Modern Wisdom - #547 - Dr Cassie Holmes - How To Manage Your Time For A Happier Life

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Dr Cassie Holmes is a Professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, an author and an award-winning researcher of time and happiness. Time management in the modern world is hard. Many people don't feel like they have sufficient space to complete their to do list, let alone manifest their spare-time dreams. With some new strategies and a different mindset around time however, this problem might be fixed. Expect to learn what time habits the happiest people all have, how to truly value things experiences you want to enjoy, the relationship between time and happiness, the best techniques for an efficient schedule, how science advises you to deepen friendships, how to make tasks you don't want to do suck less and much more... Sponsors: Get £150 discount on Eight Sleep products at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 15% discount on Craftd London’s jewellery at https://bit.ly/cdwisdom (use code MW15) Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Extra Stuff: Check out Cassie's website - https://www.cassiemholmes.com/ Buy Happier Hour - https://amzn.to/3DAdigA  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back to this show. My guest today is Dr Cassie Holmes. She's a professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management and author and an award-winning researcher of time and happiness. Time management in the modern world is hard. Many people don't feel like they have sufficient space to complete their to-do list, let alone manifest their spare time dreams. With some new strategies and a different mindset around time, however, this problem might be fixed. I expect to learn what time habits the happiest people all have, how to truly value experiences you want to enjoy, the relationship between time and happiness, the best techniques for an efficient schedule, how science advises you to deepen relationships, how to make tasks you don't want to do succ less, and much more.

I really appreciate an insight into time management, I think that it's something everybody could be better at, even my most efficient, most effective, best executive functioning friends all need an assistance, and Cassie is literally one of the world's leaders when it comes to researching time and happiness, so you're in good hands today. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dr. Cassie Holmes. You are basically a happiness teacher, right? Yes. I teach happiness in particularly focusing on the role of time for our happiness. Why are those two things intrinsically linked? Well, because the way we spend the hours of our day,

sum up to the years of our life, and so the time that we spend is the fabric of our life. And from that, we are either more or less happy. And when I say happy, what I mean is the joy that we experience in our days as well as the satisfaction we feel about our lives. So there's both that emotional feeling within as well as a value that I have incognitive feeling about that both of those are linked to and when I say the word happy and feeling happier which is really the goal and you know part of the title of my book that's what I'm talking about. Interesting. I remember reading a summary of Dan Gilbert and Daniel Kahneman's two

approaches of what they thought about happiness, the lying in the pool with a cocktail on a lilof the rest of your life. Yes, it's not meaningful, but you enjoyed every second individually, and then the other version that was like a meaningful one. And it seems like your definition of happiness here kind of combines the two. It's the state enjoyment in the moment, and it's the retrospective feeling of being satisfied about how your life has gone and about each moment as it was spent. Is that the commonly held definition when we talk about happiness in the literature and the science at the moment? Is that what people mean when they refer to happiness? It is the sort of what the literature refers to the term that they say is subjective well-being, and that is the

coupling of this emotional component, so feeling more positive than negative emotion, as well as satisfaction about. And notably, there are instances in which they do sort of come apart, but as I'm not even just talking about the literature, but really about the implications for us as individuals and how we should be spending our time, what I am going for is that coupling. Like we both want to feel happy and satisfied while it's happening, but also have an impact on our evaluation of how good life is and how meaningful, and meaningful is actually, or meaning is a little bit of a separate construct. But in our research, we've actually looked at what's the correlation

between how happy people are feeling and how meaningful they feel like their life is, and they're so highly correlated. And yeah, there are instances where, again, you can pull them apart, but as I'm striving to feel sort of good in and about my life, and I think that that's what a lot of individuals are striving for, that's the operationalization of this idea, this construct using scientific jargon. But basically, that's our goal,

to feel happy within and happy about and really it's about feeling joy and fulfillment. So that's the goal. What are the biggest predictors of happiness and life satisfaction? Well, if you look at the all the studies that have happiness as a dependent variable as the outcome, you see that a big thing that has an effect is our natural disposition, so our personality and

and so like, are you a naturally half-glass full type person or are you a natural grump? Now that has a big effect and it is important to recognize, but I don't focus as much on that because we don't have control over that. Another thing that does have an impact on our happiness is our circumstances and our life circumstances. So these are things like income level, attractiveness, marital status, and interestingly, these things are the ones that a lot of people are like, if only I have that, then I'll be happy. And that's what they're striving for. If only I had a lot of money, then I'd be happy.

If only I met the love of my life and got married, then I'd be happy. If only I was super gorgeous, then I would be happy. And the research shows, looking at the correlation, the relationship between those circumstances and happiness, that there is a relationship, but it's significantly smaller than we think. And the answer is no.

If only you had a lot of money, would you be happy and happy forever? The answer is no for that. If only you were super gorgeous, would you be happy and happy forever? The answer is no for that. If you found the love of your life and got married, would you be happy forever?

The answer is no for that. And so also our life circumstances are largely out of our day-to-day control. So, again, that's not something I focus on. What I focus on is this final chunk, this input into happiness that does, and Science Show, has a significant effect, and actually a significantly larger effect than we think. And that is what we do and our mindset in the day to day. And I particularly focus through this lens of time, how we spend our time and how we think about our time,

has a significant influence on our happiness. And this is where we have choice. And this is why I'm interested in it, because if we understand the science and know are informed, okay, what has been validated as having a significant effect on how we feel in our days and how satisfied we feel about our lives,

will great. Then we can make the choice, the day-to-day choices, to implement those insights and then feel happier in our days and more satisfied about our lives. What are the ways in which the happiest people spend their time then? Well, the research points to some averages. So looking at time tracking research, what the researchers do is look over the course of people's days, what activities are they doing, as well as how they're feeling over the course of the day,

so that you can identify, okay, what are those activities that on average are associated with the most positive emotion, what are those activities that on average are associated with the most positive emotion, whether those activities on average are associated with the most negative emotion. That research points to the happiest activities are those that involve social connection, so whether through intimacy, or spending time with family and friends,

the activities that are associated with the least amount of happiness on average tend to be commuting, work, and housework. So that's a bummer and we can talk about how to address that. But I think what's even more helpful for folks and listeners is not thinking about averages, but actually when and which I describe this process and this exercise that is so helpful in happier hour is basically tracking your own time. So over the course of a week, writing down what are you doing? What activities are you doing in every half hour and there's a worksheet on my website in case helpful? But really it's writing down what you're doing and being more specific not just work or Socializing but what work activity are you doing and if you're socializing who who are you with and what are you doing?

