Happier, by Tal Ben-Shahar, and time poverty

[flexagon]

Yeah, I couldn't resist Happier. I haven't done the exercises; I haven't done the soul-searching. But I like his general take on it: that happiness comes from finding and pursuing activities that are both pleasurable in the moment and have long-term meaning. And I like the chapter on time and happiness:

Psychologist Tim Kasser shows in his research that time affluence is a positive predictor of well-being, whereas material affluence is not. Time affluence is the feeling that one has sufficent time to pursue activities that are personally meaningful, to reflect, to engage in leisure. Time poverty is the feeling that one is constantly stressed, rushed, overworked, behind. All we need to do is look around us -- and often within ourselves -- to realize the pervasiveness of time poverty in our culture.

To raise our levels of well-being, there is no way around simplifying our lives. This means safeguarding our time... which is not easy.

Maybe these paragraphs only caught my eye because of the P-word, and yes I do still think the P-word has to do with my C-word (you know, my alling-cay, don't say it in front of the kids). But it feels true to me. I definitely have a nasty tendency to pile on the fun and/or rewarding activities until I'm completely overbooked.

Even if the individual activities in which we engage have the potential to make us happy, we can still be unhappy on aggregate.

Word up, and drat. :(

Comments

[miyyu.livejournal.com]

This makes a lot of sense to me. Feeling poor in terms of quality of life is what makes poverty. If you're starving, that's one thing, but if you make a good living but your time isn't your own to enjoy it, what's the point?

Guarding your time is very difficult, especially when you want to be involved in things outside of work and if you're connected to many people. I have a much larger family now that both my parents are divorced and have started separate lives and it's getting more and more difficult to guard my weekends without offending people. I don't have a solution to that yet.

[flexagon]

if you make a good living but your time isn't your own to enjoy it, what's the point?

I think a lot of people think "well, I'll have all the free time LATER, and still have this pile of money". And that's true as far as it goes, but I think by the time a lot of those people retire they've forgotten how to do the relaxing and creating that they originally dreamed of. Making all that money, and spending all that time in the rat race, changes you.