Imagine strolling through a park, letting the sun rest on your skin. You rest by lying on the green grass and staring at the tips of the trees. You have no pressing commitments—just time to take in the beauty and slow down.
It’s almost impossible to imagine, isn’t it? Often, such a slow-down moment feels like a luxury in our busy lives.
Yet, according to Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans: ”this feeling of having enough time—time affluence—is the key to enhancing personal well-being and happiness.”1
In her book Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life, she writes, “Most of us live with a time-poverty mindset, constantly rushing against the clock and barely catching a breath. Compare this with ‘time affluence’ – a state where you own your time and use it purposefully for things that truly matter.”2
The core idea of “Time smart.”
The core idea is that, while we often prioritise money, time is more valuable. In our relentless chase for money, we overlook a truth: time is more valuable. Money seems tangible, while time is abstract—making us prioritise the former.
Whillans argues that “adopting a time-affluent mindset is a process, not an overnight change. Becoming time-affluent is not a one-off event. It involves consciously reminding ourselves that time, not money, is our most valuable asset. It’s about making decisions in line with our values and deliberately making choices that contribute to time affluence.”3
Strategies for being “Time smart”
Whillans suggests reflection and documentation as the key strategies.
“Understanding why we squander our time away with games or mindless scrolling helps us replace such habits with meaningful tasks, like pausing to chat with a loved one.“4
The first and very natural step is to be brutally honest about how you spend your time.
This is why this post comes with the Time management quiz. This quiz will help you determine where you squander your time away, where you do okay, and where you need to improve.
Identifying the time-consuming yet non-rewarding activities allows us to replace them with more meaningful and enjoyable tasks.
This is by far no new concept for managing your time. And it could rub some people the wrong way. If you choose to work additional hours to pay extensive bills, having someone propose advice to forget money and instead switch your focus on time could be frustrating, even angering.
Most of us would opt in for four-hour weeks.
There’s no argument there.
The mindset shift and the value of your focus are worth highlighting. Remember, the idea of longer articles included in the
is to gather productivity lessons but not at the expense of well-being.Therefore, I think considering a Money vs. Time shift is vital.
The time affluence
Whillans explains: “Believing that time holds as much importance as money—and often more than money—is the first step to time affluence.”5
This anchoring of important decisions to our core values instead of financial gain helps evolve our perspective. Deliberately making choices prioritising time over money across days, weeks, and years sets us up for true happiness.
“However, the commitment to time affluence is ongoing. It's about consistently holding yourself accountable and being disciplined. Ultimately, shifting the scale of work-life balance in favour of time—instead of money—can unshackle us from the constant feeling of being "time-poor" and enable us to truly savour our lives. Time affluence is about having the freedom to slow down, to indulge in the experiences we deeply care about.”6
That is the aim of this weekly newsletter for every reader, every week.
So, with that said, let’s start with Whillans' first key suggestion: Understanding why we squander our time away, how, and where.
Time management quiz
This quiz7 will help you determine where you squander your time away, where you do ok, and where you might need to improve. Don’t worry. I will include some suggestions for areas where improvement is needed at the end of this post. But you must take the quiz; otherwise, it won’t make much sense.
Next Steps
Before you even started the quiz, you might have had some insight into areas where you might need to pick up your speed.
In the following sections, I will take you through a a quick summary of the main areas of time management that were explored in the quiz, and a guide to the specific tools you can use for each.
Goal setting
To start managing time effectively, you need to set goals—this is not a new concept for you.
The following questions come to my mind; you could go ahead and consider:
What do you want to optimise your time for?
What will you use available time for?
What is the goal of creating more time for yourself?
When you have a clear goal in mind, it's easier to figure out what needs to be done and when. But if you don't set goals, you'll end up wasting time on things that don't really matter. So, make sure you set goals to stay productive and avoid confusion.
People often don't bother with goal setting because it takes up time and effort. But what they don't realize is that putting in some effort now can save a lot of time, effort and stress later on.
Below are some of my archived posts on goal setting that can help you get started:
Prioritising
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
Without prioritising, you may work very hard, but you won’t be achieving the results you desire because what you are working on is not of strategic importance.
Most of us have a “to-do” list of some sort. The problem with to-do lists is that they are reactive. Often they resemble an unstructured collection of things that need to get done.
For in-depth details on how to start prioritising your tasks, see some of my archived posts on prioritising to get started:
Managing interruptions
Having a plan and knowing how to prioritise it is one thing. The next issue is allocating enough uninterrupted time to get to work.
Interruptions crop up from every corner, every minute of the day. Depending on your environment, interruptions are a natural and necessary part of life in some settings.
Below is my archived post on minimising distractions that can help you get started:
Procrastination
Delaying tasks can cause a ton of trouble. You might end up with such a massive pile of work that everything seems impossible to complete.
The best way to beat procrastination is to figure out why you procrastinate in the first place.
Once you know why you procrastinate, you can plan to get out of the habit.
Below are some of my archived posts on overcoming procrastination that can help you get started:
Scheduling
To nail time management, you've got to be good at planning your day. When you know what you need to get done and what's most important, it's time to build a schedule that keeps you on task and stress-free.
You can have the best of both worlds by setting up a solid schedule that aligns with your values and personal objectives.
In the upcoming weeks, I will cover the ins and outs of effective scheduling, so stay put.
That is all for this week. If you have not done so already, your only action is to complete the quiz and remember the mindset shift suggested by Ashley Whillans: Money vs. Time.
Thank you for reading.
Until next Wednesday,
Jana
This is the fourth post out of 24 essays I plan to write as part of the Sparkle on Substack Essay Club to keep myself accountable and post regularly.
If life often gets in the way of your regular writing and you are a fellow Substacker (which many of you are), I'd recommend you join
and Essay Club.
I took the quiz and tallied my results and it was about where I thought I would be. I’ll have a look through some of the older articles you mentioned and try to brush up on my prioritisation and goal setting. As you say, I have a habit of doing busy work without being focused on the main priority
Another great article, with a unique perspective on time affluence I haven’t seen before!