#29 Ashley Whillans: Time Poverty and Time Affluence
What if most of your conversations about time are actually conversations about feelings?
80% of working adults feel like they’re “time-poor,” but time is a tricky concept to pin down. What many people really mean when they say “I don’t have enough time” is that they feel stressed or overwhelmed by the demands of work and life. This truth has costly consequences—feeling time-poor can have stronger negative effects on happiness than being unemployed. Dr. Ashley Whillans of Harvard Business School discusses the research linking time and well-being and offers suggestions on how to adopt a healthy time lifestyle.
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Ashley Whillans is the Volpert Family Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. Professor Whillans earned her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of British Columbia. Her research seeks to understand the associations between time, money, and subjective wellbeing. She is particularly interested in understanding how individual, organizational and societal factors like gender, workplace policies, and income inequality predict how people value and spend time and money, with possible implications for well-being.
Mentioned in the Episode:
Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life by Ashley Whillans
To build efficacy, eat the frog first by Rachel Habbert and Juliana Schroeder
Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte
Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol by Silvia Bellezza, Neeru Paharia, and Anat Keinan
Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind by Dan Gilbert et al