how do you spend your time essay

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How to Spend Your Time on What Matters Most

Like many people I know, I often feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Working, daily meal prep, household repairs, and seemingly endless appointments occupy large chunks of my days, leaving little time for the things that matter most to me—like hiking in nature, creative projects, and hanging out with the people I love.

How can I change this pattern? That’s the topic of Cassie Holmes’s new book, Happier Hour . Holmes, a researcher and professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, provides a treasure trove of ideas on how to reassess the way we spend our time and prioritize the things that make for a happier, more meaningful life.

One could argue that this topic has been mined before, but Holmes comes at it a little differently than most. For one thing, she doesn’t assume the only way to feel less busy is to give up bunches of activities—or to cut back or retire from work. In fact, as Holmes points out, being not busy enough can have similar effects on our well-being as being too busy, because it can make us feel idle or without purpose.

Instead, she and fellow researchers have studied how happiness is linked to discretionary time—when we aren’t doing what we have to do, but what we want to do. It turns out that there are better and worse ways to use discretionary time if happiness is our goal. Following the guidance and exercises contained within the book can help you figure out which activities to forgo and which to prioritize to create a more fulfilling life for yourself.

How we spend our time now

To start, Holmes recommends doing a detailed accounting of how we actually spend our time, so that we know where we’re currently using up discretionary time and can make better choices. Most of us have a vague sense that we’re wasting time watching TV, scrolling through social media, or gaming, but do we realize how much or how little enjoyment or sense of meaning we derive from these activities? Only if we analyze our days can we figure out what makes us happiest and when we’re just mindlessly filling our time, she argues.

For most people, doing an exercise like this makes them realize that the biggest source of happiness and meaning in life is their relationships . But many of us give these short shrift—or aren’t fully present even when we’re with the people who matter most. If we’re leaving on our cell phones while socializing with friends or thinking about work while walking a child to school, we are missing out on the moments when we could be fully engaged with the people we love and build the deep social connections that make life worthwhile.

“Simply close out of that social media app you’re in and dial up a friend to actually talk. Or when you go into the office, initiate a genuine conversation with a colleague about what’s going on in your lives,” writes Holmes. “Having strong relationships and feeling a sense of belonging is critical.”

Holmes understands that we can’t always be doing the things we love. Most of us have to work, do housework, or commute—often our least favorite activities. But, she says, we can enjoy even these things more than we do by “ bundling ” less pleasant activities with pleasanter ones. For example, if you have a long commute to work, you can listen to an audiobook on the way; or, while folding the laundry, you can talk to a friend on speakerphone. Bundling this way can make the time pass more quickly and make life happier.

“Don’t spend the hours of your workweek waiting for them to pass. This is the time of your life, and you can’t let it go to waste,” writes Holmes. “With a tiny bit of intention, you can turn this time from seeming worthy of the trash bin into a treat.”

When it comes to your job, you probably can’t bundle those same activities into your workday. But you can still increase your happiness at work by infusing it with a sense of purpose (the reason why you do this work), creating moments of flow (deep, undisturbed engagement with your work, where you lose track of time), or building stronger connections with colleagues . Each of these things make work more enjoyable—and may make you more productive, too. 


No one has more than 24 hours in a day, of course. But there are a few more activities Holmes suggests that can actually make us feel as if we have more time, and that can make us less stressed out. For example, using our time to perform small acts of kindness or to get a dose of awe has been found to make us feel more time-rich than time-poor. Holmes recommends adding these practices—as well as regular exercise—to our everyday lives as a way to boost our mood and help us feel less rushed. Of course, that means making time for them—even when we think we’re busy.

How to savor the good times

For the things we already enjoy doing, Holmes suggests ways to get more out of them, too. But first you need to understand the concept of hedonic adaptation , where even things that make you super happy can lose their appeal with time. Whether it’s listening to a favorite song, eating at your favorite restaurant, or date night with your romantic partner, happy experiences can get old if you do them repetitively without breaks or variation. It’s best to space these experiences out or infuse something novel into them lest they get stale, says Holmes.

“Hedonic adaptation occurs because we stop noticing when the same good thing happens again and again. Change, however, makes us pause and pay attention,” says Holmes.

One of Holmes’ favorite ways to increase happiness, she writes, is to treat the weekend like a vacation—meaning, don’t fill it with chores or other “must do” activities. By making weekends a special, rejuvenating time, you can find more happiness and feel more refreshed when you return to the weekdays.

