>> In our recent work, we have been really interested in these
constant trade offs that people are navigating between time and money.
So if you think about it, most of the time you could have more money, but
you probably have to give up some of your time.
Or you can have more time, but it might cost you some money.
And so we wondered whether there's sort of chronic dispositional differences,
whereby some individuals are more likely to be willing to give up their time to
have more money, and some are willing to give up their money to have more time.
And indeed, when we've now conducted very broad surveys,
nationally representative surveys within North America, at least.
And what we see is that the population of North America seems to be pretty split
down the middle.
>> Interesting.
>> That about half of the people seem to prioritize money, and
about half seem to prioritize time when sort of faced with these trade offs.
And so you can see the value in trading off one
against the other depending on the situation.
But sort of dispositionally, when we look across situations,
what we see is that individuals who chronically prioritize time over money,
who are willing to give up their money to have more time or
to say work fewer hours in order to have more free time.
We see that they are happier than individuals who prioritize money, and
kind of aren't willing to give up their money to have more time.
>> Excellent, so in some sense, time makes you more affluent than
wealth makes you affluent, or at least makes you happier in some sense.
>> Yeah, and so what is definitely clear is that both time affluence and
material affluence matter for well-being.
So I think sometimes people hear sort of a little sound bite about my work and
they think that it means, money can't buy happiness.
And that's not true. Money can buy happiness.
People who have more money are happier.
But also people who have more time are happier, up to a point, right?
So people who say that they feel really busy and pressed for time,
like they haven't had enough time to do the things that are important to them,
tend to be less happy.
And interestingly,
the wealthier you get, the less likely you are to feel like you have enough time.
And that seems to be both a function of the objective realities of wealthy people,
for example, working more.
But also this sort of subjective perception that as your
time becomes more economically valuable,
you tend to view it as scarce because what is valuable is scarce.
And so what we're seeing then is that perhaps people need to kind of re-jiggle
their priorities a little bit.
At least one set of basic material needs are met,
it may be worthwhile to think about prioritizing time.
>> That's fantastic.
And so throughout that course, we keep hearing that to
do this we sometimes have to put these intentional practices in place, right?
We might have this intuition to just spend all our time making as much money as
possible, or that we need to buy things for ourselves when we're having a bad day.
But those intuitions are wrong.
And we talk about how you need to put intentional practices in place to
do this better.
Your mind is not going to tell you to do it automatically, so set your habits up so
you can do this to maximize your happiness.
Now, have you taken some these research to heart?
Have you started in your own life trying to put these practices in place for
either kind of for social spending or for time affluence.
>> Yeah, I mean, so first up I would say it really is hard
sometimes to put these ideas into practice.
So I have to admit when I started doing all this for social spending research,
I was meeting with my tax accountant and
he started tapping the line where it said how much I donated to charity.
He's like, gosh, I sure have seen your name in the media a lot.
>> [LAUGH] >> That's the value of charity.
I was like, I guess [LAUGH] a little bit more.
And so I think I have tried to alter my approaches a little bit.
For one thing I think in our charitable giving work,
one thing that we see is that charitable giving doesn't just
automatically make people happier all the time.
It really depends on how you do it.
And so charitable giving opportunities that make you feel more connected to
others, charitable giving opportunities where you can really see the impact that
your generosity is having, tend to have the biggest emotional boost.
And are therefore most likely to be self-reinforcing.
And so I've tried, in my own life, to try to seek out some of those opportunities.
So for example, with a group of friends because I live in Canada,
we're able to bring over a family of Syrian refugees.
And basically kind of help them adjust to life, and provide for them for
the first year that they're here.
And so that's a kind of opportunity where I think it's very emotionally rewarding.
Because it's a group of friends working together to do something that we find
really meaningful,
where we'll get to see the difference that our actions are having.
And so I guess, through my work, I've learned to be on the lookout for
those kinds of opportunities,
where I can not just sort of click donate on a website which is also great, but
really have the chance to see the impact that my actions are having.
>> And that kind of fits with your work, too, right?
Because in the original studies, even in the $5 studies,
give this to a friend or do something nice for a friend.
Didn't you find that doing nice things for others is boosting your social connection,
and that might be one mediating factor that leads to increased happiness,
is that right?
>> It does seem to be one very important factor, yeah.
So the more that people are getting a sense of social connection
from their giving, the happier they turn out to be.
>> Excellent, cool.
And so how about on the time affluence side,
has that work led you to kind of prioritize slightly differently?
>> Yeah, I struggled with the time affluence.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] So
one of the reasons that I'm doing the course, is I tell my students is that
I can notice myself being in some ways a hypocrite about this, right?
Where I know this work really well.
I know how you build in habits.
But then I look in my own life and I'm not necessarily pursuing habits or
kind of doing them because they take this intentional work.
So don't feel bad, you're just modeling.
[LAUGH] Modeling a thing or two.
>> One thing I do is that I have thought fairly intentionally about
the parts of my day that are the most frustrating or least happy.
And I try to ask myself, can I use money to eliminate those moments of my day?
Because that's likely to be a really good use of money based on our research.
And for me, I am the worst cleaner ever.
Cleaning as my husband will be quick to point out, he's great at cleaning.
He can clean the kitchen like that.
For me, it will take an hour to do a terrible job.
And so I've decided it's just worth it to pay for
a house cleaner, even though it seems a little bit indulgent.
It takes out that terrible part of my day, terrible part of my week.
So it's a way that I can use money in order to buy happiness.
>> Yeah, and use money to buy extra time, right?
because it's not the time that you spend cleaning, too, as well.
>> Exactly.
>> But you're also a surfer, right?
So I feel like you must have some time off or at least on your web page,
it mentions you being a surfer, so yeah.
>> I think [LAUGH] My colleagues would say that I'm okay at maintaining
the work life balance thing.
But it's still challenging, right?
Because I think we forget how busy we're going to be in the future.
So it's easy, I always think, I'm too busy to do that tomorrow,
but in two weeks I'll definitely have time.
And so that's one other thing that I've learned from my own work and from other's
work is to try to think about, okay, if I don't feel like I have time to
do this this week, I probably won't feel like I have time to do it in six months.
And so trying to restrain myself a little bit in terms of how many things I take on.
>> Perfect, perfect well,
it's good to hear some aspects of the work being put into practice.
But also the example that we keep talking about in the course, where this is hard.
It takes intentional effort, and you have to kind of go against.
Even if you know this work, it's hard to kind of make that part of your intuitions.
So thank you so much.
Again, this was Professor Elizabeth Dunn.
You should check out her book, Happy Money, The Science of Happier Spending.
Thanks so much, Liz.