Do you pass time or spend time?
Treating time as money “can actually undermine your well-being,” says Sanford DeVoe, one of two researchers at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management who carried out a new study to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The new study shows people who put a price on their time are more likely to feel impatient when they’re not using it to earn money. That hurts their ability to derive happiness during leisure activities.
With growth over the last several decades in jobs paid by the hour, it’s important for people to be mindful of the impact this can have on their leisure enjoyment. “What thinking about your time in terms of money does is that it interferes with your ability to enjoy your leisure time because you’re not making any money from those activities,” says DeVoe. He offers three tips for maximizing your leisure time:
Maximizing Your Leisure Time
- When you’re off the clock, you want to think about your time as priceless (just like those Mastercard ads).
- It can often be in our organization’s or boss’ interest to remind us of the monetary value of our time, but it’s critical for enjoying your time off the clock to leave that mindset at the office door.
- One thing you might do is to consider when you’re doing something that gives you personal satisfaction and enjoyment, is to take an extra moment to take those experience in more fully – indeed, one of the reasons we work so hard is so that we are in a better position to do the things we enjoy.
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