The Science of Sunday Scaries
More free time isn’t going to make you happier.
January 31, 2022
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Reading time:
5 mins
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Phil Rosen
Good morning. Welcome to the only thing in your inbox that’ll actually make you feel good about the start of the work week.
If Sunday Scaries gave you jitters yesterday, I have just the thing for you: How to never get them again (according to science).
Here we go.
How the happiest people approach work-life balance
Life is fast and getting faster. Everything, it seems, is either lighting a fire under our ass or dragging us by the ear.
Feeling crunched for time is nothing new. Some believe it’s getting worse. The late sociologist John Robinson compiled his findings on the matter in his book Time for Life.
He posed two key questions:
How often do you feel rushed?
How often do you have time on your hands that you don’t know what to do with?
Robinson found the happiest people were those who rarely felt rushed, and also rarely felt bored. Their jobs or schedules matched their willingness to spend time doing something as well as their energy levels.
“Happiness means being just rushed enough,” Robinson concluded.
These findings, as the Atlantic also points out, confirm that “the real joy killer seemed to be the absence of any schedule at all.”
People with too much time on their hands reported being dramatically less happy than busier folks. Those most unhappy, according to Robinson, were those who felt under-scheduled and always in a rush.
More free time, then, isn’t necessarily going to make you happier. It might do the opposite. I can't help but raise an eyebrow when someone demonizes work because — be honest — what would we do otherwise?
Less work doesn’t equal happiness, it just means more time on your hands — which Robinson says is actually a key component to unhappiness.
People need their time to feel productive, even if it isn’t actually.
You could feel happier, for example, if you scheduled video games into your day instead of plopping down on a whim. Video games aren't particularly vigorous, but if it's exactly what you planned to do, you’d still feel productive, according to Robinson’s study.
Without a schedule, we risk feeling under-scheduled. That leads to stress, idleness, anxiety, and a looming feeling of crunched time.
In other words: Sunday Scaries, but on every day of the week.
By giving your activities start- and end-times (even things unrelated to your job), you'll feel better about what you do. Adding voluntary parameters, the theory goes, can really perk you up.
Time blocks can seem arbitrary, but they can organize your thoughts and expectations, while easing the sense of feeling rushed.
So unless you’ve already binged the entirety of Ozark, try scheduling your viewings ahead of time and see what happens.
Until next Monday.
— Phil
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Tip Jar Recs
Something quirky: Scrabble can be maddening, but “it’s cheaper than therapy,” says this graduate student who briefly went pro at the word game. (Literary Hub)
Something different: The world’s most elite helicopter rescue team protects skiers and snowboarders who venture deep into the Swiss Alps. (GQ)
Something encouraging: 19-year-old Zara Rutherford just became the youngest woman ever to complete a solo global flight. (Smithsonian Magazine)
Fiction: Why humans shouldn’t be looking to the stars for intelligent life. (Electric Lit)
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You can read last week’s edition here.
Photos: Kaique Rocha and alleksana, Pexels.com.
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