And as importantly is as you're coming out of that activity, how did that activity make you feel? Not this sort of global is like, I like to do this and I don't like to do this, but having spent your time doing that, how do you feel on a 10 point scale? And this is so hopeful because at the end of the week, you have this fantastic personalized data set. So you can look, all right, what are those activities that got my highest ratings? Why were those that really made me feel happy and satisfied and joyful? What are those activities that are like not at all happy? You also can see just how much time you're spending

across your various activities. So you can sort of pick up on like, holy cow, I smell a whole lot of time on this activity that got like fours in my ratings. And it's not even all that necessary. So that's informative in itself. Maybe reallocate that what I would say is wasted time into time that is more joyful in which you now know what types of activities those are because you have the data right there in front of you. Is there anything interesting about happiness differences between experienced and remembered activities or events? There is. But again, I'm going for the ones that have the double that provide on both.

And what's nice about the time tracking that you do for yourself is that, as you're coming out of the experience, it's capturing both how you felt in it, because it's really a sort of close memory, but also how you're feeling about. But yes, research does pick up on TV watching. But interestingly, so like TV watching

is shown to be quite mediocre on sort of meaning, but on the average American average viewing of TV actually gets pretty high rating. So there you see a disconnect. But what's cool about the individual data that you collect and I teach a course on this. So applying the signs of happiness to life design. So over years I've had my MBA students and executive MBA students do this. And so I see these patterns from their observations. What's sort of interesting is TV, rarely shows up among people's happiest

activities in their sort of broad 10 point rating, but what's also interesting you see and you can see like actually that first hour of TV is sort of fun, right? It's like after that long day of work and you pour yourself a glass of wine and you're settling into that first episode, it's totally delightful, but what happens often and what we see in, our own time tracking data is that when we say yes to our do one of you the next episode and those evenings of binge watching by hour two and three actually your happiness ratings even your enjoyment ratings have plummeted.

And so that also is really insightful being like, okay, and I can explain the psychology behind the fact that we get used to things over time. So, hedonic adaptation is our psychological propensity to get used to stuff after doing the same thing over a continued period of time, doing the same thing repeatedly over time, spending time with the same person over time. We get used to those, so it has less of an emotional impact than it did initially. Now, it's good that we adapt in the face of bad stuff because it makes us resilient. It's less painful over time. We become more tolerant. But the bummer is that we also get used to good stuff.

So, I mean, that explains why something that is like quote unquote enjoyable, like watching TV initially, it yes, it is fine. But over time, it stops having a strong of an impact. And so that has implications for how we structure our time in terms of you should actually spread out the good activities so that that sort of initial starting, that intensity has a strong of an effect as possible.

But it's not only over the course of hours within the day, it's also really important to recognize this in the days of our lives, because we were talking about a sort of activity of watching TV, but think of something way more profoundly, potentially joyful than that is like spending time with the people you love. And you think about the very first time that your partner said, I love you, right? The impact of that is like fireworks in your heart and it's so impactful.

But then there was words, I love you, over years, got shortened to love you and you sort of say it as you're hanging up the phone or walking out the door, you don't even hear the words, like the meaning behind those words. And if something is profound as like a declaration of love, it's something that we get used to, such that it stops having the same emotional impact. That is something to take into account and to try to offset in the happiness that we feel

in our days, right? Again, that's what we want is like to feel joy within our days and satisfied about our lives. And so some of the exercises and advice that I give based off of the studies is basically how do we not only figure out what activities to spend more time on and to maximize our time on, but also how do we not only figure out what activities to spend more time on and to maximize our time on, but also how do we engage in those happiest activities so that we actually experience the happiness that is potentially there within that time that we're already spending and not miss out on it? What are some of the strategies there other than I guess chunking stuff down into smaller, more frequent exposures so that the hedonic slope doesn't drop off quite so quickly. What else can

people do? Yeah, so breaking it up, which is what you just said. So having breaks between the happy activities, infusing variety is another. So research shows, for instance, that couples who engage in novel experiences together, report greater relationships, by doing various, like different things together, it keeps you engaged, it keeps you paying attention and you're sort of doing that with your partner. Another is recognizing that even though these things might seem every day, recognizing that they are not inevitably going to continue happening every day. Our time is finite.

And when you actually recognize just how limited times left are, that absolutely draws our attention. And so one of the exercises, which is actually quite poignant, is if you reflect back on your last couple of weeks and what was an activity that really brought you joy? Oftentimes, it's these very mundane moments or like ordinary moments. And count. Count how many times you have left. And actually the first step is counting how many times have you done this activity in your life so far? Then count how many times do you have in your life left to do this activity in your life so far, then count how many times do you have in your life left to do this activity? Accounting for the fact that factors in your life are likely to change. Accounting for the fact that if that joyful activity involves another person,

circumstances of their life and their availability is going to likely change. And then recognizing or counting, calculating really, the percentage of all your times of doing that activity you have left and so often, we recognize that holy cow, I have less than half. And in some cases, it's like 8%. Like one of the examples I had my students do this exercise. One of the students, he calculated time spent, watching sports with his best friend on the couch.

