To be happy, spend money on time

Do you want to be happy? Buy more cooked meals and hire a home assistant. This is a fundamental question in our everyday life: whether you have to spend money to save time or take time to save money?

If your goal is happiness, you may want to open your wallet. Spending money in order to save time can reduce stress in terms of a little time in one day and thus make you happier.

"People who spend money to buy time by hiring someone else to do their hateful task share more life satisfaction,"

says Ashley Williams, assistant professor at Harvard Business School and lead author of a study that was based on a number of studies in several countries. Researchers do not observe the same effect when people use the money for material values.

In one of the series of analyzes, Miss Williams and her colleagues studied nearly 4,500 people in the United States, Denmark, Canada and the Netherlands in terms of their well-being and time-saving purchases such as ordering meals, calling charges, hiring home help or paying someone to do your job as purchases, annoying tasks, and more.

In another series, using a broader definition of such purchases, they surveyed about 1,800 other Americans. About 28 percent of those in the first series and half in the second series have reported spending money to save time. In both cases, those who have incurred such costs share greater satisfaction with life than those who do not. And here it does not matter whether they are rich or poor.

People benefit from buying time regardless of their income. (Still, the authors note that this may not be the case for the poorest of the poor.)

"If you are going to have to deal with a task and your performance fills you with horror, maybe it's worth considering the option to pay someone to finish it for you, "

says Elizabeth Dunn, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and author of the research report.

There was a relationship between time and happiness, but the researchers wanted to see if one was causing the other. They said they conducted an experiment with several dozen Canadians. First, whether $ 40 participants would have two consecutive weekends to spend on instructions or spending that would save them time, or for material purchases such as board games, expensive wine, clothing. They then asked the participants to describe their mood at the end of the day.

As the researchers predicted, spending money to save time had the effect of shortening time-related stress and increased prosperity, while spending on tangible goods never achieved the same effect. But regardless of the advantages, they found that buying time is not as popular as a man can assume.

Even among more than 800 surveyed Dutch millionaires, all of whom certainly could afford it, only a small part spends money to save time-consuming tasks.

Professor Williams and Dunne have several assumptions about the cause, at least in the United States: the Protestant work ethic that values ​​you to be busy or blame you for paying someone to do something you can end up doing. "We want it to look like we're dealing with everything, and we can not spend money on purchases that save time even when we can not afford it," said Miss Willans.

Conclusion: For greater life satisfaction, according to the study, order a meal on the phone, call a taxi, or pay someone to do an unpleasant task. This turns out to be true regardless of income.

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