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Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most

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Learn how to reframe your time around life’s happiest moments to build days that aren’t just full but fulfilling with this “joyful guide” ( Eve Rodsky, New York Time s bestselling author) that is the antidote to overscheduling.

Our most precious resource isn’t money. It’s time. We are allotted just twenty-four hours a day, and we live in a culture that keeps us feeling “time poor.” Since we can’t add more hours to the day, how can we experience our lives as richer?

Based on her wildly popular MBA class at UCLA, Professor Cassie Holmes demonstrates how to immediately improve our lives by changing how we perceive and invest our 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

Enlivened by Holmes’s upbeat narrative and groundbreaking research, Happier Hour “is filled with loads and loads of practical, evidence-based advice for how to live better by investing in what really matters. It’s the kind of book that can change your life for the better” (Laurie Santos, Yale professor and host of The Happiness Lab podcast).

320 pages, Paperback

Published June 20, 2023

1121 people are currently reading
20832 people want to read

About the author

Cassie Holmes

5 books97 followers
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.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 633 reviews
Profile Image for Katharine.
318 reviews1 follower
January 16, 2023
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.
Profile Image for Lydia Wallace.
521 reviews105 followers
April 28, 2022
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.
Profile Image for Aly Haebig.
159 reviews1 follower
January 1, 2023
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.
Profile Image for Stephanie’s Libby Antics.
943 reviews6 followers
January 28, 2023
You might gain something useful from this book if you have never read any other self help and/or pop psychology book.

Otherwise….
Profile Image for Brittany Viklund.
389 reviews320 followers
December 1, 2022
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.
Profile Image for Katy O..
2,978 reviews705 followers
September 11, 2022
(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!
421 reviews11 followers
April 7, 2023
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.
Profile Image for Lauren.
35 reviews1 follower
November 29, 2022
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.
Profile Image for Emily Sabbah (Warren).
171 reviews1 follower
November 29, 2022
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.
Profile Image for Mikala.
642 reviews237 followers
April 13, 2024
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.
Profile Image for Leah Agirlandaboy.
825 reviews17 followers
Read
February 19, 2023
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.
1 review
April 15, 2022
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!
Profile Image for Zibby Owens.
Author 8 books24.2k followers
January 13, 2023
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...
1 review
May 6, 2022
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.
Profile Image for Elizabeth Sund.
607 reviews17 followers
May 10, 2023
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.
Profile Image for Elena Calistru.
55 reviews193 followers
January 28, 2023
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."
Profile Image for Liz.
34 reviews3 followers
November 14, 2024
Very helpful strategies for reorganizing and reprioritizing your life to include more of the good things.
Profile Image for Ella W.
7 reviews
April 28, 2024
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!
Profile Image for Elissa.
218 reviews12 followers
September 18, 2022
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!
Profile Image for Sanford Chee.
559 reviews99 followers
Want to read
August 10, 2022
"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
Profile Image for Adam Benforado.
Author 3 books93 followers
August 10, 2022
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.
Profile Image for Lauren.
231 reviews3 followers
January 11, 2023
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.
Profile Image for Abby.
41 reviews2 followers
July 10, 2023
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.
1 review
May 6, 2022
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.
1 review
April 15, 2022
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!
Profile Image for Eric.
856 reviews
December 14, 2022
Cassie has written an excellent analysis on the subject she has chosen for her research at UCLA - the topic of happiness. Perhaps that sounds a little unusual for a top-ranked school of business but it has many elements that affect professional career success. In Cassie's words, happiness is where fun and meaningfulness "join hands". And, in addition, to the research regarding happiness, she includes many practical means to increase and enhance happiness in one's life. Even for me (at 75 years old), I found ideas to consider. For example, one of my least happy activities is driving to and from UCLA football and basketball games. One idea is to do a better job of scheduling the time of day of when I make the drives (to minimize the time the commute takes) and identifying activities to bundle with the drive such that they are less unhappy. Bundled ideas would be listening to books or podcasts during the drive. I recommend Happier Hour to everyone I know.

One subject regarding my happiness that I have thought about is the dilemma of whether UCLA wins or loses. Wins are absolutely happy for me and losses are absolutely unhappy events. At least I can say that in very recent years, UCLA has won more that half the games we have attended in person.

Other key thoughts from the book for me were:

When you look at your life overall, you want to feel happy, and you also want to see it as meaningful. Fortunately, these goals are not at odds with each other.

End life with no regrets.

Happiness is a choice!
Profile Image for Leah.
747 reviews119 followers
February 12, 2023
I found this book really valuable and impactful in my life.

It's worth a re-read every now and then as a good reminder on how to go through life.

Focus on what's most important to your purpose and happiness in life.

Learn ways on how to make time for those important things.

What is even important in life.

How do people gain satisfaction with their lives.

I feel like this book really re-centered myself on what's important to me and how I can focus on that in my day to day.

It also had good practical solutions to make more time for things.

Outsourcing tasks you hate that don't provide any value or happiness in life is key. For me that would be cleaning the house, so it would be great if once a week or at least once a month I could pay for someone to do a deep clean for my kitchen, bathrooms, and floors at least.

Also if I outsource my youtube editing to a professional then it would free up so much time, and i would actually create more content. Most of the time I don't create content on my youtube channel because I dread having to edit it after. But I truly love the memory making, and life cataloguing of vlogging. I genuinely love doing it, so if I can find someone who can knock out the parts I hate then I'm game.
Profile Image for AimeeJo.
128 reviews
June 16, 2023
Good stuff to hear but pretty basic content/things we all already know…just need to be reminded of from time to time. Isn’t too different from a lot of other self help books so if you’ve read many of them this will probably be redundant or unhelpful- also in my opinion discussing usage of time for a whole book is pretty boring so not that it was a bad book just not an exciting topic, yet still one that is important and needs to be talked about. Although not my favorite book it definitely leaned into making sure you realize what/who you’re spending time on/with and not wasting it doing things that rank low on your happiness scale or with people who don’t fill your cup. Acknowledging what activities and people bring you the most joy and giving those people and things the majority of your time was my biggest take away.
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