And he calculated, so how many times has he done that in his life? I mean, that was a sort of funny exercise, and he was like embarrassed and proud to you know including all those days after school and middle school in high school but then they went off to college and then it was like Christmas breaks for two weeks on you know they would be on the couch watching TV and sports together but then they continued living in different cities and had a girlfriend. And so then it was like visits included partners. And then his best friend had as a two-year-old. So even when they visit each other, being able to spend some hours on the couch with just this buddy watching sports, like they are very limited. And doing that calculation, he realized that in his life he has only 8% of times on his couch watching

whether it's his couch or his friend's couch, basically watching sports with his buddy. Left, and that is really impactful. So what does that make you do? Well, it makes you prioritize that time. So actually during the break of that class, he went and called his buddies like, dude, we need to play on a guy's weekend, but also during that time, it makes you seiver and soak up that time more. And I share in the book my calculation with my coffee dates with my daughter. And these coffee dates are, so like it actually was born out of a very functional thing of me needing caffeine and stopping at a coffee shop on my way to drop her off and into my office

and she's tagging along as the little preschooler. But what we did, and this is another strategy to keep paying attention, is turning a routine into a ritual. And so this ritual, that my daughter and my coffee date, we gave it a name, Thursday morning coffee dates. And now, even though we've had to shift it to Saturday mornings, we still call it our Thursday morning coffee date. And we like listen to the same songs. We order the same things. And it is just this special time, 30 minutes each week for the two of us to be together.

And I calculated how many times have we had a coffee date together in the past. And including during my maternity leave where like sort of bundle her up and take her to the coffee shop, because that was my like source of sanity. And then our weekly coffee dates, I calculated that we've had about 400 coffee dates together in our life so far. And then I calculated how many do we likely have last? So she's seven in about like five years, she's going to be 12 and want to go to the coffee shop with her friends instead of me, sad. So that's going to limit it and then she's going to go up to college and probably live, you know, across the country. And so I calculated, we probably have about 230 coffee dates together left.

That is 35% of our coffee dates left. That's less than half, quite a bit less than half, and she's only seven. So what is that, what's the impact on that? Initially, like, yes, tear in my eye, but the bigger effect is that I prioritize this time. I make this time. So when it was on Thursday mornings, meetings were scheduled around it. They didn't start before nine. Now that it's shifted to Saturday mornings, activities are scheduled around it. But not only is it about prioritizing that time, it is when I'm spending that time knowing just how limited

and precious those moments are, then I remove distractions. So like my cell phone goes away, that like constant to-do list that is running through my mind of always like, okay, what do I need to do next? Like what's coming up and that planning gets quieted because this is the time of my life. These are the important moments and recognizing that they're limited makes us pay more attention. I got a memento-mori calendar that counts down to 80, have you seen these?

And it's in weeks of your life? Oh, I haven't. But I can imagine that you actually buy it pre-filled in, so you tell them your age and they pre-fill in the first, whatever, like 50 multiplied by your age or 52 multiplied by your age in terms of squares. And that I guess is kind of similar because you're looking at what is it that I've got left? Thing that comes to mind when you're talking about that is the relationship between a child and the parent that you spend 18 years or whatever living out of each other's pockets and for the last portion of that those teenagers just hating each other and constantly having

arguments and storming up the stairs and feeling like you're in a prison. And then you leave And in retrospect, I mean, it must be in terms of hours spent with your parents, almost all people in the Western world must be looking at the final 10%. Like at the age of 18, at the age of 18, you've spent 90% of the time that you're ever going to spend with your parents. Yeah, maybe even less, I guess. I recently took my mom to Rome. She hadn't been away on holiday for ages, and I wanted to do something nice, and I mean, her went away to Rome, and we spent four days,

four and a tiny bit of days together, and I put her in a side car. I did a, I made a do a vestibitor around Rome in a motorbike and side car, and it looks like Wallace and Gromit, it's the funniest thing. And that was one of the things I was very conscious of there was wow I haven't spent this much time around my mother in 15 16 years 16 years since I've spent

four days in a four days. But it's not that long. And yeah, I like the idea of starting with the end in mind of using the precariousness of what it is that we've got. And also the other thing I suppose is that even without working out how many accurately working out how many of these things you've got left. Life situations can change pretty rapidly and the housemate that you live with now might not live with you again in six months time. I love watching a series on TV with one of my housemates that's back in the UK, but I live in Austin now.

I didn't know that I was going to live in Austin. I was going to try it out and see if I enjoyed it. Now I'm here. And you know, there will be, I mean, Sam Harris talks about this as well, there will be a last time that you bounce your baby daughter on your knee. You know, there will be,

she will get too big or not one to do it anymore or some situation will look her, this could be the last time. This could be the final time that you get to be abroad with your mother, that you get to be on the couch with your friend, shit talking, the world's greatest athletes, as they perform, as well as they can.

And yes, I think adding a sense of seriousness. Like, this has important consequences. This isn't something that should be taken lightly. If you're deriving this much pleasure from something you should take it seriously, because you take shit seriously, that means nothing. You take shit seriously all the time that is completely arbitrary.

A argument with a stranger on the internet that you're never going to think about again. You took that more seriously than the activity today that gave you the most joy. And yes, I like the idea of all of that creating perspective, scarcity, understanding the scarcity, understanding the lack that you have, reflecting on how important it is to you in using that as a projection to remind yourself of the scarcity moving forward. I think all of that's great. Yeah, and what you're picking up on is so it's that sort of difference between what's important versus what seems urgent.

