Ashley Whillans
Guest is known for...
Dr. Ashley Whillans is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and a leading behavioral scientist. Her research on time, money, and happiness has been published in top academic journals and popular media outlets. She is also the author of “Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time & Live a Happier Life” and has received several awards and accolades for her work in the field of behavioral science.
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Dr. Ashley Whillans discusses time poverty as a structural and psychological issue, exacerbated by technology. She talks about research showing that above a certain income level, money does not necessarily buy more happiness, and how the pursuit of wealth for its own sake can be a happiness trap. She suggests outsourcing productivity to apps and tools, having a conversation with ourselves about our use of technology, and engaging others to move towards behavioral change. She also touches on the challenge of switching off during the pandemic despite having more time available without commutes.
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From the Podcast
Ashley speaks about the notion of Time Poverty and how it is structural and psychological. She goes on to say that while have more time for leisure now than in 1950s, we still “feel” time poor. She speaks about the role of technology in exacerbating this further.
Ashley speaks about research that suggests that above USD 60,000 money does not necessarily buy more happiness. She goes on to say that above USD 100,000, people might start to feel worse off because they start comparing themselves with a different economic stratum. She speaks about how the pursuit of wealth for the sake of it being a happiness trap.
Ashley speaks about two broad archetypes in the world – Morgans (people who prioritize money) and Taylors (people who prioritize time). She speaks about how this impacts some of our daily choices and some of our macro choices. She goes onto say that interestingly enough Taylors often end up making more money than Morgans. She links it to how this is often impacted by our upbringing and the impact on our overall happiness levels.
Ashley speaks about implication of valuing time (as a Taylor) or money (as a Morgan) on how we make career choices. She speaks about how it is all the important for us to self-select ourselves into a career that we are intrinsically passionate about given that the paradigm is shifting from driving on a highway to navigating a maze.
Ashley speaks about how having a number attached to a unit of time can sometimes lead us to optimize for money thereby leading to us solving for the short term while missing out on some of the elements required us for us to be effective and happy in the long run.
Ashley discusses how our approach towards getting the “best deal” in a situation can actually accentuate time poverty. She says that we end up finessing on getting the best deal but miss out on savouring the experience (called life!). To borrow from John Lennon, she says something to the effect of “Life is what happens when you are busy trying to get the best deal”
Ashley speaks about the notion of how we should outsource the task of staying productive to tools and apps that are out there and not leave it to the vagaries of our will power. She also speaks about how we should have a conversation with ourselves on why we might be reaching out to technology whenever we have a few residual moments to kill.
Ashley speaks about how we should think about bringing time affluence in our lives. She speaks about the notion of time being a collective resource and therefore the need for us to engage our friends, our family members and our colleagues at our workplaces to move from cognition to behavioural change.
Ashley speaks about how the current context around COVID has really made it that much harder for us to switch off. People are feeling more and more overwhelmed despite having more time at their disposal given commute has been taken out of the equation.