She also recommends some tried-and-true well-being practices, like keeping a gratitude journal or writing gratitude letters . Though not a meditator herself—“I am too fidgety and impatient, and I find sitting still to meditate extremely difficult”—she does recognize the benefits of being mindful and recommends alternative practices for staying present. And, as she found when helping students analyze their days for their happiest moments, it’s always good to find time in nature.

“It turns out that simply stepping outdoors to an open sky overhead is a shared source of well-being,” she writes.

Putting it all together near the end of the book, Holmes makes the case for crafting our days like an artist might. She recommends writing out a weekly schedule of what you need to do, then blocking out times to do what fills your life with meaning and makes you happiest—time with friends, activities that fulfill your purpose, time for reflection, time in nature, or time to do nothing but daydream. She also suggests that, while you spend this time, make it a “no phone zone” so that you aren’t distracted and can get more out of it. And, if there are things you hate to do but have to do, bundle them with something you enjoy.

For me, this was wise advice that I have taken to heart. Though I’d long ago recognized hiking in nature as my happy place, I’ve also decided to take longer breaks from my cell phone, make regular dates with some of my closest friends, and put on music when I cook dinner (for me, not a favorite activity—but I love rock and roll!). Maybe reading this book will encourage you to make your own days happier, too. After all, as author Annie Dillard wisely wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

About the Author

Jill Suttie

Jill Suttie, Psy.D. , is Greater Good ’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good .

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• Child Development

The Value of Spending One-On-One Time With Your Children

Forging quality time with each child.

Posted July 15, 2015

One-on-one time with your children — all of them — keeps your unique relationship with each one healthy and in tune. We become aware of this through the multitasking haze when it simply happens logistically, and then we say to ourselves, "Oh yeah, that is what he needs from me," or "Oh yeah, that is what she likes to do together. We need more of this."

Parenting more than one child at a time usually means we have to deal with issues using words fit for all ears — not just one pair at a time. And that gets tiring and boring . Using a homogenized approach that fits all our kids works about as well as the "one-size-fits-all" sweaters fit our bodies.

Here are some "whys" about the value of making quality time happen on purpose, not just by luck:

• The small intimacies that are unique to the way you parent a particular child at a particular time of life — theirs and yours — are more likely to appear during one-on-one time: the nicknames, the caresses, the loving teasing that makes them feel treasured by you. These are far less likely to happen, and are harder to do and make feel real in a crowd.
• Too often, we leave these one-on-ones until we need to repair emotional distance that has grown from some less-than-happy interchange. Leaving them solely for this purpose means you miss the chance to enjoy one-on-ones and employ them as preventive maintenance against that very trouble. It is money in the bank when your children trust that you have them in your heart and mind always, not just when they are in trouble.
• These moments are so important that you and your spouse should help each other have them on a regular basis for the above reasons. Time alone with mom is just different from time alone with dad, and those differences reinforce the strengths that come from each other.
• And remember, this one-on-one time need not be task-driven to be useful — often exactly the opposite. Time to "chill" is often better understood by our kids than it is by us, and they are often better at it. But you have to be there, with them, devices off, for unstructured one-on-one time to work its magic on both of you.

Dr. Kyle Pruett is a Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and Educational Advisory Board member for The Goddard School, an early childhood education franchise and leading preschool teaching learning through play ( www.goddardschool.com ).

Kyle Pruett, M.D., is a Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and Educational Advisory Board member for The Goddard School.

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• Emotional Intelligence
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• Neuroscience

Setting New Year’s Intentions in Middle Age

B y midlife, we have picked up some habits and mindsets that feel nearly impossible to shake. We get comfortable in our discomfort, whether it’s the way we communicate with our spouse, our attitude toward work, our mindset regarding our body, or our belief system about how the world works.

By midlife, many of us have given up on the whole idea of New Year’s Resolutions because we believe we’re destined for 2024 to be just like 2023…and 2013 and 2003. As social psychologist Dan Gilbert once said , “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.” But, that doesn’t have to be the case, and oftentimes isn’t.

I’ll admit it: Gilbert could have been talking about me; or at least me in my mid-to-late 40s. It was during the Great Recession. The company I’d founded 20 years earlier was at risk of becoming insolvent, my long-term relationship was ending, and my adult foster son was wrongfully going to prison. I felt stuck, personally and professionally. New Year’s Resolutions felt like a ridiculous lift because everything was going wrong at the same time. There were so many resolutions I could have made—I didn’t even know where to start.