And we tend to dedicate our time and our thoughts to what is urgent, irrespective of its importance. And yeah, by thinking about recognizing the preciousness, the limited nature, the finite nature of the time we have with these people we love doing these things that we love, that increases the urgency. It makes it to recognize how urgent it is. And interestingly in our research, we find actually that people who think about

their time from a broader perspective, so are thinking in terms of their years and their life overall, instead of just thinking hour by hour, they actually are happier and report grid or meaning in their life. And one of the drivers is because they spend their hours on what's important irrespective of its urgency. And so it gives you, you use the term perspective. Absolutely. It does that. So taking that perspective of your life and from taking that broader life perspective, it pulls out what is important

to you. So in a happier hour, I have a few exercises that do encourage not just counting times left, but to take this broader life perspective. And some of them are quite poignant, but they're so important because they're so clarifying. So one of them, for instance, is writing your eulogy. This is, and some of my students, I will say, are like, what? I thought this was a happiness class, and you're having me write my own eulogy. And so what this exercise is is basically projecting forward, assuming you live a long life, and writing down how do you want to be remembered? So what are the words you want people to use to describe you? What life do you want to

have lived? And I point out to one of my students was like, I am sorry professor, but I can't do this assignment. Like thinking about my death and creates too much anxiety, I'm going to like forfeit my grid. I'm like, okay, let me reframe the exercise or the assignment for you, right about the life that you wanna live, because that's essentially what it is. It's not an exercise about death, it's about what life do you wanna live? And writing that down and articulating

clarifies what's important, what are your values? Who do you want to be? And with that clarification, what are your values? Who do you want to be? And with that clarification, what is your purpose? Like what are your ultimate goals? With that, that even though it's thinking about years and life overall, that informs how we spend our upcoming hours, right? It's surely it's only in contrast of how we want to spend our time, that we can look at the way we spend our time.

Like, it's like a subtraction, okay? What is it that I want to achieve? What is it that I'm doing that's getting me to what achieving that? And that's not the lean-in go get a type A thing. It's I want to achieve a life which involves lots of outdoor activities and whatever, right? But you can only contrast those two if you have an end goal, if you have some sort of destination. I had Ryan Holiday on last week and he was talking about how discipline without a destination is basically impossible because what are you being disciplined in service of?

Like what is your discipline working towards? Perhaps your life goal in some alternate universe that was hell would be to spend as much time on TikTok as possible. Well, discipline would involve you spending as much time on TikTok as possible, right? I want to be the most, watch the most number of hours of TikTok if anybody on the planet. That's my life goal. It is only in comparison with the things that you want to do that you can look at this plan and it kind of feels like the way that you spend your time is pretty much exactly the same. Yeah and the thing that I actually see among my MBA students that I think that folks can all relate to is the importance. So without your own clear sense of purpose, of your own goal and what you're striving for,

then we pick up on other people's goals, like these general notions of success. And those general notions of success, it's a terrible thing to be striving for because, hey, it's so amorphous, it's so multidimensional, and a lot of it is extrinsically driven and not intrinsically.

So it's not what you ultimately care about. It's sort of like this general sense of like what you should do and what one does do. And that is very difficult because, it's not difficult. It what it does do is at least do unhappiness because it's like, A, the thing is, like the goal, the post is always changing, right? It's like this gender, like if success is having a lot of money, but then as you make more money, your reference point of how you're doing

Shifts because you're surrounded by people who also have more money or fame, you know It's like you're surrounded by people who you're all of a sudden in like a different room And you're like how am I doing compared to those around me? Well, there's always someone doing better, right? But the value and for you identifying what matters to you and your own purpose and your own ultimate goals is that that is where what you're talking about with this idea of like that's the comparison that should motivate you. It's like if you're not aligned or like living out

what you care about, then that should, you know, kick you in the back and make you start working in line with that. But also it's great because when you are achieving along that route, it is so much more rewarding because it's what you care about. Like in the U.S. and like each step along the way and actually going back to even thinking about activities and how we should be spending our time in your time tracking, you know, there might be activities that aren't fun. So there is those that are maybe wasted time like the TikTok example is like, you're spending a lot of time on it. It's not necessary, nor is it very fun. But then there's also some of these activities that are actually necessary.

Well, that was something I noticed about your example, commuting to work, being at work and housework. For most people, those are relatively non-negotiable. The things that they can't outsource, they can't get someone else to go to work for them, they can't get someone to drive them to work, they can't get someone else to do the housework. So yeah, there has to be a solution in order to make these things less powerful. So there are. So there are some strategies for the commuting, for instance, is something that you have to do.

And bundling is actually one of the strategies that coming out of research by Katie Milkman and her colleagues is such a simple idea, that is very effective. And what it is is like you take this activity that you don't wanna do, but it's necessary, like driving to work or commuting or whatever it means, or like folding the laundry. You know, we have household chores, and bundling it with an activity that you do enjoy.

That is more worthwhile. So whether it's picking up the phone, we talk about the role of social connection, picking up the phone and calling your friend while you're folding the laundry or commuting or listening to a wonderful, enriching enlightening podcasts right here. Subscribe below. Thank you, Cassie. Start to show, show the channel. That's what you're here for. Thank you. But I mean, like joking aside, absolutely. So all of a sudden, instead of like oftentimes during a commute when someone's driving, flipping through the radio mindlessly or if they're on the tube or subway

flicking through their tiktok and instead of if instead of that sort of filling of time, if you spent that time intentionally listening to a podcast where you learned something that you're inspired by, then all of a sudden that time that you're just sort of trying to get through of the commute, all of a sudden it feels more worthwhile and enriched. Let me give you my most recent bundling solution. So I have quite a lot of emails that I need to deal with and I can't really outsource them or maybe I just struggle at delegating control. My personal assistant might might agree with that. I bought an exercise desk which is a recumbent stationary bike that has a flat, it's built, it's purpose built, right? And you put the laptop on top of it. There's something called Zone 2 cardio,

which is cardio between around about 110 to 130 BPM heart rate for most people. And it's actually kind of hard to achieve because it's not as quick as a run, a run would take you way over it, it probably into the 140s, but it's quicker than a walk. So it's kind of difficult to work out how you're going to mediate this particular pace. And it's also, you have to do it for quite a while, you need to accumulate around about 180 minutes per week if you want to get a very good impact, but it's the you have to do it for quite a while you need to accumulate around about 180 minutes per week If you want to get a very good impact But it's the train slow to run fast blah blah blah tons of health benefits longevity and heart rate variability and resting heart rate and blah blah blah But it's really hard to do emails also suck. So now when I do my emails

