21. Positive psychology of time

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

John Lennon

Our lives, certainly in the Western world, are dominated by time. Think about it for a moment; how many activities do you do where time isn’t an important factor? I bet there aren’t that many! At work and at home, time and how we use it takes centre stage, whether it’s 2 minutes to clean your teeth, a 45-minute commute to work, a 2 hour meeting, a 10-minute ready meal or 3 minutes of extra time when your side is losing. In this chapter we’ll be exploring two different aspects of time – time use and time perspectives – and looking at their importance and relevance to our well-being.

Time use

The perception that we are short of time is all around us. Media messages continually remind us how busy we are, how hard we work, how little free time we have and how we need to get some ‘work-life balance’. It’s so obvious that we don’t have enough time that we don’t even question it. Yet studies suggest that people underestimate the amount of free time they have in a week by about half. According to researchers John Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey, Americans of working age actually have as much free time in a week as they have work time; about 35 hours.

Did you know that the total number of hours that the average British employee works in their lifetime has shrunk from 124,000 (in 1856) to 69,000 (in 1981)? This is even more astonishing when you consider that the average length of a career has not changed – it’s still about 40 years.

Research suggests that in 1870 the average British worker worked 2,984 hours per year. By 1938 this had decreased to 2,267 hours, and by 1987 it was only 1,557 hours.

During the same period of time, total non-work hours have increased from 118,000 in 1856 to 287,000 in 1981. Part of this increase in non-work hours is attributable to longer life expectancy, and therefore a greater number of non-work hours in retirement. Nevertheless it means that whilst we might think we’re working harder than ever, the figures don’t bear this out.

So, now that we have substantially more leisure time than at any point in our working history, what are we doing with this time, and are we putting it to good use?

It’s strange when you look at the bare facts, since many people think they are working longer hours than ever, and have far less leisure time. So why do people underestimate the amount of free time they have each week by half? What is contributing to the feeling that we’re more time pressured than ever before? UK positive psychologist Ilona Boniwell suggests that one of the reasons may be because we try to do too many things. A good example of this is my friend Laura, who has two school-age daughters. Not content with one after-school club for them, she regularly ferries them to two and sometimes even three in the same day! Megan does hockey practice followed by extra maths and a violin lesson on Wednesdays; Sophie goes to art club, then choir practice and swimming. Boniwell suggests that squeezing in so many activities leaves us feeling very pressed for time, and contributes to the feeling that we are rushing to get things done, even though we actually have more free hours at our disposal than ever before.

Estimate how much leisure time you have each week (by ‘leisure time’ we mean time when you’re not doing paid or unpaid work, sleeping, eating or looking after the kids): ______________hours per week

Now keep a simple diary in your well-being journal every day for a week or so, noting briefly what you spend your time doing, and accounting for every single hour.

What do you notice about your leisure time? Do you have more or less than you initially thought? If this is a typical week, what do you spend most of your leisure time doing? Does your use of leisure time increase or decrease your well-being? If the latter, how could you use it differently?

The time thief

Trends in TV-viewing are quite alarming. According to time-use studies, television viewing time in European countries at the end of the 1990s averaged between 2 and 2.75 hours per day, with a fifth of people saying that they watch TV for more than 3 hours per day. Research from TV ratings agencies themselves suggests that people fritter away an even larger proportion of all their free time in front of the goggle-box (in Europe about 3.5 hours per day on average, and in the US, 4.5 hours), and these figures seem to be constantly increasing. Now, what’s wrong with that, you may ask? It’s a free country after all, and no-one is making us sit there and absorb hour upon hour of reality TV, soap or docu-drama. Plus, watching the telly can be both very entertaining and relaxing, and 3 hours or so is not a lot to spend on the sofa after a hard day’s slog at the office, is it?

Psychologists argue that we’re not actually making a rational choice when we slump in front of the TV for the evening. For a start we get the benefits of TV-watching, such as being entertained, immediately, whereas the ‘costs’, such as not getting enough sleep or not investing enough time in our relationships, are in the future. And we also have a self-control problem. When push comes to shove, although we all generally acknowledge that yes, OK, we do watch more TV than is good for us, we don’t often do very much about it!

