Day passing fast? Maybe it’s ‘time famine’
Life demands have changed throughout our life span. The pandemic accelerated many changes affecting how we spend our time.
Three years ago, you may have had blocks of time scheduled to accomplish daily routines of work, family duties and perhaps some rest and relaxation. For some, working at home offered some convenience, but for many, it blurred the compartmentalization of work, home, child care, home schooling and more. There was not enough time to accomplish the tasks of the day.
Yale psychology professor Dr. Laurie Santos has a word for this — “time famine.” Feeling overburdened, exhausted and starved of time are good ingredients for a stressful, unhappy life.
The opposite of time famine, according the social psychologist, is time affluence — a subjective sense that you actually have free time. Time is money as we often say. Having time affluence is feeling that you are time wealthy.
Money is more variable and adjustable. We may make less or more money in our lifetime, but time is not adjustable; we can’t make it more or less. We have the same 24 hours in the day all throughout our lives.
If you think about it, time is actually more valuable than money. If you lost money, today, you can make it up, another day. But the time we have today is lost at the end of the day and cannot be regained.
Being time-famished according to the experts, from a psychological perspective, is similar to hunger famine. Studies have found that experiencing time famine had more of a negative impact on well-being than being unemployed.
Imagine having a hectic day at work, a looming deadline and the hope of getting out of work on time to attend an important family commitment — and your boss scheduled a short-notice meeting with you at the end of the work day. Your nervous system will wreak all kinds of havoc and you will experience time famine.
Since the feeling of not having enough time in the day is subjective, free time can be five minutes or 10 minutes. It does not have to be an hour or more.
You may actually have a number of short free time periods in the day that you can use to renew yourself.
The social psychologist’s term for this is “time confetti.” Having time confetti lists of things that you can do (other than work) when you have these short moments has proven to contribute to a feeling of time affluence. Use your five minutes between meetings, or the 10 minutes waiting to pick up your child from football practice, to cross off items on your confetti list.
Your list may include taking deep breaths or writing some entry in your gratitude journal. It could be reading a chapter of a book you really enjoy or it could just be sitting still and noticing your environment. A short mindfulness period many times a day is grounding nonetheless.
A study was done showing how buying time can be more enjoyable than buying things. Participants were given $40 to spend on anything that can help them get back some time. Some spent it on food takeout, hiring somebody to do grocery shopping, doing a much-needed clean up and such. Another group was given the same amount to buy clothes, books and other things.
The study results showed that those who spent the extra money to buy some time are much happier.
Make better use of your free time however short and scattered it may be throughout the day. If you are fortunate enough to have the means, here are some suggestions:
• Order takeout a couple times a week to buy back the time of cooking dinner
• Hire somebody to clean the house
• Utilize your able teenager neighbors to help out
• Use errand services to buy groceries and other items
• Utilize meal prep services or meal deliveries once or twice a week
• Hire some help to cut your grass and clean your yard
• Say no to time-grabbing activities that do not really contribute to your time affluence
I’m pretty sure you can come up with your own list. It takes some reframing in our pre-conditioned thinking that the little moments of free time we get throughout the day can be well spent. Make your time confetti list and keep it handy.