Time Wealth: Are You Living Rich Or Poor?

Exploring the concept of time affluence

Have you heard the phrase:

Rich people buy time, poor people waste it?

I came across it a few days ago and it got me thinking about the psychological - and lifestyle - concept of ‘time affluence’ versus time famine or scarcity.

Being time affluent, or ‘time rich’ is the feeling that you have plenty of time to pursue activities that are personally meaningful and important to you, along with time to reflect and time to engage in leisure and rest.

So instead of being money rich or money wealthy, we should add a third measure of success - that being wealthy in time.

Let’s break this down into super basics. First of all, what is time? Besides that thing on your wrist or that device on the wall of your home that makes that ticking sound?

According to an AI generated definition, when I asked the all-knowing Google, ‘what is time?’: Time is the continuous, irreversible progression of existence, allowing us to measure the duration of events and the intervals between them, and is often considered a fourth dimension alongside the three spatial dimensions.

And time passes us by at varying speeds - seemingly quickly or lightning fast when we’re doing something we enjoy or if we’re lost in a state of flow, not even realizing time is going by because we’re so engaged in what we’re doing. Or it’s crawling by agonizingly slow when we’re doing something not so fun like watching the clock and waiting for your work week to end on Friday afternoon, and the time just seems to almost stop and each minute can feel like an hour.

But we all have the same amount of time (give or take). At least in the present moment. We all live within the same 24 hours at a time, time frame. Granted some of us might have more time alive on this earth than others, but that’s not something we can control - our lifespan. Or at least not too much.

But we’re all living with this 24 hours a day construct thanks to modern society, and the cycle of the earth spinning through space around the sun, breaking our days up into handy 12 hour chunks, 12 hours of day time, 12 hours of night, and we live our lives in 7 groupings of this 24 hour period - a modern and arbitrary amount - the ‘week’.

But the question we should be asking ourselves is how are we using our time? Are we using it effectively? Are we using it to our (and its) full potential?

After all, as I alluded to above, our time is limited in the macro-view of our whole lifespan. We, as human beings, aren’t alive all that long, in the grand scheme of things.

Did you know (and this might be sobering to learn, so brace yourself as this can come as a bit of an existential shock): On average, a person can expect roughly 3,911 Mondays throughout their lifetime, based on average life expectancy.

3,911 Mondays. That doesn’t sound like all that many, put into those numbers, does it? That’s not a massively huge number.

Cue the existential dread!

But that might put things into perspective for you with how you’re using the 3,911 Mondays you have (give or take) in your life. How we’ll you’re spending your time.

Are you living every day, hour, minute, second of your life the way you want to? Of course not. None of us are going to be wringing out every last drop from every moment of our lives. That’s just ridiculous. I mean, in an ideal world, it would be great.

But of course we waste time, don’t we? We spend time mindlessly scrolling on our phones or other devices, or scrolling on our streaming services looking for something to watch. We waste time binge watching TV (and there’s nothing wrong with that! Sometimes we need to do things like that to rest and recharge. Sometimes we just need to veg out because our crazy hectic days have left us a bit brain dead and exhausted.

But if you have crazy, hectic, busy stressful days…does that mean you might be a bit lacking in the time affluence part? You may not think you have any time to enjoy yourself doing things that bring you joy, and you might not have that quiet contemplation time if you’re spinning a zillion plates. Or you might not feel like you have time for rest and relaxation. A little bit of old fashioned R&R.

But don’t freak out. It might feel like you’re time poor - that you have no extra time to spare to live your life how you want to live. But you’d be wrong.

In today’s modern, crazy, hectic, fast paced society, we might feel like we’re all time famished. That our time pockets are empty.

But as I said, no need to freak out. I’m here to say we’re all probably more time rich than we think we are. We just have to stop and take a step back and think about where we might have some magic pockets of time that we can use more wisely, and better, than what we might currently be. It’s like finding some spare change inside the couch. Surprise! You do have some extra spending money you didn’t realize you had!

We all have some hidden extra time that we don’t know about, because we’re spending our time affluence, our time money, so to speak, in the wrong way.

According to social psychologists, we now have more time that we can spend doing things we want and living how we want, than we did in times past. It’s just that they come in smaller chunks of time so are less noticeable so we’re less likely to realize they’re there for us to take advantage of.

Thanks to modern society, a lot more things are automated than they used to be. Think of grocery shopping online. Or doing your banking. Or ordering take out, or throwing your clothes in the washer and dryer.

These were all things that in the past would take a whole lot of our time. Though many still probably go grocery shopping in person, you don’t have to, and with a few clicks on the internet, you can have food delivered to your door.

So think of all that time you save because you’re not spending an hour or two wandering around picking up food? You can use that time to do something you enjoy.

And remember before online banking existed? Where now bills are paid almost instantly with the click of a button? Do you remember having to drive to a bank, wait in line and then talk to someone to get things done? Now, all that time is at your disposal!

And cooking! Of course we don’t always want to get take out for breakfast, lunch or dinner. But once in a while, it’s a nice thing to do. A luxury for a lot of us. But that saves a couple of hours of chopping and cutting and preparing and cooking and labouring over the stove or oven. That’s some more time we can spend doing other things while our food is being dashed directly to our door!

And laundry. Decades ago, laundry was an all day thing, scrubbing and washing and drying by hand. If you go back far enough, you’d be using a washing board and hanging your clothes on clothes lines (though obviously many people still do hang dry!).

So think of all these tasks that used to take up large chunks of our day, that, thanks to technology and automation, takes up little to none of our time now - so we’re adding that extra time to our time bank and becoming more time wealthy - IF we’re spending that extra time the right way!

If we’re wasting that precious time change that we find in those metaphorical couch cushions by doing mindless stuff like scrolling on our phones, then we don’t realize we’re spending our time cash!

So we need to be more aware of how we spend this so-called ‘time confetti’ (coined by author Brigid Shulte)? These small chunks of time that we gain here and there. Maybe 10 minutes when we finish a meeting early, or an appointment is cancelled, adding these minutes into our time bank.

But how do we spend this extra time? Probably not as well as we could be - or at least in ways that are memorable to us. Like I said, we probably hop onto some device to mindlessly pass the time and then later complain we have no time to do what we want to do.

So if you do happen to gain a few extra minutes of that precious time, maybe use it to take a short nap, if you are able. Or go for a walk to clear your head during your busy day or take an actual break if you think you never have time to take for yourself - you might have more time than you think.

One thing you can do is to actually schedule some time into your week. Put it in your calendar! Block off periods of ‘free time’ - but don’t just leave it open as ‘free time’ because what will you probably do with that? Scroll scroll scroll.

So plan your time. Fill your blocks of extra time with things you want to do to be productive, to enjoy, to spend in ways that feel the best way for you.

In this way you’ll start to become much more aware of all the time you might actually have available to you - that you never actually thought you did!

It might come in smaller pieces like confetti, but it will be there. We just need to re-educate ourselves on how to spend our time in the best ways for us to live a fulfilling life.

How much extra time do you have floating around to use more wisely?

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