About Our Guest:
Cassie Mogilner Holmes is a chaired professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, an award-winning teacher and researcher on time and happiness, and bestselling author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.
Cassie’s research examines such questions as how focusing on time (rather than money) increases happiness, how the meaning of happiness changes over the course of one’s lifetime, and how much happiness people enjoy from extraordinary versus ordinary experiences. Across these inquiries, her findings highlight the joy that stems from interpersonal connection and paying attention to the present moment.
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
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Transcript:
Lainie Rowell:
Well, welcome. I'm super excited for this and How are you today, Cassie?
Cassie Holmes: I'm doing well. Thanks for, thanks for chatting. It's a beautiful morning here in Southern California. I went to the beach this morning and that's like such a way to start the day.
Lainie Rowell: That is a lovely way. I am blessed also to live near water and I can get out there. I didn't get out there today, but now you're inspiring me. Okay, let's talk about your book. There's so many things that you're doing that's great, but I want to really dive into the book if you're good with that.
So your book, Happier Hour, and In the book, you talk about it's not about having more time, but making the time we have rich. Can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like, how you do that in your life, what you recommend for us?
Cassie Holmes: Yeah, I mean, where to start? And I think it's actually a really important point because So many of us feel like we don't have enough time.
And that feeling of time poverty, that sort of acute feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. And it's a really negative experience. We're actually doing a lot of research on it now to See sort of who is most susceptible to feeling time poor as well as what are the consequences of it, with the hope also of finding out what are some ways to sort of offset it.
And the reason it's so important to sort of start there is because some people think that, oh my gosh, I don't feel like I have enough time to even. think about how I spend it, where we're just reacting to what gets presented to us. And that feeling of time poverty is an experience of scarcity, of feeling constrained.
It is associated with heightened feelings of stress. It makes us less healthy because we don't feel like we have time to exercise. It makes us less nice when we're in a hurry. We are less likely to slow down and help others out. makes us less confident in achieving what we set out to do and ultimately, as I study time and happiness, it makes us less happy.
And also the people who tend to feel it look like me. Women tend to feel more time for than men. Having young kids particularly when people have kids under the age of four, but if they still have kids in the home, when you are working full time and your partner is working full time, those are the folks who are sort of most susceptible to this experience.
Sometimes there's this sort of thought like, if only I quit everything, then I would be better, right? If only I were time rich, then I would be happy. But that is not true. And we have explored this with research with Hal Hirschfield and Marissa Sharif. We looked at what's the relationship between the amount of discretionary time people have and their happiness.
And in that work, we found a consistent sort of answer, pattern of results, and for instance, looking at data from the American Time Use Survey, so looking at how tens of thousands of working and non working Americans spend a regular day, how did that relate to their feelings of satisfaction in life, their happiness?
And we found that the results are an upside down U shape. So, like an arc or a rainbow, and this is really interesting because it means that happiness goes down on both ends of the spectrum. That is people who are time poor and not this data, those with less than approximately two hours of discretionary time in the day are less happy.
And that's because of those feelings of stress that I was just talking about that feeling of overwhelm, exhaustion, of not being able to spend time on the things that you want. But what was interesting and surprising was that other side, whether we found there is such thing as having too much time, that those with more than approximately five hours of discretionary time in the day, when they were spending it relaxing, doing what they wanted They were also showing lower levels of life satisfaction, lower levels of happiness, and that is because of lower levels of productivity and lacking a sense of purpose.
Now, I, that was like a long answer to not even, you're like, that wasn't even my question, but it actually starts because you're like, oh, you know, how do we make our time rich? The answer isn't having more time. How do we make ourselves happy? The answer isn't having a whole lot of time available.
What it really is, is when we're looking at that sweet spot between two and five hours of discretionary time in the day, it's actually flat. So it has nothing to do with how much time you have to spend on your discretionary activities, which means that it's actually how you're spending that discretionary time.
But also, even when you're looking at the time rich people, or like the people who have too much time, you don't see actually a drop off if they're spending their time really sort of connecting with others, or when they're spending that discretionary time in these sort of personally enriching and fulfilling ways, like pursuing a hobby.
And also when you go to the other end of the spectrum, the too little time, that is like if you could just get to having a couple hours of the day to spend how you want. Then you're right there. So it's not totally out of reach and we can actually talk more about like, okay, so if it's not about just having a whole lot of time, it's how you spend it, which I actually know was your question, but I'm like, how do we even start?
