We are too busy for our own good

Years ago, I took a sabbatical and we lived a few months in California and a few in the backblocks of New Zealand’s South Island. I’d just got used to how impatient shop assistants were if you couldn’t immediately spit out exactly what you wanted to buy, when we moved back Down Under and I was expected to wait politely while the person ahead of me in the queue passed the time of day with the lady behind the counter.

We’re not yet as bad as America, but there’s no doubt life in big cities such as Melbourne and Sydney is a lot faster and more furious than it used to be – and still is in quieter parts of the state.

We have to move faster in the big cities, of course, because we have so much to do, so much to fit in. Or so we imagine. We blow our horns at other motorists who slow us down as we hurry to our next commitment. (When did we become a nation of horn-blowers? Yuck.)

And that brings me to your summer break. Did you – or are you still – enjoy the chance to take it easy, get up late, stay in bed reading, potter about, read the paper, avoid doing much?

Or did you rush about, keeping busy, trying to fit in as much fun as possible, keep the kids entertained?

In other words, did you really get a break, or were you as busy as ever, just doing a different list of things?

When I was young, annual holidays were almost synonymous with being bored. There was never anything much to do apart from go for a walk. My big sisters sat on their beds reading – they had eiderdowns, I remember – so I hung around them doing the same. They fed me issues of a little children’s magazine called Sunny Corner, continuing the adventures of Milly-Molly-Mandy. (I’ve had a weakness for chick-lit ever since.)

I became a bookworm at an early age partly because everyone else at home was reading books but mainly because there was nothing else to do. And, in my very religious family, reading was allowed on Sunday between going to meetings. Even comics.

And that brings me to weekends. Do you see them as a chance to do a lot of pleasant things you can’t do during the week? Do you start with a list of great things to do, but end with a lot of the pleasures you’d hoped to achieve not crossed off?

Sometimes I think being so busy at the weekend is a form of greed. Of having eyes bigger than your stomach. I doubt it’s much of a recipe for the good life.

But have you noticed how, when you try to tell a friend how exceptionally busy you’ve been, they invariably counter that they’ve been busy, too? No one wants to admit to being unbusy.

Even the retired claim to be terribly busy. Everything’s relative, I guess.

In his latest book, Australia Reimagined, social guru Hugh Mackay reflects on the “culture of busyness”, about which he has many reservations. “No matter how we try to dress it up, disguising it as a virtue or a badge to be worn with pride, relentless busyness is a health hazard – yet another contributor to our epidemic of stress and anxiety,” he says.

“For too many of us, holidays have been compressed into ‘short breaks’, the pleasure of walking or running in the open air has been swapped for a quick burst at the gym, the therapeutic joy of aimlessness has been overwhelmed by the need for everything to have both a purpose and an outcome.”

A sane person would regard excessive or sustained busyness as a warning signal, he says. “No time to read? No time to walk? No time to play? No time to nurture a neglected relationship over a cup of coffee? Surely there’s something awry in a life like that.”

Sometimes we keep ourselves busy because we feel we need to be – and be seen to be – busy, especially at work. Many bosses keep themselves busy making the easy decisions so they can put off the really hard ones.

Sometimes we’re busy because we’re not as efficient as we should be. Sometimes we’re busy at work because it’s better than being at home with our not-so-loved ones. Sometimes we keep busy because it leaves us no time to think about the meaning of our lives.

Mackay says our addiction to busyness has three adverse consequences. First, we’re becoming a sleep-deprived society.

Second, we’re becoming afraid of stillness, solitude and inactivity.

Third, busyness can both distract us and insulate us from the needs of the people around us. Busyness “decompassions” us, he concludes.

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How to get more enjoyment from the time available

I don't know about you, but it's at this time of year, when the Christmas rush is over and things slow down – even for those who are "working through" – that I get a bit more philosophical, a bit more reflective.

What exactly did I achieve last year? Is next year going to be all that different? What's the point of working so hard? How can I find a better balance between work and play?

To tell you the truth, I'm divided between all my old professional ambitions and a desire to slow down, smell the roses and have more fun.

Of course, one of the key lessons of economics is that we're often faced by conflicting but desirable objectives, and the answer is to find the best trade-off between them. The particular combination that yields most "utility" (aka happiness).

Unfortunately, that's about as far as economists' advice goes. Fortunately, psychologists' advice is a lot more practical.

Economists are big on working to make money, then using the money to buy the things that make us happy. Which things, exactly? Who knows? Economists cop out at this point by assuming you know what things make you happy.

Psychologists assume nothing, but conduct studies and experiments to see which things make us happiest and whether we always know to pick them.

Often we don't. Some years back I wrote up the recommendations of three North American psychologists in their paper, If money doesn't make you happy then you probably aren't spending it right.

Their advice included spending on experiences rather than objects, spending on others rather than yourself (eg Christmas) and on small pleasures rather than big luxuries.

Research shows that small pleasures – such as a cold beer on a hot day or, for my family, a hot cup of tea on a cold day – are some of life's most "salient" (noticeable) instances of happiness.

But soon after, three marketing academics, Jennifer Aaker, Melanie Rudd and Cassie Mogilner, published a complementary paper, If money does not make you happy, consider time.

