
Buying time promotes happiness - petethomas
http://pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/18/1706541114.full
======
koliber
A friend once presented me with a model of thinking about work and time.
Categorize all tasks on two scales: how much you like doing something, and how
good you are at it. Now, draw a square and break it into four quadrants. One
will be "good at it, but don't like doing it". Another will be "Good at it,
and like doing it". The remaining ones are "Bad at it, but like doing it" and
"Bad at it, and don't like doing it".

Assuming you have resources to hire help and outsource, consider doing the
following:

For things you like doing that you are good at, make that your main job. You
will be effective and happy.

For things you don't like doing and are bad at, outsource. If you try doing
these yourself, you will be miserable, and the outcome will be sub-par (you're
bad at it!).

For things you like doing and are bad at, make that your hobby.

For the things that you don't like doing but are good at, either do them
yourself or outsource, depending on your time availability and resources to
hire help.

I've been doing this for a few years as much as possible. Even at home, my
wife and I naturally divide chores along these lines.

~~~
Sleeep
>For things you like doing that you are good at, make that your main job. You
will be effective and happy.

The other outcome besides being "effective and happy" is "turning something
you enjoy into something you hate because now you _have_ to do it." Just
because you love doing something doesn't mean you love being forced to do it
for someone else 40 hours a week.

It's pretty naïve to think that the things you enjoy in your free time are the
things you enjoy doing for paid work and vise versa. I absolutely _hate_
cleaning around my house, I hate everything about it, but I don't mind
cleaning for paid work at all.

There's other issues too and quite a few people I know took that route ("doing
what you love") and it lead to career dissatisfaction for various reasons.

Jobs have other "stuff" other than just your work, you may love X but hate
working in X industry for various reasons, like work environment, salary, job
prospects, etc.

The things you enjoy and are good are probably not even viable paid
opportunities. (Nobody's going to pay you to put together model airplanes).

You don't get to "test drive" the vast majority of jobs at home first.

There's something to be about not being invested in your work and,
essentially, not making your work the focus of your life.

[http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/03/18/reader-
story-i-...](http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/03/18/reader-story-i-quit-
my-passion-and-took-a-boring-job/)

~~~
collyw
> There's something to be about not being invested in your work and,
> essentially, not making your work the focus of your life.

Sure but you spend a good chunk of your life at work, so it's difficult not to
want it to be meaningful.

~~~
the_gastropod
"Good chunk" is hard to disagree with. In general, we've implicitly agreed to
bad terms, and assume we must work until the "retirement age" of 65. In most
developed countries, wages are high enough for this to be completely optional.
By being slightly less materialistic, a ~10 year career is possible for above
average salaries, and a < 20 year career is possible for most salaries.

Doing something that's not your passion for 40 hours a week for 10-20 years is
a heck of a lot more tolerable than doing it for 45 years.

~~~
count
Or get paid to do something you enjoy doing. And then it's not 'a bad terms'
deal, it's awesome.

~~~
Sleeep
Just because you enjoy doing something doesn't mean you will enjoy doing it
for 40+ hours a week for 45 years.

I actually do enjoy programming and I get paid (well) to do it but going to
work is _certainly_ not "awesome," and I would not do it if I didn't have to.

You could absolutely love caring for children but hate being a child care
worker because of dealing with parents and issues like abuse and negligent at
home among other reasons.

------
neilwilson
Call me old fashioned, but rather than working yourself silly to then spend
your money buying time back, why don't we set society up so that you have to
work less in the first place to earn a living?

Are we not back to the parable of the fisherman and the banker?
[http://www.garywu.net/fisherman-and-banker/](http://www.garywu.net/fisherman-
and-banker/)

~~~
z3t4
Some people actually love what they do for "work".

~~~
pasquinelli
I don't understand those people. I went out and got a job doing what I love,
but it only turned the thing I love into a fucking job.

~~~
octygen
This happened to me too. I find the quality of the boss/leadership mitigates
this for me. A good leader can make a job into something you love if it can be
aligned to what you want to do. I try to attain this utopia with everyone on
my teams.

------
koonsolo
In Belgium we have this great thing called servicecheques
(="dienstencheques"). It is a government sponsored project where you can buy a
servicecheque for 9 euro's, and you will get 3 euro's back from taxes.

Each cheque represents 1 hour of work such as house cleaning, ironing, meal
preparing, etc.

