🙏 Buying Time Beats Buying Stuff
The purchase most people never think to make.
Advertisement
🙏 The Shift
The Purchase Most People Never Think To Make
A 2017 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by researchers Ashley Whillans and Elizabeth Dunn, ran a simple experiment: give people $40 and tell them to spend it either on a thing, or on buying back time.
💵 People who bought time felt happier than people who bought stuff — at every income level.
The catch is almost funnier than the result: nearly half of surveyed millionaires spend nothing on outsourcing tasks they dislike, and hardly any workers said they'd use a windfall to buy back time rather than buy a thing.
👉 Try This Today
Spend a small amount of money this week specifically to get an hour back — pay for delivery instead of a store run, outsource one chore you dread, or just protect an hour on your calendar like it cost something. Because it did.
Advertisement