Ah yes, time. One of the most valuable commodities we possess, but often spend unwisely. We work less efficiently than we could (guilty) and waste too much of our leisure time sprawled in front of the box watching reruns of Midsomer Murders (ditto).

Time tends to be laden with personal meaning – we live through it, after all – compared with money which, at best, contains potential. And time fosters interpersonal connection.

Since both personal meaning and social connection have been found to be critical to happiness, for individuals to consider how they spend their time ought to be important in their efforts to "solve the happiness puzzle".

The authors' first suggestion is to spend time with the right people. That doesn't mean cosying up to Malcolm and Lucy, it means that social leisure activities contribute more to happiness than solitary ones.

People who engage in social activities more frequently, experience higher levels of happiness than those who engage less often.

Whatever the activity, you usually enjoy it more if you do it with other people.

But it's not only whether you spend your time with others, but who the others are. More satisfaction comes from spending it with friends, family and significant others (or "the wife", as we probably should revert to saying during the Trumpocene) than with bosses and co-workers.

That's no doubt true but, since most of us have little choice but to spend much time with workmates, it makes a lot of sense to turn workmates into friends whose company we enjoy.

The authors say two of the best predictors of people's general happiness are whether they have a best friend at work, and whether they like their boss.

As the quality of workplace friendships increases, so do happiness and productivity, studies suggest.

The authors' second suggestion is to spend your time on the right activities. Regular checking by testers shows that hanging out with family and friends comprise the happiest parts of the day, whereas working and commuting make for particularly unhappy portions of the day.

But, again, if you can possibly wriggle your way into a position where you enjoy your work, you'll do much better in the happiness stakes.

Third suggestion is to enjoy the experience without spending the time. Neurological studies show people get much pleasure merely from thinking about activities they find pleasurable.

You can get a lot of pleasure from reading up on and planning a holiday even if, for whatever reason, you end up putting it off.

You can derive pleasure from window shopping, and the pleasure gained from shopping for a dress may exceed the pleasure from actually acquiring the dress, they say.

But the authors' next suggestion is roughly opposite to the previous one: expand your time. Rather than spending a lot of time salivating over future purchases or adventures, focus on "the now".

One possible benefit from being present-focused is that it slows down the perceived passage of time, allowing people to feel less rushed.

In one study, people instructed to take long, slow breaths for five minutes not only felt there was more time available to get things done, but also perceived their day to be longer.

Let me wish that 2017 is a year in which you perceive yourself to be less rushed.

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How to get yourself more time

Had a little too much politics of late? Much prefer an earnest discussion about why we're having so much trouble getting the economy moving? No, I thought not. Let's change the subject. Let's talk about time.

Do you spend much time thinking about time? Most of us spend a lot of time thinking how little time we have, but that's not the same thing. We spend little time actually thinking about time, which I'm coming to think is a big mistake.


Time is an economic resource, so it's surprising even economists don't think much about it. Apart from Stephen Hawking and his physicist mates, it's probably psychologists who do most of the thinking, but even they don't do much.

People say time is money, which is true enough, but the fact that most of us get most of our money by exchanging it for our time is only half the reason time is an economic resource. Economics is the study of the problem of scarcity, and there's nothing scarcer than time.

No matter how rich or poor we are, each of us gets the identical daily ration of precisely 24 hours. So it's one dimension of life working to reduce the gap between rich and poor.

But time is an economic resource in another sense. When we exchange time for money we use time as a means to an end. We use the money to buy things we hope will make us happy. But time is also an essential part of the end itself. We need time to enjoy the things we've bought with the money.

And the more time we spend earning money, the less time we have to enjoy ourselves - including by doing things that don't cost much if any money.

In an article in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Jennifer Aaker, Melanie Rudd and Cassie Mogilner, marketing experts at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, remind us of the ultimate reason why time is an end as well as a means: the way each of us chooses to spend our time and the experiences we accumulate over the years quite literally constitute our lives.

So let's forget money and focus on time. How can we maximise the "utility" - satisfaction or happiness - we derive from the limited, if unknown, quantity of time we've been allotted? The authors survey the psychological studies of time and distil them into a number of helpful hints.

Their first principle is: spend your time with the right people. Because we're social animals, the most satisfying thing we do is spend time with our nearest and dearest and close friends. We should allocate more of our time to being with them and enjoying the intimate conversations we have with them.

But if it's so satisfying, why do we need reminding? Because of all the time we need to devote to making money, but also because we seem to be programmed to worry more about getting money than about using our time in ways we find satisfying. We have an inbuilt bias to worry more about means than ends.

This raises the question of how we could get more joy from all the time we spend at work, but that's so important I'll leave it for a column of its own.

A less obvious principle is: enjoy the experience without spending the time. Research in neuroscience has shown that the part of the brain responsible for feeling pleasure can be activated by merely thinking about something pleasurable, such as drinking your favourite brand of beer or driving your favourite brand of sports car.

"In short, this research suggests that we might be just as well off, or even better off, if we imagine experiences, but not have them," the authors say.