I just sit on the bike. I set it away for an hour, I have, I've got Parkinson's law going on, so I've restricted down my time to have a goal and I'm like, right, I'm good. Yeah. Got to get my thing done because I got 60 minutes and I know and I can see it counting down or whatever. I'm going to get the cardio in that I would have kind of, it's satisfying, it does make me feel good, but it's not, it would be really awful to do on its own. And yet I take so much pleasure from doing it

while I do my emails, it's insane. And then I get my emails finished. And actually, I genuinely look forward to doing emails, because I'm like, oh, gonna get a bit of cardio and get a nice sweat on. I'm gonna feel really good once I finish up. So, I'm aware that that's like the most hyper nerdy solution to this,

but also listening to podcasts on your commute is another one. I am very appreciative of this suggestion, though, because email is my source of least happiness. And so if there's a way to bend over to me. 360 bucks will get you an exa work exa desk 2000 desk 2000 eye and it will change your life. Oh my gosh. And then you can hand clothes on it when you're not using it as well.

It's fantastic. Talk about a persuasive advertisement. I'm not even sponsored. Not even sponsored by them. And right, so you've brought up a couple of times here, the importance of social connection. You mentioned intimacy, which is presumably like relationship partner stuff as well. How can people develop their friendships and deepen their friendships?

Because one of the things that I hear a lot is a difficulty in people finding friends, especially guys, I think, when they get into adulthood, you don't have the same structures that maybe through school, through uni, sports teams, stuff like that. I think guys, especially when they get married, there's a ton of evidence that suggests they just adopt the friends of their partner, and that's now their friend group, but even that

starts to dwindle over time as well. So what about deepening friendships? What are some of the strategies people can use to do that? Yeah, and so there's an exercise in my, I share in the book and then I have my students do, which is called the relationship, closeness, induction task, but basically what it is, it is a series of questions.

And this takes 15 minutes and I will loop back to how this can be implemented to sort of forge friendships. It's a 15 minute task. So basically it starts with, I think it was like three minutes that in these questions, you like, you're paired up, I paired my students up, and they have two minutes to ask a question, they ask a question, the person answers it, and then the other person asks the same question, and they answer it. So it's reciprocal. And then the first two minutes is like these, what you talk about when you meet someone, like what's your name? What made you decide to come in this case? It's like to UCLA to get your MBA, where are you from? These things that are those initial get-to-know-you conversations.

But then I'm like, okay, guys, now move on to the second set of questions. The second set of questions are a little bit more self-disclosive. So they are like, what do you like to spend your time on? Like your hobbies and your experiences. So you get to hear about the other person's experiences and how they spend their time. And then the last set of questions, they have eight minutes to go through. And these are deeper.

These are like, why are you most proud about in your life? What is your happiest childhood memory? What is your greatest fear? And these questions aren't just about how you spend your time, it's really your emotional experience in your life. And this is a method that's been shown to make people feel significantly closer and like they are more like friends at the end of it, even though it's 15 minutes, but what it's doing, it's based off of reciprocal escalating self-disclosure.

escalating self-disclosure. So what that means is that it is sharing and asking and listening. So it has to be not just you like dumping like, oh my god, this is my biggest fear and this is what I'm really struggling with, but also asking the other person and listening. What are you struggling with? And through that, what friendship is, it's about this sense of being known and being cared about and knowing and caring. So there is that reciprocal feature of it. And so, you know, like you were talking about, often in shared experiences, when we're in experiences together, that's an opportunity to develop that sort of shared experience,

like when you go to college or university, that shared experience starting a new job together, often, you know, with all of us, or so many of us, working remotely actually the opportunity to develop actual friendship at work has really waned, and that's what I am attributing the increased disengagement from work that we've observed in the workforce. To the fact that folks don't have friends and not an opportunity. So to say that yes, it is about finding activities that you, you know,

like people who like doing the same thing, but it just showing up and doing the activity together isn't going to be where the real friendship comes from. It's from having that conversation, that conversation that gets authentic, and you are being vulnerable, and you are supporting the other person and their vulnerability. So to the point, be ready to ask the good questions when you're hanging out with someone and also be willing to share. Note that not sometimes you need that escalating sort of component of the conversation so that you don't like freak people out, but it's always surprising by how happy people are to really get genuine. And so it's just up to you to be willing to get there too. Didn't your husband ask you some insanely intense questions first, the first time

that you met? Yeah, so I shared that in the book, my husband and I, he is, I mean, he's such a wonderful person and he's like my favorite conversation practice, still to this day. And we were set up on a blind date over coffee. And like, his first question was like a very last one in this relationship, closeness, induction task. He was like, what to you is the secret or not the secret? Like, what are you striving for for like a happy good life? And I'm like, oh, wait, what about like, what are my hobbies? And what made me decide to come to Stanford? He skipped all of that. And it was so refreshing. And so coming out of even that first coffee date. I was like, wow! I feel like I know somewhat and am a little bit known by this stranger. And so I think that that that is an example

that has proven well for me in terms of establishing a really beautiful relationship. I think a lot of people have problems at the moment with the shallow sort of nature of conversations that I have. I think it's another reason why podcasts have got so much popularity because you get to kind of almost hear sometimes conversations that you wish that you could have a little bit more. I mean, I know for me, there's the reason that I enjoyed starting this show for a half years ago, 500 and something episode to go, is because I was struggling to have the frequency and depth of conversation that I wanted.

