If you asked someone you know how they were doing, how likely would they be to say that they were busy, tired, or stressed? For modern humans, a lack of time seems to be their Achilles heel, preventing them from enjoying the advantages of increased life expectancy, technological development, and the wide range of choices that material well-being affords.
“Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever” (Horace Mann).
We merely have 4,000 weeks to live, on average, and while certain individuals will relish additional time, there’s no assurance that we’ll even reach that total. The Christian writer Jerry Sittser attempted to calculate how many hours a person spends performing routine, unavoidable tasks. According to his calculations, a person who lives to be 80 years old will have lived for approximately 29,200 days, or 700,800 hours. Of this total, they spend 2,000 hours brushing their teeth (four minutes per day), 204,400 hours sleeping (seven hours per night), 43,800 hours eating (90 minutes per day), and 58,400 hours doing household chores (in the fortunate case that they allocate no more than two hours per day to this).
We do not know if previous generations kept such records, but amid the demands of modern life, it seems to us that they lived in a bygone era of leisure. Despite having much less comfort and facing more difficult living conditions, they had managed to domesticate time.
The term “time famine” first appeared in scientific literature in the early 2000s to describe the overwhelming, almost universal feeling of having too much to do in too little time.
The paradox of a time deficit in an era where technology frees us from many tasks (or at least makes them easier) has been written about extensively, and researchers have tried to find solutions to this problem.
Reduced working hours and no free time
In 1930, British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that the working week would be reduced to 15 hours in a century’s time. Two decades later, Richard Nixon, then Vice President of the United States, spoke about the possibility of Americans retiring at 38 from around 1990.
Although these optimistic predictions were based on the obvious fact that working hours were constantly decreasing, they did not prove to be realistic. Indeed, the 8-hour working day began to be implemented throughout the world at the beginning of the 20th century, marking the end of exhausting work schedules of 10–12 hours, or even 18 hours, a day, six days a week. However, since then, working hours have not decreased further, but actually increased, making free time increasingly scarce. This proves that the motto of British social reformer Robert Owen (who campaigned for an eight-hour working day for all workers in 1817), “Eight hours’ labour, Eight hours’ recreation, Eight hours’ rest”, needs more time to be implemented.
A 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center indicated that 60% of working American parents felt stressed due to a lack of time. According to a 2007 study, approximately 85% of parents wanted to spend more time with their children, and a 2004 survey found that the number of Americans who preferred two weeks of vacation was double the number who would have chosen two weeks of extra paid work.
However, frustration with the lack of time is only partially justified, as an article in The Economist explains. It shows that people in developed countries have more free time than previous generations. Since sociologists began conducting surveys on this topic after 1965, leisure time has increased considerably: men work an average of 12 fewer hours per week, and women spend less time on both paid and unpaid work thanks to modern conveniences such as dishwashers, washing machines, microwave ovens, and other appliances.
Nevertheless, not all employees have more free time. In fact, over the last 30 years, the working hours of professional workers have increased to exceed those of less-educated workers.
Financial earnings and level of education are good predictors of free time scarcity
A Harvard Business School survey of 1,000 professionals working in banking, accounting, consulting, and law found that 94% worked at least 50 hours per week and half worked more than 65 hours per week. Moreover, these figures did not include the additional 20–25 hours spent checking phones, and according to their own statements, professionals responded within an hour to messages received from colleagues or clients.
According to The Economist, it is true that there is more free time, but this increase was more pronounced between the 1960s and 1980s. After this period, free time became more prevalent among people with lower levels of education. In the US, men without a high school diploma gained eight hours of free time per week between 1985 and 2005. However, during the same period, those with a college degree worked six hours more per week than before. The same trend was observed among women: those with higher levels of education had less free time than in 1965, with almost 11 fewer hours per week than women who had not graduated from high school.
This gap reflects structural changes in the labour market, such as a steady decline in job opportunities for those without higher education, as well as a different attitude towards work and family. Workers with lower levels of education do not spend much time looking for the right job or obtaining new qualifications, and they tend to work closer to home than unemployed people with higher levels of education.
Work overlaps with life, completely changing its landscape for those who work long hours (often with commensurate earnings). However, it’s not as bad as it seems, argues economic journalist Ryan Avent. He explains that professional life has become more enjoyable as technology has eliminated tedious tasks and given specialists the opportunity to cooperate and devote more time to creative activities.
Avent also argues that although they complain about the lack of time, workers at the top of the pay scale would not want to slow down their pace of work under any circumstances. One might imagine a male professional working over 50 hours per week choosing to work 35 hours instead, giving his wife the opportunity to work the same number of hours, ultimately earning a high income while having more free time. In reality, however, both spouses tend to adopt 60-hour work schedules, using the money to pay people to take care of the house and children.
