14 DAY TRIAL // Experts with the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management say that our perception of what we call “free time” may dictate an important portion of our personal happiness. Viewing time as money is never the way to go, the researchers suggest.
In a new study, experts determined that people who placed a lot of emphasis on valuing time tended to be less happy all around, primarily because they never allow themselves to just cool off and do nothing.
In other words, these individuals tend to feel very stressed when they are not using their time to win money. This pattern of behavior holds true even if they are supposed to have leisure time, and simply enjoy the simpler, finer things in life.
Under such circumstances, leisure activities become anything than pleasant, turning into a source of stress. This reduces overall happiness levels in this subpopulation. Impatience is also very widespread in this group, PsychCentral reports.
This behavior goes hand-in-hand with the common, widespread misconception that more money equals more happiness. This has been proven wrong on many occasions, and recent studies have also shown that the happiness level in the general population is not dependent on gross domestic product (GDP).
“Treating time as money can actually undermine your well-being,” RSM investigator and lead study author Sanford DeVoe, PhD, explains. He conducted the work with PhD student Julian House. The team set up three experiments to assess their test subjects.
Some groups were unknowingly conditioned to think about their time in terms of money. This was done by making them answer a questionnaire that contained precisely-formulated questions. Not all participants were conditioned in this manner.
After the questionnaires were filled out, test subjects were given the opportunity to relax and enjoy it, but were not told to do so specifically. On average, those in the conditioned groups expressed less satisfaction with leisure time, and more stress.
But these individuals proved more than willing to relax when scientists paid them a small sum for listening to music. Seeing time as money actually “changes the way you actually experience time,” DeVoe explains.
“Two people may experience the same thing, over the same amount of time, yet react to it very differently,” the investigator concludes.