And, then, in 2008, I had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic and had a Near Death Experience (NDE), which was the perfect wake-up call for making change in my life. Prior to my NDE, with my 50’s looming on the horizon, I figured that the time for making meaningful change in my life had passed me by. The NDE made me realize that there was no better time than now.

Over the past few years, partly due to my own midlife challenge and, partly due to the fact I lost a few friends to midlife suicide, I became a student of a life stage with bad branding: the “midlife crisis.” After spending time with thousands of midlifers and working with academics on what’s called “middlescence,” I’ve come to realize that midlife is less of a crisis and more of a chrysalis—a time with the potential for deep transformation.

As we approach the new year, I believe that reframing a “resolution” as an “intention” is one way to improve our odds of feeling success in 2024. Whereas a resolution feels like a directive with two possible outcomes—success or failure—intentions are directional and represent an ongoing effort. Here are four intentions that can help set you up not just for 2024, but for the rest of your life:

Remember how much of your adult life is still ahead of you

Most of us don’t have much “longevity literacy.” In other words, at 63, when I hear that the average longevity for a man in the U.S. is about 73 , I might think I only have a dozen years ahead of me. But, this neglects a whole variety of factors (including the tragic fact that U.S. longevity is incredibly impacted by socioeconomics and access to health care). When I factor in my family history, personal health status, and demographics, I may live till 90, so I still have 30% of my life ahead of me.

My realization that I have so much of my life still ahead of me opened up doors and possibilities that re-energized me. I’ve tried my hand (and mostly my clumsy feet) at surfing, am speaking Spanish for the first time, and have taken up pickleball. (Okay, I know, every midlifer is expected to be a pickleballer, right?) I’m convinced that when you start to realize how much life you still have ahead of you, you’re more willing to try something new. It’s never too late to become a beginner again.

Let go of the mindsets, identities, and relationships that no longer serve you

Running the midlife marathon is best done without carrying extra baggage. The first half of life is often about adding and accumulating not just possessions, friends, or romantic relationships, but also all those professional roles and titles we’ve held, all those mindsets that guided us, and all those stories that defined us. The second half of life is about editing—letting go of that which no longer works for you. I call this the “Great Midlife Edit” and it’s a perfect ritual to start the year. Write on a piece of paper all the mindsets, roles, identities, relationships, and obligations that have run their course in your life and throw them in the fireplace on a cold winter evening as you dedicate to replacing them with something new that will nourish you. By emptying some of the contents from your suitcase of life, you have created the space to add new intentions.

Treat time as a valuable asset

Anticipated regret is a form of wisdom. And learning from your past—metabolizing your life lessons—is the raw material for your future wisdom. It’s worth asking what do you know now, or have you done now which you wish you’d learned or done 10 years ago? It could be learning to cook or garden, starting a journaling practice every morning, or walking the Camino de Santiago sacred pilgrimage in Spain. Time is our most valuable asset as we age and it’s a nonrenewable resource. If you spend a dollar, you can make another one. But, if you waste a day, a year, a decade, you don’t get it back. Think of your time as an investment at this stage in your life.

Understand wellness as a shared responsibility

There are many variables that influence living a long, good life including how you eat, exercise, and sleep, but there’s one variable that stands, far and away, ahead of all the others: how socially connected we feel. It’s time we started thinking of wellness as a social activity. What if you began to look at your wellness as a shared responsibility, striving for social, not just personal, wellness. Maybe it’s time to count not how many steps we took or how many calories we consumed today, but how many sunsets we experienced with our spouse, how many times we felt goosebumps during a deep conversation with our closest friends, or how many times we smiled at a stranger. Your Great Midlife Edit has created the space for social connection. Friends aren’t a “nice-to-have.” They’re a “need-to-have.” Our friends, family and community are our “emotional insurance.” Resolve to invest in your community in the year ahead. 

New Years is a transitional time, and midlife acts in the same way. It’s when we’re no longer young, but not yet old. We’re all familiar with the heroic caterpillar to butterfly journey. Midlife for the butterfly is in the chrysalis. Sure, it’s liminal, dark, gooey, and solitary, but it’s also where transformation happens. When that chrysalis cracks open, there is the colorful, winged creature that delights us so much—the butterfly.

Let’s think of midlife as the dawning of a new era, a time when much of what we accumulated dissolves, just before we’re ready to transform, spread our wings, and pollinate our wisdom to the world in our 50s and beyond. Now, that’s an inspiring intention for 2024. You’re not just getting older—you’re getting better. Your best years are not behind you. They’re right now.

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