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Which of these 6 time traps is eating up all your time?

By | Ashley Whillans | ideas.ted.com

There is an 8 out of 10 chance that you are one of the poorest people in the world. However, when I say you’re poor, I’m not talking about your bank account (although material poverty is indeed a pressing concern for many of us).

Rather, I mean you are time poor: You have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Time poverty affects all cultures and crosses all economic strata. Most of us feel this way.

In 2012, about 50 percent of working Americans reported they were “always rushed,” and 70 percent “never” had enough time. In 2015, more than 80 percent said they didn’t have the time they needed.

If you’re worried that this is some kind of first-world problem and that you should just get on with it, don’t. Time poverty is a serious problem, with serious costs for individuals and society. The data that I and others have amassed show a correlation between time poverty and misery. People who are time poor are less happy, less productive and more stressed out. They exercise lesseat fattier food and have a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. Time poverty forces us to compromise. Instead of preparing a nutritious dinner, we grab chips and guac and munch mindlessly while staring at our screens.

The most obvious explanation is that we simply spend more time working than previous generations but evidence doesn’t support this theory. Time diaries show that men’s leisure time in the US, for instance, has increased six to nine hours a week in the past 50 years, while women’s has increased four to eight hours a week.

Why, then, do we feel more time poor than ever?

Time poverty doesn’t arise from a mismatch between the hours we have and the hours we need; it results from how we think about and value those hours. It’s as much psychological as it is structural. We are ceaselessly connected. When free time arrives, we are unprepared to use it so we waste it. Or, we tell ourselves we shouldn’t take a break so we work right through it.

The first step to becoming time smart is to identify the time traps in your life.

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ideas.ted.com
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