Our free time is undervalued and
becoming contaminated, says
James Wallman. In his new book,
Time and How to Spend It, the
bestselling author and futurist
examines how to claim back our
leisure time and learn to relish our
most valuable assetW
ould it surprise
you to hear that
we have more
leisure time today
than ever? Most
of us think we
have very little time, but the truth is we
actually have a lot – on average, five hours,
49 minutes each day. Of course, no person
or day is exactly average, but this means
we typically have somewhere between
36 and 40 hours of disposable time every
week to spend however we want. So why
don’t we feel time-rich? It’s something that
economists have been puzzling over and
they’ve identified several reasons.
One is that we earn more, so time feels
more expensive. Then there’s the way
we’ve come to see busyness as a status
symbol: important people are busy, so we
want to be busy, too. Add to that the f lood
of incoming emails, texts, tweets and
24-hour news and gossip updates, along
with the endless ocean of possibilities,
both digital and in the real world, and
it’s easy to see where time goes.
A second factor is the comparison we
make between what we can do and what
others are doing, making us anxious. So
we try to push back the tide and keep up
by multi-tasking. This fools us into
thinking we’re being more productive
with our work time, so we try to do it with
our leisure time, too. When we’re playing
with our kids, we check Facebook. When
we’re hanging out with one group of
friends, we post pictures to show another.
This is something sociologists call
‘contaminated time’.
We’re also addicted to our devices. In
2007, the amount of leisure time we spent
on devices like smartphones could be
measured in minutes. Now, we spend onTHE
FULLNESS
OF TIME
BIG IDEAS