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Goldilocks’ lesson, that one can have too much of a good thing, even when it comes to the size of a chair, has applied in fields ranging from astrobiology to economy. Now it seems like it may even rule our free time.
The researchers found that while levels of subjective well-being initially increase as free time increases, the trend does not necessarily hold for very high levels of leisure.
“The sweet spot is a moderate amount of free time,” said Dr. Marissa Sharif, co-author of the University of Pennsylvania study. “We found that having too much time was associated with lower subjective well-being due to a lack of a sense of productivity and purpose.”
Writing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Sharif and colleagues explained how they analyzed the results of two large-scale surveys, involving a combined total of over 35,000 participants.
One was the American Time Use Survey, which was conducted between 2012 and 2013 and asked participants what they had done in the past 24 hours.
After collecting opinions on what activities would equate to free time, and then calculating that time for participants, the team found that if subjective well-being increased with free time up to about two hours, it began. to decrease once it exceeds five hours.
At the same time, data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce, carried out between 1992 and 2008, revealed that beyond a certain point, having more free time was no longer linked to greater subjective well-being. , but it hasn’t gone down – perhaps because few participants reported having more than five hours of free time per day.
The team said the U.S. time use survey suggested how people spent their free time mattered.
“Although an abundance of discretionary time spent on solo and unproductive activities had a negative effect on subjective well-being, discretionary time spent on social or productive activities did not,” said they wrote.
The team then conducted two online experiments, with data from 2,565 US participants in one and 4,046 in the other, with the aim of ensuring that the results were not simply due, for example , to a scenario in which people living with depression could find themselves with a lot of free time.
In both experiments, participants were asked to imagine a set amount of free time per day and what they would do with it, one experiment specifically examining whether it was spent on meaningful and productive activities, or “wasted” .
The team found that more free time was not necessarily better than imagined feelings of well-being, stress, or productivity. Specifically, imagined well-being peaked as hypothetical productive free time rose from moderate to high, but was 0.4 points lower on a seven-point scale compared to moderate amounts of non-productive free time.
The team said the effects size was small and the optimal amounts of free time were inaccurate.
Nonetheless, they said the work suggests that people who feel they have too little free time not to give up all their obligations, but instead try to find a few hours of leisure a day. Meanwhile, those who are having empty days should try to spend their time with a purpose, whether it is to connect with others or to do something productive.
Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioral sciences at the University of Warwick who was not involved in the study, praised the research.
“This is a valuable study because it provides all kinds of statistical evidence for a very intuitive idea: Human beings like to have free ‘discretionary’ time – for leisure, household chores, hobbies, etc. – in their day, but not too much, “he said.” It’s a Goldilocks result – on time. “
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