How can we escape the time traps that keep us from living our best lives?

These are the traps that make us feel like there are never enough hours in the day. They leave us time poor, a term Ashley Whillans talks about in her book, Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life. 

Ashley is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and a leading scholar on time and happiness research. She explains the negative impact feeling time poor can have on our health, our productivity, and our relationships. 

In contrast, when we prioritize how we spend our time, we gain many positive results, no matter where we reside in the world. Ashley says, "People who value time report greater happiness, less stress, less negative emotion. Doesn't matter where I study this, in India, in Kenya, in the U.S., in Canada, in Denmark, focusing on time is an important path to happiness."

Ashley designed tools to help us rethink our relationship with time. These include self-assessments and checklists for making smarter decisions about how we use our time. She explains how incorporating them into our lives can prompt us to ask, "not only how much would that decision cost you, but how much time would it cost."

Ashley Whillans is part of the Workplace and Well-Being Initiative at Harvard, and she advises organizations on workplace and well-being strategies. Her work has appeared in publications like, the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal.

Curious Minds Team

Learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Episode Links

Daniel Gilbert

Time poverty

Autonomy paradox

Time confetti and Brigid Schulte

Yes-damn effect

Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

Mere urgency effect

Psychological safety 

Time affluence

Time is Tight: How Higher Economic Value of Time Increases Feelings of Time Pressure by Sanford Devoe and Jeffrey Pfeffer

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