And if I was able to do it on the podcast, you have an excuse to kind of bypass all of this. So tell me about you and what did you have for breakfast and what are you up to tomorrow? Like people don't expect that. They expect you to kind of pretty quickly get into the meat of the performance with this. And I think that you're right that the escalation, you're gonna turn some people off. But if you're the sort of person for whom you want

to kind of speed through minutes one through 10 and get into the final five, I think that that makes a lot of sense. And I think that more people than realize it would resonate with like a really interesting, deep conversation. When I think about what most of my 20s is a very normal bloke in the UK, just being a club promoter around a range of young people that were relatively outgoing and whatever whatever. So few people had conversations like the ones that they wanted to. I think they had conversations that were very surface level that were about TV or current events but no important current events just like and I think that that might just be a byproduct of being young, right? It might just be a byproduct of being in your 20s. I don't know.

I don't think so. I think that those are the types of conversations that generally are had in social settings, like social settings with big groups. So actually touching back to the time tracking exercise that I suggest folks do, the reason that I say it's so important to not just sort of, right, socializing as your activity, but actually who are you with? And also going back and looking at, okay, well, what were those activities that I felt like most connecting? And that might be like for some, for me,

it absolutely requires a genuine conversation. And but that genuine conversation can happen in a lot of different contexts. It can happen with a colleague at work. It can happen with like someone at a cocktail party as I am only satisfied when I leave one of these sort of cocktail parties, if I come out, I'm like, oh my God, I got that person was so cool

and so interesting, but so it's like finding those ways, those activities, but also the pieces of that activity that sort of make you feel most connected. So that it's the honest is on you not only to put yourself spend time on those activities that make you feel that way, but really make that time what you want it to be by showing up, having driving the conversation. And I agree with you, people are more willing than

they might initially think. It's just because it doesn't often happen, doesn't mean that it won't be fun. And just give it a shot. Talk to me about the time poverty and, and time, affluence relationship? Yeah, so time poverty is what actually drove me to write the book. And what it is, is this acute feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. And when we feel like we don't have enough time, it's this really limiting

experience and it is experienced a stress and it makes us unhappy. And it also makes us less healthy. So research shows that when people feel like they don't have enough time, they're less likely to exercise, they're less likely, they're delay going to the doctor. It also makes us less nice. We are less likely to slow down and help others out. And it makes us less confident in being able to achieve all we set out to do because of the sense of limitation and it makes us less happy. And I share to open the book this time earlier in my career when I was living in Philly, and I was an assistant professor at Wharton and had given, it was just one of these crazy days

where I traveled up to New York to give a talk. And my presentation was sandwiched in between back-to-back meetings, and then I had this colleague dinner. And then I was rushing together very last train that would get me home to my four-month-old at the time, and my husband, Esley Bin-Filly. And I did make the train, but I remember looking out the window as the night was passing by and the houses were like in this blur and I was like, I don't know if I can keep up.

There's just, I am exhausted and overwhelmed between the pressures of work, being a good partner, being a good parent, being a good friend, like the never-ending pile of chores, there simply weren't enough hours in the day to get it all done, let alone to do any of it well, let alone to enjoy any of it along the way, and that feeling made me at that moment and think, okay, the solution is to quit. I should quit my job that I'd work so hard to get, Because surely if I moved to a sunny, slow-paced island somewhere, I'd be happy. If I had a whole lot more time,

I was like, then I will be happier. But before I quit, I was like, this is actually an empirical question. Like, are people who have a whole lot more time happier? And this is a question that we've gone on to test and looking at with some of my beloved collaborators, Hal Hirschfield, and Marissa Shreve, we looked at what's the relationship

between the amount of discretionary time people have and their life satisfaction in analyzing across studies and one of the studies we analyze data from tens of thousands of working as well as non-working Americans, calculating how much discretionary time they had in their days, time spend on discretionary activities. And what we found was really interesting is this upside-down use shape. So sort of reaching down to unhappiness on both sides on the one hand on the left side, with two little time, people are less happy.

That is the time poor. That is me on the train. But what was interesting was on the other side, that you also saw this downward slope to unhappiness. And so it suggested that there's actually such thing as having too much discretionary time and then digging into that. What it turns out is like people are driven to be productive. That is we are averse to being idle when we spend days upon days with all of our hours and nothing to show for how we spend those hours.

It undermines our sense of purpose and with that we feel dissatisfied. And so this is really important to recognize that actually in the middle of that upside down you, it's pretty flat. So it's not about how much time you have. It's really with the conclusion from this and I is what drove the book. It's not actually about how much time you have available to spend how you want. It is how you spend the time that you have available. So it's not about being time rich. It's about making the time that you spend rich. It's about, as we've said, identifying what are those activities that are really worthwhile. And when you're spending

your time on those activities being fully engaged, not being distracted, so that you get the happiness that is available in that activity. And so when I'm saying time rich, it's about looking back on your day and feeling fulfilled, not about not being busy, because you can actually be quite busy, but if you've spent time on things that felt worthwhile, then you don't feel depleted, you feel fulfilled, and satisfied, and that's the goal. And so that's actually what motivated or sort of directed my research agenda since. So if like, okay, how should we be investing the hours of our days? So that again, at the end of the day, instead of feeling depleted and stressed and overwhelmed and unhappy,

you look back and you feel satisfied and fulfilled and excited for the next day to do more, right? And so with so many people feeling time poor, so we conducted a national poll in the US finding that nearly half of Americans feel like they don't have enough time to do what they said out and want to do. And that's bad because of all those reasons that I said. But actually we have more time available to us than we think. And when we spend that time in ways that feel really worthwhile, that gives us energy, that lessons the sense of constraint and limitation, and actually that increased sense of efficacy of being able to accomplish what you set out to do, increases

your sense of how much time you feel like you have available. And when I'm talking about time available, this is hours within your days, not what we were talking about at the very beginning of the limited nature of your life. Hmm, you talk about this discretionary time. I'm already thinking that the bottom end where things stop being bad was about one hour, and the top end when things start to get bad again is five hours. Is that the bracket? It's two hours and five hours.