This system is to promote low-wage work, but also has the nice benefit so
people can cheaply buy home services. Wages are pretty high in Belgium, so
this is an ideal solution for both people doing that kind of work, and working
people in high need for such services.

~~~
bb611
Is there a lot of demand for these jobs?

In the US I would have to pay 1.5-2x that for housework, which puts it
squarely into a category of value that I just do myself

~~~
1337biz
Main reason for the scheme is in my opinion to force people into paying taxes.
It is probably a market where tax evasion is the most invisible because
already some sort of trust relationship is in place.

------
atomashpolskiy
What these scholars are pushing for eerily resembles good old aristocratic
society.

Instead of promoting to consume less (having smaller houses and less clothes,
producing less garbage, eating less) they advocate for buying a couple sturdy
negroes to do the hard work, while their master can learn to play the piano
(and not feel bored/unhappy to cleanup his own shit).

Has the western society already arrived at the point, when there is such an
abundance of low-income, unskilled, badly educated people, that the
capitalists from Harvard Business School see big potential profits in building
a brand new time-saving services industry with all this underutilized labour?

~~~
christophilus
Yeah. This is pretty much the same problem I had with the book "The 4 Hour
Work Week". The ultimate solution in my opinion is to automate crappy jobs out
of existence and to set up social safety-nets for the displaced workers so
that their quality of life increases.

~~~
atomashpolskiy
Crappy jobs still bring some income that can then be spent on consuming, often
with the leverage of bank loans, keeping the wheels of the economy spinning.
Who could be more striving for buying and consuming than a person who can
hardly afford anything?

~~~
christophilus
Right. I'm looking at it not from an economics perspective, but from a
humanitarian perspective. As much as possible, we should be trying to
eliminate drudgery and misery from the human condition.

I remember watching a documentary about a sulfur mine in southeast Asia. The
average life expectancy for miners there was something like 2-5 years. It's
crazy to me that anyone would even take that job, but:

A. The miners probably didn't know the life expectancy B. The miners didn't
have much of an alternative C. The society viewed (views?) them as expendable

I think this is an excellent illustration of an area where automation needs to
be done, but market forces won't encourage it. The labor is just too cheap.
But just because the economics doesn't work, it doesn't mean we shouldn't do
it.

Economics shouldn't be the only consideration.

~~~
atomashpolskiy
I absolutely agree with you. In the above comment I was just speculating on
the possible economical/political reasoning behind the lack of automation. In
addition to simply being cheaper than automated solutions (in the short run),
cheap labour might also be seen by capitalists/governments as an economical
agent, that is more preferable for the economy with regards to increasing GDP,
than those on welfare, because the former still has some spare money to spend,
and welfare covers only the very basic needs. I agree that it's truly awful
that in some extreme cases people have to pay with their health/life to be a
part of a consumerist society.

------
somberi
Somewhat related: Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, "The cost of a thing is
the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it,
immediately or in the long run."

And also:

"I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it
worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think
it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth
men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of
selling them."

------
slindz
For those who read comments here first, I read the abstract, here's my tl;dr:

The people in developed countries who buy themselves things to save time are
happier than those who don't.

Yup. Sounds about right.

~~~
mamurphy
It's a bit more nuanced than that:

The people in developed countries who buy themselves things to save time are
happier than those who instead buy material objects.

~~~
kobeya
As opposed to the people that buy immaterial objects...?

~~~
mattnumbe
As opposed to those who invest in time saving services.

------
TeMPOraL
If someone else is looking for what the study actually means by "buying time",
this is the closest thing to an answer that I found in the text:

> _In all samples, respondents completed two questions about whether—and how
> much—money they spent each month to increase their free time by paying
> someone else to complete unenjoyable daily tasks._

~~~
cJ0th
I wonder what types of jobs cleaners would outsource

~~~
slfnflctd
I once found myself in the odd position of working as a janitor while hiring a
maid to clean my floors and surfaces at home (only before having guests over)
because I couldn't find the time and energy after I was done with my regular
job.

The biggest one I can think of is car repair, or driving itself. Mostly it
would probably be indirect stuff like food prep, though-- dollar menus and
cheap frozen dinners. For the 'working poor', being able to spend less time
cooking is an accessible luxury that's hard to resist.

------
sethbannon
Can someone explain why they're sure this is causation and not correlation?
Intuitively it seems to me a happier person would be more inclined to spend
money on buying extra time than someone who's unhappy, who would be more
inclined to spend on things or experiences.

