#29 Ashley Whillans: Time Poverty and Time Affluence

What if most of your conversations about time are actually conversations about feelings?

80% of working adults feel like they’re “time-poor,” but time is a tricky concept to pin down. What many people really mean when they say “I don’t have enough time” is that they feel stressed or overwhelmed by the demands of work and life. This truth has costly consequences—feeling time-poor can have stronger negative effects on happiness than being unemployed. Dr. Ashley Whillans of Harvard Business School discusses the research linking time and well-being and offers suggestions on how to adopt a healthy time lifestyle.

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“Time poverty is not just an individual problem—there are real social and structural factors that contribute to time poverty.”

— Ashley Whillans

Ashley Whillans is the Volpert Family Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. Professor Whillans earned her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of British Columbia. Her research seeks to understand the associations between time, money, and subjective wellbeing. She is particularly interested in understanding how individual, organizational and societal factors like gender, workplace policies, and income inequality predict how people value and spend time and money, with possible implications for well-being.