But is there anything wrong with watching TV anyway? Surprisingly, we don’t rate it very highly in the happiness-inducing stakes – it comes out at below average or about average for enjoyment. Secondly, whilst it can seem to make time pass very quickly, watching TV isn’t challenging enough to induce a flow state (see Chapter 4) and improve our well-being that way. Thirdly, people who watch lots of television place more importance on affluence (possibly because they see a lot of celebrities on the small screen), are less satisfied with their financial situation, feel less safe, trust other people less and think that they see their friends less than their peers. 3.5 hours per day adds up to over 3 working days every week – now that’s one hell of a lot of spare time to squander on an activity which doesn’t give us that much pleasure. There must be other ways to spend our time which are more likely to make us happy!

How did your leisure time tally fare?

Tell yourself that next time you catch yourself aimlessly hopping from channel to channel, you’re going to switch off and spend the time on your favourite hobby, whatever that might be.

To make this easier, you need to be a little prepared; having made the decision to tear yourself away from the TV and plunge yourself into cake-baking for an hour, nothing will be more demotivating and likely to get you back on that sofa with the remote-control clutched tightly in your hand than finding you have none of the essential ingredients in your cupboard. So try to plan ahead. Your well-being is worth the effort!

Time perspective

OK. Say you’ve done your time-use diary for a week or so and have made a few changes to how you spend your free time. What if you still feel as if your work-life balance is out of control? How can you avoid feeling that the hours and days are racing past and start feeling as if you’re in control of your time again? The answer may lie in your time perspective (TP). By TP, we mean whether you’re typically living in and focused on the present, the past or the future.

Psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Ilona Boniwell have researched the subject of time perspectives and their relationship to our well-being. Your time perspective is important because it has a powerful influence on your decision making and the subsequent actions that you take.

There are 5 main TPs:

Future time perspective: if you have a future TP you’re able to delay gratification and work towards future rewards. People with a future TP tend to be more successful than others.

Present positive time perspective: if you have this TP you’re very focused on enjoying life to the max in the here and now. You’re less likely to be concerned about the consequences of your actions.

Present negative time perspective: this TP is characterized by a sense of hopelessness. You believe that your life is controlled by outside forces rather than by you.

Past positive time perspective: if you have this TP you get a lot of pleasure from looking back over your life and reminiscing. You like to maintain family traditions.

Past negative time perspective: you’re more focused on what you should have done differently in your life and you’re likely to have many regrets.

Which TP describes you best? And which TP would you say is more likely to lead to higher well-being?

Research suggests that the TP most conducive to well-being is the past positive, although Zimbardo and Boniwell opt for what they call the balanced time perspective, which means that you take the best from past, present and future TPs, rather than slavishly following one over any other.

Which TP do you favour?

You may like to log on to Philip Zimbardo’s website and take the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, comparing your results to the ‘ideal’ (or ‘balanced’) time perspective:

http://www.thetimeparadox.com/surveys/ztpi/

Benefits of a having a balanced time perspective (BTP)

Researchers have found that people who have a BTP:

Are happier
Are more satisfied with life
Experience more positive emotions
Have a stronger sense of life purpose
Are more self-efficacious
Are more optimistic.

TP reflection

Spend 10–15 minutes reflecting on the results from your ZPTI and answer the following questions:

Do you recognize yourself in your ZPTI score?
Do you have one dominant time perspective, or a mixture of several?
How does your dominant TP (or TPs) show up in your life?
Does your dominant TP (or TPs) work for you?

The key to achieving a more balanced time perspective is being able to adopt the TP which is most appropriate to the situation you’re in. Awareness of the various TPs is a great starting point. If you have one or two TPs which predominate, you can practise switching between them.

For example, it’s generally helpful whilst you’re working or studying to maintain a future TP, but it can make you feel restless and anxious if you’re still focused on the future when you get home or have a day off. To maximize your enjoyment of family and leisure time, adopting a present positive TP is more helpful.

If you tend to have a dominant future TP, next time you are with your family and friends, switch off from work and focus your full attention on them. The practice of mindfulness (Chapter 13) can help you develop a more present positive TP.

If you tend to have a dominant present positive TP, try sitting down for 20–30 minutes and making some longer term plans. See Chapter 15 on goal-setting too.

If you are low on the past positive TP, give an old friend a ring or browse through some holiday snaps.

In order to create a more balanced time perspective, you need to practise being able to switch from one TP to another, so that you can adopt the one which is most appropriate for the situation you find yourself in.

Even though we often feel pressed for time, on average we work fewer hours and have more leisure time than ever before in our history.
The average European squanders as much as 21 hours per week of their precious leisure time in front of the television.
Your time perspective (TP) – the way you think about and relate to time in your life – is essential to your well-being.
A balanced time perspective is most conducive to well-being.
You can learn to develop a more balanced time perspective.