Identifying with the profession, awareness of the competition for well-paid jobs, and a more expensive lifestyle (including private education for children) form a package that is very difficult to give up, despite the obvious disadvantages, especially relational ones, Avent writes. However, abandoning the fast track would mean adopting a different outlook on life and a different lifestyle, one that is specific to people with a different income level. This would entail changes to everything from location to identity, and the journalist argues that this change would be difficult to survive.
In fact, researchers have found that a chronic lack of free time has an important perceptual component that cannot be attributed solely to the financially well-off. We keep ourselves constantly busy because, in our society, being busy is highly valued, due to the standards we have set ourselves that consume both time and energy, and because we have convinced ourselves that time is money.
Does time equal money?
Although we complain that time flies too fast (and with it, our lives), the reality is that we find it difficult to choose free time over financial gain.
Ashley Whillans, a professor at Harvard University, shows that prosperity is one explanation for our chronic lack of time. As incomes have risen around the world, so has the feeling that we don’t have enough time.
“In countries from Germany to the United States, people with higher incomes are more likely to agree with statements like, ‘There have not been enough minutes in a day,” writes Whillans.
Although it seems counterintuitive that prosperity would reduce our free time, there is a logic to it: any valuable resource seems rarer than it actually is, and once time is quantified financially, people become concerned with using it in the most profitable way possible. This mentality creates stress as people feel they must account for every moment, notes Harry Triandis, a social psychologist at the University of Illinois.
The relationship between time, money, and anxiety has become more pronounced since World War II, as economist Gary Becker pointed out in 1965 when he noted that time is used more carefully than a century ago. He found that a higher salary makes people willing to work longer hours, ultimately increasing the value of work time and amplifying the price of the total time budget.
Researchers Daniel Hamermesh and Junmin Lee found that it is people with high incomes who complain the most about a lack of time. Hamermesh discusses the scarcity of time in the modern world, highlighting that while life expectancy in two wealthy countries—the US and the UK—has increased by 15% over the last six decades, per capita income has tripled, generating a significant amount of disposable income (as well as time-consuming choices) within a much shorter timeframe.
Perhaps, when viewed from this perspective, it is not surprising that patience is no longer our strong point. A study by Google found that 53% of online users abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load.
In fact, one second can already be considered too much of a waste of time—the magic number for gaining a competitive advantage on the web is just 250 milliseconds, according to Microsoft specialist Harry Shum. Users tend to visit a website less often if it takes 250 milliseconds longer than a competitor’s site to load.
The request “Just wait a second!” has already become annoying in a world where, no matter how quickly things happen, they give us the frustrating impression of slowness.
And if our free hours and seconds are constantly slipping away, we must also look to a cultural model that has shaped our choices and attitudes, making us believe that a constantly full calendar and a life dictated by the clock prove that we are making good use of our time.
“I am busy, therefore I am”
If there is one group of people who cannot be accused of having free time, it is mothers, who often work too. Journalist Brigid Schulte described the overwhelming feeling of working to exhaustion while trying to juggle family and career, only to find herself “scattered, fragmented, and exhausted” by the guilt of not doing enough in either area.
Recognising that even single people feel powerless and overwhelmed by daily tasks, Schulte investigated the reasons behind this phenomenon in her book Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, highlighting the three dimensions of a truly fulfilling life: work, relationships, and leisure time.
The journalist pointed out that mothers, especially single mothers, are the group most deprived of time, although it has been difficult for male researchers to grasp this for decades because they associated time spent at home with children with an abundance of free time. While today’s fathers are much more involved in raising their children than previous generations were, the time mothers invest in caring for their children and performing household tasks is still significantly greater, even when they work full-time.
Schulte talks about the nights she spent baking cakes for the following day, in an attempt to make up for the time she spent away from her children while working. She recalls one Thanksgiving when preparations for a dinner for 18 people left the kitchen in chaos, with flour sprinkled everywhere, and an exhausted mother who was certain she would not be able to clean up before the guests arrived.
In a changed society where roles have changed and become more complicated, you can’t manage family and professional life and still have a life if you try to respect the standards of yesteryear, where the husband financially supported the family and the wife took care of the household and children.
Perhaps, then, mothers could relax their standards a little—the kitchen floor doesn’t have to be so clean that you could perform surgery on it, Schulte argues.
However, it is not as simple as it seems because mothers tend to compare themselves to each other in order to convince themselves that they are performing their role as close to perfection as possible.
Competition is a zero-sum game
What makes the situation worse is that mothers tend to idolise busy people, getting caught up in a game where they lose even when they win: “I’m much busier than you.” In fact, it’s a game that’s hard to avoid, as journalist Rachel Halliwell points out. She recounts a conversation with another mother, to whom she unwisely recommended a good book. The woman quickly dampened her enthusiasm by promptly listing all the tasks she was juggling, ruling out any indulgence such as reading. Halliwell admits that she couldn’t help but score points in this game, boasting about how she organises her day, which usually starts at 5 a.m.
