In short
The financial equivalent of happiness—how time-use choices can be worth more than income increases.
Guest backgrounds
A social psychologist who studies how people should spend time and money to promote happiness, using econometric methods (shadow pricing, regression analytics).
Key claims
Everyday decisions about time can yield greater happiness benefits than making more money; shifting mindset from valuing money over time (or vice versa) can be equivalent to specific annual income gains.
Notable examples
Deliberating over meals (what/when to eat) versus savoring meals—savoring is framed as the happiness equivalent of making about $3,600 more per year; changing how you think is also described as equivalent to about $2,200 more per year.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Connection Between Time and Happiness
0:00 to 0:28
Exploration of how spending time wisely can increase happiness more than money.
The Connection Between Time and Happiness
0:30 to 2:18
Exploration of how spending time wisely can increase happiness more than money.
“With SUVs made to move with your rhythm.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:28This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. of America for a reason. With SUVs made to move with your rhythm. The versatile Equinox tackles your entire day. The spacious Traverse fits your crew and your whole weekend. And tracks bring style with value you can count on. All infused with tech that has your back. So your drive always hits the right chord. Chevrolet. Together let's drive.
1:04The research interest came first and now I just see all of these connections to my own personal life. I'm a social psychologist and I study how we should spend our time and money to best promote happiness. We used an econometric technique called shadow pricing, regression analytics strategies, trying to understand the proportionate benefit of a time choice relative to an income increase.
1:32Simple things that we do on an everyday basis, these time use decisions, have a greater benefit for happiness than making more money. So if you spend more of your time deliberating around meals, what am I going to eat, when am I going to eat it, moving from that mindset to savoring your meals more, that's the happiness equivalent of making$3 ,600 more per year. Just by shifting your mindset from valuing money more than time to time more than money, that's the same as making$2 ,200 more a year, just by even just changing the way you think. By trying to put a quantifiable numerical value on time, we are hoping that it might encourage people to start being a little bit more deliberate with even small decisions in their everyday lives.
From the publisher
The Big Idea: What's the dollar equivalent of happiness?
30 Jan 2019
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One way to encourage people to value time over money is to assign a dollar value to it. New research is doing just that: https://hbr.org/2019/01/accounting-for-time
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