#318 A New Way to Think About Your Time | Ashley Whillans

For many of us, in this pandemic, our relationship to time has become particularly fraught. You may be noticing that, with no limits on your work time, you are going into overdrive and feeling more crazed than ever. Or you may be feeling like you have too much time and are bored out of your mind. Or you may be feeling both. My guest, Ashley Whillans, is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book Time Smart. She was recommended to us by a former guest, Laurie Santos, a professor from Yale and host of The Happiness Lab podcast. Ashley has a radical approach to managing your time -- or taking your time, to put a new spin on an old cliche. Her goal is to get you from a state of time poverty to time affluence. In this conversation, we talk about: how to do a time audit; funding time, finding time, and reframing time; the surprising extent to which prioritizing time over money predicts happiness -- and what to do if you usually do the opposite; how to handle time confetti; and the value of canceling meetings. This is the first of a two-part series we are doing this week on time. On Wednesday, we’re going to talk to someone with a rather different approach. Her name is Jenny Odell and she wrote a bestseller called How To Do Nothing.

Where to find Ashley Whillans online: 

Website:

• https://www.awhillans.com/

Social Media:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashleywhillans?lang=en

Book Mentioned:

• Time Smart

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Other Resources Mentioned:

• Elizabeth Dunn’s research on money and happiness
• Sheena Ieyngar’s research on consumer choices
• Brigid Schulte’s work on time confetti

Additional Resources:

• Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live
• Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide
• Free App access for Frontline Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care