~~~
j7ake
Experiments never show causation. The caution comes from interpretation of the
data, which varies between scientist to scientist. You could say the
additional experiments they did were not sufficient evidence but the proper
response should be a suggestion of a new experiment that would convince you
rather than saying "correlation is not causation ".

~~~
sgt101
If a theory makes a new and novel prediction which is then confirmed by
experiment that is often seen as casualty.

------
greggman
I'm actually surprised more people don't buy time.

I used to pay to have my laundry done. first it was part of a 3hrs for $60 of
house cleaning I used to pay for in the mid 90s once every two weeks. Then
later when I moved into a apartment with no washer. I loved it. Also loved the
house cleaning when it was good.

Would love to pay for some kind of shared personal assistant that would deal
with whatever. I'm not sure how much I'd be willing to pay. I rent a cube at
an office with shared assistants that charge for individual services. each
phone call $3 for example. I'd love to be able to pay for someone to deal with
all my bills, taxes, mail, basic shopping ...

------
wu-ikkyu
"he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to
recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does
not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present
or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having
never really lived."

------
tlanc
I'm not seeing anything described in the article as "buying time" that
couldn't also be described as "buying the right to order someone else around"
aka "delegating". Surely the most direct way of buying time is by taking a pay
cut in exchange for more time off, or even taking unpaid time off. It occurs
to me there may be a good proxy for this in comparing similar tech jobs in the
US vs the EU / UK. The latter pay less, but receive substantially more time
off.

~~~
smcdow
> Surely the most direct way of buying time is by taking a pay cut in exchange
> for more time off, or even taking unpaid time off.

We don't get those choices. I tried for YEARS to engineer a long-term part-
time career in the software industry, and I couldn't get it to happen. I'm
perfectly happy to trade more free time for less money, but there are just no
takers out there. The industry isn't interested.

As far as taking unpaid time off -- usually, that happens after you've quit
your previous job and before you've started the next one.

~~~
tlanc
I can think of two ways you can trade money for time as a SWE: 1) Amazon has
started to offer part-time jobs for SWE's
([https://www.flexjobs.com/jobs/telecommuting-jobs-at-
amazon](https://www.flexjobs.com/jobs/telecommuting-jobs-at-amazon)) 2)
relocating from the US to UK / EU gives you 25-100% more PTO and shorter hours
in exchange for lower salaries

~~~
smcdow
1\. Interesting, except the part where Flexjobs wants you to pay to look at
job listings. Primary indication of a scam.

2\. Yes, it is super-easy to get a visa to work in the UK or EU.

------
haddr
What are most common/important time saving services? (couldn't find any
example in the original paper)

~~~
e59d134d
Home cleaning. I was reluctant to let a stranger clean my home but it is
totally worth it. My maid cleans home better than I ever did, and she is
faster.

I used to use laundry service, that was amazing.

------
z3t4
A full article with click-able links!

Now entrepreneurs need to read this and invent robots that does all the house
chores!

~~~
tonyedgecombe
We have been working on that for decades, vacuum cleaners, washing machines,
dish washers, ready meals, etc. It seems we aren't great at allocating the
time these devices free up.

~~~
z3t4
When it takes two hours for a robot/machine to do something that would take
you five minutes, most people will think that's one hour and 55 minutes
wasted, while it's actually five minutes _saved_

------
samat
Did someone find in the article the actual services people used? I am
struggling with what would they be.

House cleaning? Food delivery?

~~~
jk563
I pay for ironing, gardening, cleaning, and handyman services. Super useful
and means I don't really need to do much housework other than cooking.

------
davidjnelson
This is really interesting. I've thought about this. If you live in an area
where a living wage is low enough to make this work, it could be really great
for everyone.

Say for example, you hire a college student for $15/hour in an area where
minimum wage is $10/hour and their rent is $400/mo to work part time for you
buying food, cooking food, doing laundry, and cleaning your house. They make
$1,200/month, plenty to live comfortably as a college student while still
having time to study. They need medical coverage from their college, but this
seems to be offered.

Then you don't have to worry about those tasks anymore and life becomes much
better. If you make good money, that $1,200/mo is no biggie. Win/win.

------
eptcyka
I think that if I was able to afford to buy time, I would be happier, but not
necessarily because I was buying time.

------
contingencies
"Dutch millionaires don't spend money to save time." I had to laugh :)

------
jonbarker
Complication: anything you are good at you will want to practice to improve.
And deliberate practice is by definition frequently uncomfortable (not
enjoyable).

------
majewsky
I can confirm this anecdotally. I bought some thyme just last week and seeing
the spice shelf restocked made me very happy.

