The way we view free time is making us less happy

For starters, we can stop viewing our work as our lives and learn to distinguish the two or intertwine them. We can plan specific pursuits for our spare time, rather than flitting it away. We can take stock of how much free time we actually have and where it is going. Then, we can structure those hours and minutes to ensure they are used for someth... See more

I might not be able to spend two full weeks lying on a picnic table in my backyard, but there’s a key insight lurking in that story about the value of slowing down to prepare to tackle a hard project. If we can get over our frustration that these traditional knowledge workers enjoyed privileges that we don’t have access to, we might find in their e

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Thinking about work while trying to relax induces panic, because feelings of time poverty are caused by how well activities fit together in our mind. If we are trying to be a committed parent while our work email goes off, we can’t help thinking we should be working on our next deadline instead of being present with our child. This conflict makes u

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“Productivity advice promises the ability to extend the capacity of an hour to encompass more work, more production , than it could otherwise hold. Our productivity hacks are like little time machines, allowing us to double up on each minute of the day. One might understandably expect this to make time feel as if it's slowing down, becoming denser,

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