How to Spend Time on What You Value
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We try to use our time wisely—both at work and in leisure—but we often waste it. We may blame work for stripping us of recreation, but when valuable free time comes around, we can often revert back to more work.
What explains the gap between how we use our time and how we want to use our time? A conversation with Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans helps us analyze our complex relationship with time and how to orient our time use around what we value.
This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Arthur Brooks. Editing by A.C. Valdez and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Matthew Simonson.
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Music by the Fix (“Saturdays”), Mindme (“Anxiety”), Gregory David (“Under the Tides”), and Yomoti (“Nebula”).
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Rebecca Rashid: Arthur, I have a question for you. If you had one extra hour today, how would you use it?
Arthur C. Brooks: How would I use it or how should I use it, Becca?
Rashid: How would you use it?
Brooks: I’d use it to work. I would work more. I love my work. It’s a well-established fact to any listener of How to Build a Happy Life that I’m kind of a work addict or a success addict or something like that, or whatever the pathology tends to be.
Thinking back to the episode with what I do with the hour? I should use it to build love in my life. I should
