时间贫困：如何利用时间，决定了我们是谁

by Cassie Holmes

我们总以为，一个人的幸福感主要来源于所拥有的金钱多少。但其实现代人的不幸福感或者焦虑情绪，很多时候来自于没有自己的时间，这种“时间贫困”，让我们生活缺乏幸福感。

本书作者认为，每天能有2-5小时的可自由支配时间，是最幸福的状态。自由支配的时间过少，会让生活的满意度直线下降，但是过多的自由支配时间也未见得能够让生活保持幸福感。要想获得更大的幸福感，我们应该将关注重点从金钱转移到时间上，并像金钱投资一样投资时间，

书中提供了详细的时间管理案例和非常具体的实施步骤，可以带我们一步步修正自己的时间策略，学会合理利用时间，因为唯有如此，我们才能拥有更幸福、快乐的人生。

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Audiobook, Psychology, Productivity, Personal Development, Business

304 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2023

About the author

Cassie Holmes is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and an award-winning teacher and researcher of time and happiness. Cassie earned her PhD at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and her BA at Columbia as a psychology major. Cassie’s research has been widely published in lead academic journals and featured in such outlets as NPR, the Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and the Washington Post. Happier Hour is her first book.

Reviews

[Katharine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Happier Hour was absolutely nails-on-a-chalkboard for me, almost from start to finish. (Yes, I did finish - only because I was in the mood to see what else Holmes would say next that would drive me insane.) The wealth, privilege, sexism, and out-of-touch-ness just oozed from her perky little fingers throughout every page.

-Decide that taking care of your home is getting in the way of your happiness? Hire someone to clean it for you! Cost too much? Hire someone just to clean your floors!
-Decide you would rather spend time with your family than cook? Have a meal service deliver healthy, wholesome meals to your doorstep each night so you just have to put them on the table!
-Decide that you are happier working in part of the world with more sunshine? Just up and move your whole family cross-country!
-Decide you want to spend more time with your daughter? Leave work every Thursday at 2 to go with her to dance class!
-Decide you need more time for yourself in the mornings? Get your husband to take on kid duties a few mornings per week, even if it means watching your son go to kindergarten in mismatching socks!
-Decide you want to make sure you have guaranteed time as a couple? Pay for a standing babysitter every Friday so you Have to go out!
-Because "almost everyone has weekends," make sure to treat them as vacations and not as time to get things done!
-Make sure to take time to read the entire newspaper with your coffee!

Holmes also:
-Bans laptops in her classroom, not realizing some learning disabled kids might find it helpful to take notes on them or record parts to re-listen/watch later.
-Recommends catching up on phone time with friends and family while driving, about 6 pages after stating that people on phones in cars are more dangerous than drunk drivers.
-Never mentions male S.O.'s or spouses as actively helping with kids or household chores, except in the case above, where her husband apparently is incapable of finding socks that match. It's always the women doing the cleaning, driving, laundry, cooking, etc.

What. The Actual. F??????
I'm done now.

[Lydia Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cassie Homes what a great book and guide to making life and yourself happier. I worked at a job for thirty plus years and I wish I would have read your book then, although it has effected my life today even though I am retired. Taking the time to find happiness each day in my life has really enlightened me. I found that it can be just the simplest things in life. I now stop and listen to the birds sing, smell the flowers and take long relaxing walks. You might find me outside in a lawn chair reading and napping. You made me realize that life doesn't have to be so fast paced. You can slow it down a little and realize life should include something that makes you smile and laugh.
Professor Cassie Holmes demonstrates how to immediately improve your life by changing how you perceive and invest your time. Happier Hour provides empirically based insights and easy-to-implement tools that will allow you to:

- Optimally spend your hours and feel confident in those choices
- Sidestep distractions
- Create and savor moments of joy
- Design your schedule with purpose
- Look back on your years without regrets

I used to look back at my life with regret. I worked so many hours for so many years and didn't take the time to enjoy life. After reading your great book I realized it is never too late to smell the roses. I am a sixty four years old retiree and have started each day making sure to do something that makes me happy. I don't have a lot of money to travel since I had a child at the late age of 45 years old, which I don't regret at all. She is a twenty year old college student now. After reading your great book I gave it to her. She says it has lessened her aniexty and she has started taking some time out for herself. She works a pretty hectic job and goes to school so you have made a difference in our lives. Thanks Cassie Holmes. I highly recommend your book.

