Finance: Value of Time

6 Common Time Traps Summary

Source: Which of these 6 time traps is eating up all your time? - Ideas TED

1. Technology interruptions break our hours into confetti:
   1. Affects leisure, breaks “free” time into hard to use confetti (smaller pieces of time).
   2. Takes time to cognitively recover from shifting our minds from the present to a stress-inducing activity.
2. We focus too much on money:
   1. Prioritizing making more money over having free time makes you feel worse later.
   2. Money does not equal joy
3. We undervalue time:
   1. You need to know the value of a time spent in quantities like money to make informed decisions
4. Busyness as status symbol:
   1. Busyness is seen as important and rewarded at work, but leads to an unhappy and unhealthy life.
5. Idleness aversion:
   1. Many people do not know how to relax and feel stressed about leisure time.
   2. Idleness has been shown to be a valuable form of leisure and can increase time affluence.
6. We think we have more time tomorrow than we actually do
   1. We overcommit to things without understanding their time commitment and value busyness.
   2. Statistically, the best predictor of how busy we are going to be next week is how busy we are right now.

Excerpted from the new book Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life by Ashley Whillans

Studies show time affluent and happier people are deliberate with their free time