Intentions are deliberate actions that force us to think about how we’re using our time and to commit to making positive use of it. Subtraction and substitution lists are intentions, in a way. Choosing to read this book is another. Intentions become powerful when we tie them to daily actions that take our time away. For example, if you want to enjo

It’s because time poverty doesn’t necessarily arise from a mismatch between the hours we have and the hours we need. It results from how we think about and value those hours. It’s as much psychological as it is structural. We might not be working more hours, but we are making decisions to work at all hours.15 We are ceaselessly connected.16 It’s ea

One way to beat back bad habits is by asking the small why question: Why am I doing this? Be deliberate. It might help to say it out loud to yourself. Follow up with other questions: What am I hoping to accomplish? Is it truly adding value to my day? And most crucially, Could I use this time for something more fulfilling? Answer as honestly as you

Nothing less than our health and our happiness depends on reversing the nearly innate notion that time is money. It’s not. Money is time. This book will help you live that truth.

Knowing why and when you engage in mindless activities can help you replace them with happier time. If you kill time when you’re tired, try taking a nap instead. If it’s brought on by stress, spend the time planning productive or enjoyable time in your calendar.

Understand What You Want to Outsource Don’t assume that because making dinner is stressful, you should just order food. Research I conducted with the smart phone application Joy showed that many consumers were more satisfied with subscription dinner services than food delivery.33 This is probably because many of us like cooking, but we don’t like h

As wealth increases, so do our feelings of time poverty. The problem is that a culture obsessed with making more money believes, wrongly, that the way to become more time affluent is to become financially wealthier.38 Somehow, accruing money will allow us to buy happiness in the future: we think, I’ll work hard and make more so that I can afford mo

Find Time to Meet New People and Help Others The benefits of having high-quality social connections are similar to those of getting regular exercise and not smoking.23 Even fleeting social interactions with strangers—like chatting with the person sitting next to you on a flight—improves mood.24 The social interaction of volunteering not only makes

Step 3: Find Time Being stuck in tasks we don’t like and can’t control is one of the leading causes of time poverty.11 As a result, the easiest and most obvious path to greater time affluence is to deliberately choose to spend more time on activities that bring you joy, and less time on activities that bring you misery.12