So with less than approximately two hours of discretionary time, at least in the data set, the American time you survey data, then we saw that sort of drop off in happiness. And more than approximately five hours is where we saw that drop off in happiness. Now interestingly for some, and I will admit, for me at the time, I was like two hours sounds like a luxury. There's no way, two hours is like in the day to spend on discretionary activities. But then when I actually calculated the hours of my days that I spend doing what I love, like cuddling

with my little, you know, my little baby, having dinner with my husband, that wonderful conversationalist that I've already referenced. Having a, giving a call to my best friend on my walk home. You know, we talked about, yes, commuting is bad. But when I'm talking to one of my favorite people, those minutes added up to about like a hour and a half of time that I wouldn't have wanted to spend in any other way. And that's helpful because it suggests that in fact two hours isn't totally out of reach,

but it does require being intentional about the time. It does require particularly if you do work full time and have other demands. It does require sifting out that wasted time, that sand, that sort of tiktok time, or you can identify for yourself what that wasted time is for you, it does require minimizing the waste so that you do and prioritize and make the time for the stuff that really matters to you. I think a lot of people, when first faced with with this will probably have a little bit of difficulty because they'll confuse a comfortable or convenient activity for an enjoyable one. So they'll finish up at the end of the workday and get home.

And well, the way that I relax is by watching Netflix for a couple of hours on an evening with a glass of wine. You go, I understand, but what else is there something else that you could be doing which would be more enjoyable? And because it's less comfortable or convenient, it's presumed as being like more work. Oh, well, I've just finished work. I don't have to go and do more work. It's like, okay, look, objectively, would you prefer to spend your evening going out and seeing your friends or going and playing a new sport or whatever it is that you, whatever the thing is that you want to do as opposed to this thing which is just a path of least resistance. What would you tomorrow have wanted you today to have done? Like, are you going to look back tomorrow on the way that you spent your evening watching yet another shit Netflix series with yet another very average glass of wine. Or would you get much more enjoyment both in the moment and in retrospect had you have gone to go and see your friends?

That was the biggest thing. It was Laura Vanderkam, four and a bit years ago, who taught me about the experiencing, anticipating and remembering self, and just having that model in my mind has changed. Like I go and do so much stupid, stupid novel stuff because I think, well, if I do this, even if it's completely terrible, I've got an awesome memory that's going to stay in my mind and that's going to expand the units that I'm gonna have that'll make my life feel like it goes longer and all the rest of the stuff.

So yeah, I think getting past the mistaking a comfortable or convenient activity for an enjoyable one, I think that's a really important thing especially for people that are super, super busy, spent on great work, the kids up earlier in the morning, so on and so forth. So going on from that, how do you think people should think about the relationship between time and money? Because that for most

people, is a hugely correlated situation. Yeah. And even before we get to the time and money sort of interaction, I think that the time tracking exercise is, the reason it's so powerful is to combat exactly what you're talking about. This general notion that people have of like, oh, I enjoy watching TV because that's sort of what I do. But if you actually have the data in front of you and it's like, well, not really. It is the path of least resistance. I mean, that happens to be what you are mindlessly doing. It sort of fills your mind.

De-falling to it. Yeah. But it doesn't mean that it's actually what you enjoy doing. And if you're picking up on like, you know, like, and this, and what comes out, it's like people are like, oh, I don't have time to meet up with my friend, my sister for dinner. But in fact, you do.

Like, instead of going back home and getting on the couch and that sort of default is, it's not work. Like, text your sister and be like, let's meet up. And then when you do and you're out, you're like, that gets a 10 instead of the, you know, four of like that third hour of Netflix, right? And so with that objective numerical data, that is your very own right there in front of you,

then that is what helps motivate and kick start into spending time in these ways that are really impactful. And to your point and Laura's point and actually like going back to my example with my coffee date with my daughter, the effect on happiness carries over beyond just the time that you're spending, right? So there's that anticipation of it. So like, I look forward to my coffee date with my daughter. She looks forward to it. And then when we're in it, we're spending it. So it's like 30 minutes of delectable like sweetness. But then we remember it. And we talk

about it. And if you ask me how happy I am, I am like genuinely so happy because again, what is happiness? It's thinking about our time and our lives. And when you ask me how happy I am, I'm like pulling, it's like, well, I have this amazing relationship with my daughter. From really this like cultivate and stemming from that 30 minutes. It's just 30 minutes

Unfortunately because I work. I don't know if it's unfortunate. I don't anyway I don't pick up my kids from school at three o'clock every day like you know many parents do Because I can't I work you know, many parents do. Because I can't, I work. But that doesn't mean just because I'm not spending that time, these coffee dates, I really, these quality time that color not only how I experienced the week, but my relationships. And from that is where the happiness comes from. comes from. To your question of time and money, my dissertation work was actually looking at what's the effect of focusing on time versus money and our critical resource and what my studies over the court in lots of different ways have shown that those who focus on time as their critical resource are happier.

And really it is because they invest their time more intentionally. It's not default evenings. It is not allowing your time to be soaked up on TikTok. It is about being intentional and spending time in ways that matter to you. Thinking about money actually has its own effect and it sort of drives towards these extrinsic goals. Whereas when you think about time, it's driving you to invest your time in these activities that are aligned with your intrinsic goals, your purpose. Now, it's not like money is bad because money can actually be spent to improve our time

and the research that looks at whether the happiest way is spending money. All, I mean, my interpretation of them, is that it's all about making your time better. So it is outsourcing, actually. So putting some money against, if there are activities or chores in your life that absolutely feel like a chore, and that are pulling you out of time that you can spend in, and that are pulling you out of time that you can spend

in these ways that are aligned with your goals of whether it is investing and cultivating your relationships, investing in activities that really allow you to fulfill your purpose, then that is time well spent. Pace someone to wash your car, pay someone to do the gardening, pay someone to perhaps come and do some laundry or something. Yeah, but it doesn't even have to be so clear as like paying someone so that you don't have to do it. There are services now, like the whole, like, delivered, like grocery shopping.