[Aly Haebig · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I came across this book when I was 25, I have no doubt I would have gobbled up the all the talk about “optimization” and the arduous time-tracking activities proposed. But early-30s me had some problems with the way the author posed the idea that happiness is a choice. While there’s the briefest of mentions of how our system puts real barriers out there to being able to focus on happiness, the author largely dismisses them and instead focuses on how the reader just needs to buck up and reprioritize some shit. Granted, it’s never put in those bald terms, but the implications are there.

As for the time tracking- at some point it goes as far as asking you to literally calculate how much time you have left in your life doing certain activities (like dinners with loved ones)😳- maybe I’m in my non-tracking era but it sounded like a lot.

The basic premise I’m here for: spending more time on things that bring you joy is always a great thing to investigate. The oversimplification of some things I’ll gladly leave behind.

[Georgiana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got tired of waiting for her to acknowledge race, class, income, health status, or other privilege might play.

[Stephanie’s Libby Antics · Rating 2 out of 5]

You might gain something useful from this book if you have never read any other self help and/or pop psychology book.

Otherwise….

[Brittany Viklund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally, a self-help/time management book that includes the topic of parenting!! I loved the author’s personal sentiments about valuing time with young children as well, which felt particularly resonant to me. This brought some of the vibes of the book 4,000 Weeks coupled with practical actions individuals can take to analyze how they spend their time on what matters most. Of all the time concept self-help book, this one is definitely one of the best I’ve read.

[Katy O. · Rating 5 out of 5]

(free review copy) This was EXACTLY what I needed as I transitioned from summer off back to the whirlwind of teaching, kids in school, sports and all the things. Time poverty is one of the things I dread most about this transition and Cassie Holmes does an excellent job of teaching us how to make the absolute most of the finite time we have on this earth. Many books like this annoy me because they’re either so trite and filled with platitudes or so high level they’re not relatable. However, Holmes expertly combines real examples and research from her university studies at UCLA and it is very readable and relatable. I was immediately able to put suggestions into practice (treat weekends like vacations) and had my decision to work to contract hours as a teacher validated wholeheartedly. Can’t recommend highly enough!

[Samcwright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pro: This book summarizes a lot of the research on happiness. It also gives practical recommendations for how to implement that research. I also appreciated her reframing of happiness research through the lens of time management.

Con: Most of these pop science books are quoting and using the exact same data and research to support their insights. Relationships. Thinking Fast and Slow. Flow. Meditation. Happiness research from the Harvard happiness study.

Summary: If this is your first experience with happiness research, it’s a good summary. Otherwise, it will repeat many of the themes and insights you’ve already read.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s the thing with this one: there are some good suggestions. But there are so many cliches and repetitive points too. I cringed every time she referred to having a glass of wine with Rob, and that meant a lot of cringing.

[Emily Sabbah (Warren) · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine. Definitely not groundbreaking, and many of her examples felt out of touch for people who don't both work and can't afford regular childcare.

[Mikala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time...how we view it, use it, and manage it. Value driven content.

Something I really appreciate about books like this, and lately non-fiction in general, is that it actually feeds my energy VS sometimes other genres that I tend to skew towards, for example, thrillers. I find that they exhaust me. And use a lot of my energy to read. Because they're often very stress and anxiety inducing. But I could read like 5 of these non-fiction books a day, not feel drained whatsoever, and actually feel more energized and motivated at the end of it.