If that sounds a bit whacky, try the next principle: expand your time. You can, of course, buy yourself more time by paying someone to do the household chores you don't enjoy (in my case, mowing the lawn and washing the car).

One way or another, the more discretionary time we can organise for ourselves, the more we're likely to enjoy our time. This is partly because of the two-way relationship between the scarcity of time and its value to us.

It's not just that having little makes it feel more valuable, the authors say. It's also that, according to research results, when time is more valuable, we perceive it to be scarcer.

Many people advocate focusing on the present moment rather than the future as a way of increasing happiness. This may work because research suggests being present-focused slows down our perception of the passage of time, allowing us to feel less rushed.

But get this: again according to the research, you can achieve a similar effect simply by taking long, slow breaths for, say, five minutes.

Having greater control over how we spend our time - or even just feeling that we do - makes us happier, less depressed and physically healthier. Freely chosen activities increase happiness, whereas obligatory activities lower it - unless, of course, we can get ourselves into the right frame of mind.

I've often thought that the way to feel more relaxed and rested after the weekend is to be less greedy about all the things you want to fit in. I think it, but I don't always do it.

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'Wealth creators' push materialism over social side

There is a contradiction at the heart of the way we organise our lives, the way governments regulate society and even the way the Bureau of Statistics decides what it needs to measure and what it doesn't. Ask people what's the most important thing in their lives and very few will answer making money and getting rich. Almost everyone will tell you it's their human relationships that matter most.

And yet much of the time that's not the way we behave. Too many of us spend too much time working and making money, and too little time enjoying the company of family and friends.

We live in an era of heightened materialism, where getting and spending crowds out the social and the spiritual. That's the way most of us order our lives and it's the way governments order our society. They worry about the economy above all else.

Indeed, the parties' chief area of competition is over their ability to manage the economy. The opposition's latest criticism is that under Labor we're losing our "enterprise culture". What's an enterprise culture? One where all the focus is on "creating wealth" - making money, to you and me - and none is on how that wealth should be distributed between households or what it should be spent on.

It's one where the demands of the "wealth creators" (read business people) should receive priority over the selfish concerns of the wealth recipients and dissipaters (read you and me). But above all, it's one where the chief responsibility of governments is to hasten the growth of gross domestic product.

On the face of it, Julia Gillard seems to fit the opposition's criticism. This week she's hoping to make progress in putting her long-cherished national disability insurance scheme into law. Last week she was in the western suburbs of Sydney celebrating international women's day and offering "a pledge to all women and girls" that "Australia is promoting a world where women and girls can thrive and where their safety is guaranteed".

And Gillard used the occasion of her visit to the west to demonstrate her practical concern about growing traffic congestion and to announce a "national plan to tackle gangs, organised crime and the illegal firearms market".

At one level, all this is true, none of it's made up. At another level, however, it's carefully crafted image building, intended to highlight the difference between Gillard and her opponent and emphasise those differences considered most likely to appeal to traditional Labor voters who show every intention of changing sides.

The deeper truth is that, like most politicians, Gillard is working both sides of the street. Ask her and she'll assure you her government is just as good at managing the economy - and "creating wealth" - as her opponents, if not better.

Unsurprisingly, this other, harsher side of Labor was revealed at the weekend by the Treasurer. Wayne Swan opened his weekly economic note thus: "Putting a budget together is always about priorities. For the Gillard government, our No. 1 priority will always be putting in place the right strategies to support jobs and growth to keep our economy one of the best performing in the developed world."

Ah, yes. Labor professes to be just as devoted to the great god GDP as its evil, uncaring opponents. As part of this, it's been struggling - unsuccessfully so far - to get its budget back to surplus. And as part of this struggle it has required all government agencies to economise in their use of resources.

The Bureau of Statistics has been required to find savings of between $1.1 million and $1.4 million a year - hardly a huge sum in a government budget of $387 billion. But the bureau has found a way to solve its problem for the coming financial year pretty much in one go. It's decided to cancel the "work, life and family survey" long scheduled for this year.

This is mainly a survey of how people use their time, requiring a random sample of households to keep diaries of the way their time was spent for a short period. GDP measures only the value of work that's been paid for in the marketplace. It ignores all the unpaid work performed in the home, including caring for kids, and the work of volunteers.

Time-use surveys fill that gap. How much time are women spending in paid and unpaid work? How is women's participation in the paid workforce changing over time as they become better educated? How much paid work is being done by people of retirement age? To what extent is paid work encroaching on our weekends? How is the burden of housework being shared between husbands and wives in two-income families?

It had been hoped that this year's survey would shed more light on changes in the time devoted to caring for invalids and the frail aged as governments try to save money by keeping people out of institutional care. And while we're at it, what has growing traffic congestion done to the time we spend commuting?

One of the most popular maxims of the wealth creators is: you can't manage what you don't measure. Directly or indirectly, most of the Bureau of Statistics' efforts are directed at measuring GDP. It's so important it's measured four times a year. Our time use hasn't been measured since 2006. The cancellation of this year's survey means it won't be measured again until 2019.

How do we keep on our present, hyper-materialist path? One of the ways is by failing to measure its consequences.

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