So yes, you are paying someone to do the groceries or shopping. So yes, you are paying someone to do the groceries or delivery, like meal services, where it is like so that it saves you from doing the grocery shopping and the time cooking, a lot of it is prepped. And so that that is saving time. And yes, you are paying money. It is more expensive to have this meal delivery service than if you were to go and pick out the, you are paying money. It is more expensive to have this mill delivery service than if you were to go and pick out the produce and everything and put it together yourself. But what you've done is you've saved time. And then you can spend that time in those ways.

And so it's like such a clear trade off for me as a working mom instead of leaving work early to go grocery shopping or coming home late, which is those precious hours with my kids before they go to bed. So then I'm grocery shopping and then like cooking, which I hate to do anyway. Like the meal service, it costs a little bit more money, but then I get that extra time at work that I need.

And then my evening is not cooking dinner and cleaning of dishes. It is sitting with my family and, you know, hanging out with my kids, helping them with their homework, hearing about their days, having that wonderful conversation with my husband. So also research looks at pro-social spending. That spending money on other people actually makes this happier than spending money on ourselves. And also my work shows that giving experiential gifts versus material gifts increases a sense of connection. The recipient feels closer to you. And so pairing that together as well as research showing that experiential purchases like going out to dinner, going to a concert, going on vacation versus material purchases like buying

at a handbag or I don't know, other material purchases, like buying at a handbag or, I don't know, leather material purchases, actually, which tend to be material purchases, electronics. That people have greater happiness from their experiential purchases because they have the experience of spending that time, so it is time that you're spending, but you also have the memory. Oftentimes those experiences are shared. If you're giving an experiential gift,

like taking someone out to dinner, getting them tickets for a concert, that is a shared experience versus buying yourself a handbag. So, again, the sort of spending money in ways that buy you better time or fulfilling time and connect you with other people and foster those relationships that is money well spent. So it's not, and it's also, I think it's super important to not ignore the fact that people who don't have enough money to satisfy their basic needs. Yes. More money in the research shows leads to greater happiness, but actually what it's not is not greater happiness is reducing the unhappiness, the stress, and the pressures of not being able to satisfy your needs.

That's very interesting. I mean, there's been so much of the over $70,000 per year happiness starts to tail off. Then I had Seth Stevens-Devidovitson at the start of the year and he seemed to suggest that for every increment of increase in, I want to say life satisfaction was the measurement rather than happiness, you needed to double the amount of money, so in order for you to go from 70 to 140, you'd need to go from 140 to 280 and 280 to 560,

is there any legs to that when it comes to earning the relationship between the money that you earn and your happiness or satisfaction in life? Well, it is like, and actually it's going on that sort of diminishing returns. These things have less impact over time. I talked about the role of hedonic adaptation. And so that's a piece of it. It comes from adapting to your circumstances and then you need all the more to have any effect on your experience. And so, yes.

But the, and that's why it's so helpful to continue to come back to time. And what matters to you and your purpose because then it is absolutely continues to be rewarding when you are achieving along those dimensions as opposed to these external lens. I suppose as well it stops you from overshooting. Now I'm around some pretty competent people in Austin and a lot of them are going to be worth a hell of a lot of money within the next decade or so, right? I mean, we're in the city that Elon Musk lives in, so the opportunities, the ceiling is limitless. And I think, thankfully, most of them have done enough self work to be able to check themselves and go, hang on, just how much do I need to destroy myself in pursuit of an amount of wealth that's ten times as much as the most amount of money that

I would need per year in order to be happy. And we were talking to a friend over dinner about this last night. I was like, look, if I 10xed my income, I genuinely don't know what I do. That will buy a slightly nicer coffee on a morning, on the days that I do have, like, you know, I'm sure that it would be great to fly private and I'm sure it would be great to do the whatever and the other things. But I think that when it comes to a realistic expectation of what's going to happen in life, optimizing for time, optimizing for the experiences that in retrospect, you know you're going to be glad that you've done,

that in retrospect, you know you're going to be glad that you've done, just seems to be a much safer way to go about things. And then if the byproduct comes if you're being worth 100 million in 10 years time, then fantastic. But you know that you're optimizing for the things which actually matter. And or everything else is just extra. Absolutely. And that is, you said it so directly. It's, it's not only a safer route to happiness, it's the direct route. Like, it is, if you are investing your time on the things that matter to you, then you will be happier. You will be more satisfied and it's not more is better. It is just being intentional and spending the time in ways that matter to you. And as you said, if money comes along with it, fantastic. Like, that's gravy.

And you do, and again, not ignoring the fact that you do need to be able to have enough money to satisfy your basic needs. It's still helpful to continue to sort of touch back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Because at the very base of it, as you need, you have your physiological needs. You need food, shelter, safety, health. Those are your physiological needs. You need food, shelter, safety, health. Those are your physiological needs. The very next, once those are satisfied, and you need money to put food on the table to live in a safe place.

But once those basic physiological needs are met, then the next most fundamental need that we have is sense of connection and belonging. And that's where these relationships come into play. And then it's like once you like are short up and like make sure that you have strong relationships, then you sort of move into this competence and self-actualization where it's these sort of more individual pursuits but you do need enough money to and like I have been doing the work long enough of like comparing time and money and I am sensitive to like it's not that having any money doesn't matter, but having a whole lot more money also doesn't matter

Cassie Holmes ladies and gentlemen if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do, where should they go? My website CassieMHolms.com And then my book, I mean it pulls it all together And then my book, I mean it pulls it all together. These learnings based off of my career of research and teaching the course for years and seeing the effects. And so I'm so excited to bring these learnings to people more generally and make people

a happier with their time. Thank you, Tessie. I appreciate you. Thanks so much for having me.