"Time poor"

I really like the example given of the friend who left his job running a hedge fund, only to find all these extra hours in his day that he ended up filling with an extremely goal driven pursuit of running a marathon in which he catastrophically crashed and burned pursuing. So it was as if he traded one time poor endeavor for another in the pursuit of accomplishment.
"Wired toward achievement Ben had felt uncomfortable with days spent doing nothing. Dissatisfied with having nothing to show for his time he had transformed what was intended to be an enjoyable activity into an extreme goal directed pursuit." 💯

📢"Lacking a sense of productivity is why people with excessive amounts of available time feel less satisfied in their lives." ...it gives us a sense of purpose in our lives (this does not mean working at a paid job however...other tasks such as raising children or pursuing hobbies can provide for example that sense of purpose)

"Protecting work hours from waste and distraction." This just opened something up in my brain. Because I really think that this is a huge root of me feeling time poor all the time and constantly feeling burned out. It's because I have a set schedule that I need to be following and I've been blowing off the schedule. Then when I am working on the tasks set for myself there is immense distraction around me preventing me from completing these tasks within the allotted amount of time that I think it should take. Yeah, the distraction is real.

..."To enjoy greater satisfaction in life it's not so much about the amount of time we have. It's really about how we spend what we have. So the real answer is not about being time rich, it's about making the time you have rich." BOOOOM!! 💣

"FLOW STATE" really helpful section. Clear space, the threads for other tasks on your to do lists. Diverted from important tasks by other smaller, seemingly urgent ones. Flow involves losing track of time....most alert time.

[Leah Agirlandaboy]

I guess this is mostly a book for people who have plenty of money and just need someone to tell them to stop working so much and figure out a few other things that will make their life feel meaningful. (It relies heavily on people having the freedom to work less and also pay to outsource tasks they don’t like to do.) The book itself doesn’t seem to know that this is what it’s about, but I’m here to tell you that if you’re a rich person suffering from ennui, it might be the book for you.

[Ali W · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fantastic - so accessible and helpful and positive. It gives practical guidelines and tips for optimizing your time for a happier day/week/month/year, and it's a pleasure to read. It has personal anecdotes as well as academic studies that both help further your understand of the suggestions. Highly recommended!

[Candice · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5星

[Zibby Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is all about being aware of all the activities you do in life and understanding what you enjoy, what is important, and how you can enjoy the ones you have to do—even more. Are people who have endless hours to spend how they want happier? Research suggests the answer is no. Having too little time is bad but having too much time can make people feel unproductive and unfulfilled, which undermines their sense of purpose and satisfaction. This book gives us some insight and tools on how to minimize distractions, create a productive schedule, and find joy in how we spend our time. The goal of the framework the author provides is to maximize the amount of time we spend on worthwhile activities and decrease the time that feels wasteful.

The time-tracker exercise in the book was helpful and illuminating. It asked me to track my daily activities and rank them by my level of enjoyment. Once I saw it on paper, I learned a lot of information about my own activities that I didn't recognize. The author also talked about the importance of being present in any activity we do and not allowing ourselves to be distracted from the things we love. Research shows that even having a phone out on the table next to us during dinner or a meeting makes us enjoy the experience less.

To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book to everyone! Research backed small steps on how to spend your precious time to increase happiness. I truly loved it and loved that these were changes I could make immediately and without having to completely change my entire life.

[Elizabeth Sund · Rating 4 out of 5]

This didn't have anything new for me because I read these kinds of books a lot, but I enjoyed it. I bet I'll recommend this book a lot to friends because it's very approachable.

[Elena Calistru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Printre cele mai bune cărți despre timp citite. Bună pentru că e bazată pe muncă academică pe subiect, e bine și simplu scrisă, dar, mai ales, pentru că are sfaturi de bun simț testate pe autoare și pe studenții ei de la MBA. Vă las cu un mic citat:

"Regret-free lives aren't uniformly positive. Not every hour in a happy life is, or needs to be, happy."

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful strategies for reorganizing and reprioritizing your life to include more of the good things.

[Ella W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book for a professional development assignment and really loved it! As a recovering workaholic continuously working to guild a better work and life balance I really enjoyed the perspective and science/researched approach to finding ways to improve happiness in a busy life!

[Elissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a research-driven, yet really approachable and enjoyable book on how to think critically about how you spend your time in order to maximize happiness. I look forward to trying out some of the tactics described in the book!