Women of this generation desperately seek validation through a busy schedule, glancing at their peers and hoping that they are doing at least as well as they are. Busyness becomes a badge of honour, and free time a shameful vice that is unacceptable to admit to. Halliwell points out that it’s no wonder the role models women look up to work at a dizzying pace. She recalls Joanna Coles, former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, who had a treadmill in her office that she used to train on while sending emails; and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who works 130 hours a week, plans everything, even her bathroom breaks, and worked from her hospital bed after giving birth to twins.
Schulte presents free time as an antidote to the diseases of haste and overload, arguing that recreational activities breed creative solutions to current problems, recharge our batteries, and offer us the opportunity to rethink our priorities. After all, life is short, so we need to analyse our current direction and how we want to spend the rest of our lives. This is why she insists that we schedule our leisure time in our diaries just as we do our tasks and adhere to it conscientiously instead of postponing it indefinitely until we are finally free from urgent and important matters.
The solutions to freeing ourselves from the tyranny of time do not stop there. Studies and experts outline ways in which we can manage our time better. They also suggest ways in which we can measure time other than by profit or haste.
Escaping the snares of rushed time
If we are tired of running as if we have a grizzly bear on our heels while our minds are filled with an endless list of unfinished tasks, we can try to escape this hectic pace by incorporating moments of healing and positive experiences into our daily lives.
While some studies have noted the link between increased income and a time crisis, others have shown that money can be used to “buy” time. A Harvard University study conducted on a sample of 6,000 adults in Canada, Denmark, the US, and the Netherlands showed that people who spend money to save time (e.g. paying for house cleaning services or home grocery delivery) report greater life satisfaction. The study concluded that people are happier when they pay to save time than when they purchase material things, and that buying time can be an effective buffer against time famine, regardless of income level.
“Sometimes when people imagine time-saving services, maybe what they’re picturing is a house keeper, butler, and a gardener,” says Elizabeth Dunn, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. However, she points out that it is a misconception that only wealthy people can buy time. In the United States, for example, paying for a cleaner costs between $25 and $45, and during that time many of the tasks that overwhelm a busy woman can be completed, as Whillans, who coordinated the study, points out.
Surprisingly, however, the study showed that very few people choose to purchase time-saving services, even among the 800 millionaires included in the sample. “Almost half of them report spending no money to pay others to do tasks for them,” said Dunn.
Similarly, only 2% of a group of 98 adults in Vancouver said they would spend a gift of $40 to gain more time.
Giving is the key to expanding time
According to a study by the University of Pennsylvania, another counterintuitive way to gain more time is to help others. Participants in the study who spent time helping someone in need perceived that they had more time than those who focused on their own needs. This subjective experience of time dilation when we give time to others seems paradoxical, but researchers explain it as an increased sense of self-efficacy, meaning time spent with others seems more productive and fulfilling.
The researchers conclude that, whenever we feel pressed for time, we should be more generous with it, despite being tempted to do the opposite.
Wonder, the magic wand that slows down the flow of time
The idea that we don’t get more time by focusing on ourselves, but by focusing on what is around us, was also suggested by a study coordinated by Stanford University researcher Melanie Rudd.
Rudd and her colleagues found that experiencing feelings of wonder or awe causes subjects to feel as though they have more time. Although it is a subjective emotion that is difficult to quantify and varies in intensity and trigger from person to person, we have all experienced it at times—perhaps when faced with a mountain landscape, a rainbow, or the perfection of a baby, or when overwhelmed by a special gift or gesture of kindness. The study showed that people who experience this kind of reverence perceive that they have more time available than those who experience other emotions. They are also more willing to volunteer to help others, prefer experiences over material things, and report being happier.
In The Ragamuffin Gospel, writer Brennan Manning discusses the rarity of the sense of wonder in modern society and our unhealthy immunity to the splendour of creation and a world still filled with grace. The fact that science has provided answers to our questions about nature and the whirlwind of modern life has made us more mature, but has also deprived us of childlike feelings of wonder and fascination. “We have grown bigger and everything else smaller, less impressive,” the author laments, noting the indifference with which we pass by a frozen lake, a bush of ripening blackberries, or the lacy clouds covering the moon.
Ultimately, perhaps it is the small things that have the power to freeze time and capture the happiest moments of life. When faced with death, it is the small experiences that matter, as journalist Erma Bombeck confessed in her famous list of things she would do if she could start her life over again. A dinner with friends, a picnic where you sit on the grass without caring that your clothes are getting green, a sincere hug, a declaration of love, or a request for forgiveness are experiences accessible to anyone.
“I would seize every minute of it… look at it and really see it… try it on… live it… exhaust it… and never give that minute back until there was nothing left of it,” she concluded. It is a masterful lesson about the value of time that we should explore while we still can.
