Technology saves us time, but it also takes it away. This is known as the autonomy paradox. We adopt mobile technologies to gain autonomy over when and how long we work, yet, ironically, we end up working all the time.19 Long blocks of free time we used to enjoy are now interrupted constantly by our smart watches, phones, tablets, and laptops. This situation taxes us cognitively, and fragments our leisure time in a way that makes it hard to use this time for something that will relieve stress or make us happy.20 I (and other researchers) call this phenomenon time confetti, which amounts to little bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking.21 — *location: 339* ^ref-19453 --- When we try to enjoy a birthday dinner, notifications about our friends’ tropical vacation photos make our pasta taste less delicious. When we try to choose a restaurant for our next date, the endless ocean of reviews and ratings leads us to spend more time choosing our meals than savoring them. When we try to have meaningful time off with friends and family, our alerts from work create guilt and dread over what we’re not getting done. — *location: 392* ^ref-28469 --- 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 more leisure time later. This is the wrong solution; soon you’ll see that it’s the opposite of the right solution. Focusing on chasing wealth is a trap. It leads only to an increased focus on chasing wealth.39 — *location: 437* ^ref-20475 --- Philosopher Blaise Pascal said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from [our] inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Researchers call this idleness aversion, and it makes us do some strange things. — *location: 534* ^ref-53662 --- Free time devoted to active leisure—activities like volunteering, socializing, and exercising—promotes happiness far more than spending time engaged in passive leisure activities like watching TV, napping, or online shopping.18 — *location: 774* ^ref-8935 --- One way to prevent this is to allow for, or even plan, slack time, which is extra time left between appointments that can be used as a buffer or as downtime. Some researchers advocate rough scheduling, under which you don’t schedule time with friends for 7 p.m., instead planning to meet “after work.” Or you’ll do gardening “sometime Sunday morning” instead of “from 8 until 10.” Slack time removes the stress of making sure we fulfill all of our plans and allows for spontaneity. This spontaneity matters, because overefficiency carries negative consequences: when we are overly efficient in conversations, we enjoy them less.21 — *location: 1450* ^ref-42026 --- 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 — *location: 323* ^ref-52716 --- It’s easy to continuously pay attention to that which we believe will make us more money. Valuable free time arrives; we are unprepared to use it and so we waste it. Or we tell ourselves we shouldn’t take a break, so we work through it. — *location: 327* ^ref-10856 --- rising income inequality makes us feel as if our world could collapse tomorrow if we don’t spend every moment working, or at least appearing to work.18 — *location: 331* ^ref-14702 --- 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. — *location: 395* ^ref-45937 --- It also takes time to cognitively recover from shifting our minds away from the present to some other stress-inducing activity.25 People end up enjoying their free time less and, when asked to reflect on it, estimate that they had less free time than they actually did.26 That’s how invasive the technology time trap is: time confetti makes us feel even more time impoverished than we actually are. — *location: 400* ^ref-7934 --- Research shows that money protects against sadness but doesn’t buy joy.29 — *location: 414* ^ref-44049 --- When we become rich, we begin to compare our lives to people even richer than we are. We chase an idea we’ll never reach, because as our wealth increases, so does our sense that others are doing better than we are and that we need to, we can, catch them.31 — *location: 421* ^ref-41560 --- my colleagues turned college students into professional consultants, asking them to charge $1.50 or $0.15 for each minute that they spent working on a lab task. Students who charged $1.50 for their time felt more pressed for time than students who charged $0.15.36 — *location: 433* ^ref-43608 --- As society becomes more unequal, people feel increasingly insecure about their financial future, regardless of their current stature.49 Those doing well worry about how far they could fall. Those struggling to make ends meet fear falling farther behind. Most of us cope by working more and trying to make more money.50 — *location: 508* ^ref-61516 --- Most of us are overoptimistic about our future time.60 We believe, dumbly, that we will have more time tomorrow than we do today.61 This is sometimes referred to as the planning fallacy.62 — *location: 552* ^ref-31783 --- We keep ourselves overwhelmed in the hopes that this busyness will provide us fulfillment.63 Ironically, perpetual busyness undermines the goals that we set out to achieve with all our busyness in the first place.64 — *location: 571* ^ref-17207 --- What makes it a trap for you is that it makes you unhappy and steals time that you would otherwise use in a way that makes you happy. — *location: 579* ^ref-7313 --- When we feel time poor, we take on small, easy-to-complete tasks because they help us feel more control over our time.65 — *location: 595* ^ref-27214 --- No matter what time affluence looks like for you, the happiest and most time affluent among us are deliberate with their free time. Working toward time affluence is about recognizing and overcoming the time traps in our lives and intentionally carving out happier and more meaningful moments each day. — *location: 600* ^ref-64255 --- Time-poor people who feel overwhelmed at work spend more money than time-affluent people on material purchases that distract but don’t provide happiness or meaning.15 — *location: 764* ^ref-33238 --- Even simply moving your body helps: research shows that those who’ve moved within the past twenty-five minutes report higher happiness.19 — *location: 777* ^ref-48993 --- 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? — *location: 1392* ^ref-18965 --- If your answer to the small why question is, “I’m just filling time” or “No reason, really” or the big red flag answer, “I don’t know,” stop doing what you’re doing. Write down the activity, and add it to a subtraction list. — *location: 1411* ^ref-23699 --- 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. — *location: 1510* ^ref-64499 --- Engaging in self-control and exerting willpower are hard (and, as it turns out, somewhat overrated). You can get more assertive with your time-affluence regimen by setting defaults that produce time affluence. In this way, you don’t choose time affluence; it’s your default. This means that making a decision means opting out of time affluence. — *location: 1562* ^ref-49638 --- Proactive time (one colleague calls it “pro-time,” and we’ll use that for its brevity) is time reserved for important but not urgent work (or leisure), — *location: 1613* ^ref-28181 --- Pro-time should be distraction free: this is critical. — *location: 1623* ^ref-22276 --- The key to avoiding mere urgency is to be disciplined about pro-time. Don’t miss the scheduled time, and track what you get done. If you lose hours because of an unexpected expense of time, make it up as soon as possible. Follow through—even if you are the only person who will know you did. Think of it as a matter of personal integrity — *location: 1633* ^ref-41195 --- My colleagues and I have found that people who make time-related excuses are perceived as less likeable and less trustworthy than those who do not.24 — *location: 2012* ^ref-8411 --- The big why question is, Why does prioritizing time over money matter to me? The answer to this question will motivate you to keep pursuing better uses of your time. It may not be a simple answer, and it may change over time, but it’s important to periodically reflect on it. — *location: 2085* ^ref-34492 ---