[Sanford Chee]

"One of the reasons many people struggle to plan for the future is that they don’t have the time. A psychologist who specializes in that problem has written an engaging, useful book to help you reconsider how you spend your days." -Adam Grant

[Adam Benforado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you have time to read this book?

If you are like me—a member of the time impoverished—it seems like an entirely reasonable question to ask. But it’s the wrong question and to see why, well, you need to read the book.

It’s no surprise to learn that not feeling like you have enough time comes at a significant cost to happiness. But few of us among the time poor devote any attention to understanding the fascinating dynamics in play, let alone addressing them.

Happier Hour is a must read for any working parent.

But Cassie Holmes’s excellent new book didn’t just help me to understand myself. It also helped me understand those strange beings who seem to live in a world flipped upside down: the unhappy time affluent. Time is a resource that must be managed properly: too little discretionary time can lead to life dissatisfaction but so can too much discretionary time.

The evidence is all around us that we aren’t thinking about or handling our time in the right way. And, with great clarity and straightforward exercises, Happier Hour shows us the course to a better way of living. Professor Holmes has a real talent for translating the underlying psychological research into concrete steps we can all take to increase the sense that we do have time, to use our time so that it doesn’t feel wasted, and to prioritize our precious minutes on this earth on what is most important, not simply on what seems most urgent.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book, because it wasn’t quite what I was expecting, and took a while for me to garner anything from it. I did enjoy the last few chapters the most and would like to revisit this book. It has me thinking about how to better organize my time and tasks.

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars for me. I REALLY wanted to love this book, and I really enjoyed the author as a person (I listened to her audio version).

I think there are ideas and practical steps in this book that are really great, especially if your life has structure and predictability (you work outside the home, as an example) but for me personally as a stay-at-home-mom, my schedule is so nebulous and fluid and is literally never the same, so it was hard for me to imagine using some of her techniques in my own life. She does mention mothers often as she is one herself, but she works outside of the home and her daily schedule couldn’t be further from my own in most ways.

I think she also is missing more recognition of people whose financial situations may be more tenuous. One example she used was hiring a meal service provider for her family instead of spending her short timeframe with her kids in the evening cooking. A great idea in theory, but hardly doable for many of the general public.

[Kelsey Rae · Rating 1 out of 5]

This would probably be a great book for wealthy people, but the average person will probably not hire a maid, get a house that is walkable to work, order meals instead of cooking, etc. The person who picks up this book will probably be an overworked mother/wife, and it will be a little disappointing to read. The only thing that a less than well-off woman will get out of this is "stop scrolling so much on social media." It was very telling to me that one particular husband who is mentioned in this book thoroughly enjoyed his two-hour commute to and from work. I laughed aloud and said, "Well, of course he loves that commute. He's not having to deal with his family." Ah, well... It was a short read and another point to my reading goal, I guess.

[Joanna Borba · Rating 1 out of 5]

Happier Hour recycles the usual self-help advice, but through a lens of financial and work flexibility that many people simply don’t have. The ideas resonate if you’re already in a high-paying, flexible job with lots of control over your schedule but for the average person, it feels out of touch. I was hoping for fresh, realistic insights, but instead found it more frustrating than helpful. My only take away is that it reminded me to cut down on phone and screen time, but again not a revolutionary idea from a self help book.

[Allyson B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cassie put into words and helped me articulate how I spend my time. She gives you strategies of how to be 'Wiser Spenders' of our time so we are not left 'time poor'. I am much richer for reading her book, doing her exercises and activities. I would highly recommend to anyone who wishes to create time for what matters most.

[Marla Parkhurst · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read too many happiness/productivity books. My only new takeaway from this one was that I should do all my chores in one go, while listening to music. Rather than spread them out over my week. Everything else was just repetitive. Also; time blocking sounds like California people stuff. We northerners need to be flexible to ever see the sun.

[Alison Mackenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has great insights into proven ways to increase happiness. Ms. Holmes is a great writer, mixing personal anecdotes and research-based tips on how to live a happier life. Highly recommend!