While the study makes sense, there is a way you can think about time as money that would make life more enjoyable.
For instance, you can spend an alloted amount of time focused on being productive and earning income. Once that's all squared away, you'll be rest assured regarding your finances, enabling you to enjoy your leisure time (likely spending money) without feeling guilty, irresponsible, or worried you'll go broke.
The important thing to remember is that once you're off the "time is money clock," you shouldn't think about it anymore. Having a clear divide between productive time and fun time is the key.
On the other hand, if you avoid thinking about time and money, you'll eventually be forced to think about it more than you would ever want to!
- Tuan @ Thinking Tech
We should banish the phrase, “Time is money.”
It turns out that people who are primed to think that way are less able to enjoy any time not spent making money. Even just thinking about money before a leisure activity can lessen one’s enjoyment of it.
“Treating time as money can actually undermine your well-being,” lead author Sanford DeVoe of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management says.
He and Ph.D. student Julian House demonstrated this principle in three experiments.
For each experiment, one group of subjects was primed to think about their time in terms of money while a control group was not.
In subsequent leisure activities introduced during the experiments, the first group showed greater impatience and lower satisfaction. However, they experienced more enjoyment and less impatience when they were paid for one of the activities, listening to music.
So, if you think of time in terms of money, that “changes the way you actually experience time,” says DeVoe. “Two people may experience the same thing, over the same amount of time, yet react to it very differently.”
He cites the rise of jobs paid by the hour as more reason for people to consider this when it comes to their off time.
What do you think? Do you find that thinking about money affects your enjoyment of leisure activities?
photo: Earls37a/Flickr