Where do you want me to start?
Lainie Rowell: Well, first of all, I'm loving this because I read your book. I love it so much. And one of the things I love about it is how practical and actionable it is. And I want to get into that stuff, but I do appreciate it. And I was already asking about time poverty and you just got there because you're such a professional, you're ahead of me and I'm, I'm here for it.
And I can think about times in my life where I felt that time poverty and, you know, we're moms, I've had small kids, and that's when, oh, is time so different. It's that saying that days are long and the years are short, right? It's like you just feel like there's constantly something to do, especially if you're working full time.
But even if you're not, it's still a lot. But I really hear you on you can feel like you don't have enough, but you could also feel like you have too much. And when you're not filling it in meaningful and fulfilling ways, you don't have that sense of purpose. Gosh, you're just kind of lost.
And that's not, that's not great either. So I hear you on those, those extremes. And now let's talk about some of the practical tips that you give us in the book.
Cassie Holmes: Well, I think it's important when we're thinking about time is Yes, it's not about how much you have available, but it's really important to recognize that the amount we have available is ultimately limited, right? Our lives are finite. We do have just 24 hours in the day and how we spend those days sum up to the years of our life.
And what we don't is through that sort of rushing through our days that as you said they can feel sort of endless while we're doing it But then you sort of wake up and you're like, oh my god years have passed and I've just been rushing through it moving through It and what we don't want is to at the end of it look back with regret And so it's important to recognize the preciousness of the time we have in our life so that we can be more intentional and informed of how we spend the hours of our days.
And also when we spend our hours on activities that give us a sense of agency that make us feel effective, that give us that energy. What's really interesting is that it makes us feel like we have more time. That sense of limited and scarcity that is associated with time poverty actually gets alleviated, which is sort of counterintuitive.
You're like, wait, what? You're telling me to like spend time on something to have more time? And yes, It's spending on those activities that fill us. We found in some of our research that actually spending time to help out another person can make you feel like you have more time. And that is because when you spend the time, even though when we feel time poor, we're less likely to help others out.
We're less likely to give our time. We found in our data that when people actually do give some of their time and not in cases where it is taken and all of it is taken from you, but in fact, you are giving it to help someone. What we find is that people feel like they have more time because they feel effective because they're like, Oh my gosh, I accomplished so much with the time that I spent.
It increases your sense of how much you can accomplish with your time more generally. And so it's really helpful to think about for ourselves, what are those ways of spending that actually give us energy, that make us feel capable, effective, and full and protecting and dedicating time to that. So, what are some of those ways of spending?
In research, we'd look at time tracking. So how do people spend their time and relate it to their emotions over the course of their day? So we can pull out on average, what are those activities that tend to be associated with more positive emotion? What are those activities that tend to be associated with more negative emotion?
But that's based off of averages, like the average individual. So even though the data overall might suggest like on average, people are happier when they're socially connecting and like not typically happy when they're working, there are some individuals for whom their work hours are really rewarding.
And there's certainly some work hours that are rewarding for lots of people and also sometimes socializing not very fun. So what I encourage folks to do is actually to track their own time. So when you're talking about practical things one can do, I suggest people do the time tracking exercise, which is over the course of a week, writing down for each half hour, what you did, but as importantly, and be more specific than just work or socializing, like what work activity, and if you're socializing, whom are you with or who are you with and what are you doing and where sort of as important as what you're doing is rating on a 10 point scale.
How do you feel coming out of it? And how satisfied, how happy? And no, this is not me asking you in general, what are those activities that make you happy? We're actually quite bad at predicting or sort of pulling from these general notions of beliefs of what should make me happy. This is based off of your own experience that just happened.
How did it actually make you feel? And while it's sort of tedious to do this for a week, it's totally worth it because then at the end of the week you have this wonderful data set that is yours and you can look across your activities and be like, okay, well, what are those three activities? that got my highest ratings.
And what are those three activities that were like the most negative? Also, you can see just how much time you spent on those various activities. So for those of us who feel time poor, it's actually often surprising, like, oh my god, I spent so much time watching TV, say, if you add up, you know, those three hours each night when you're like watching Netflix.
Over the course of a week, you know, you're watching a lot of TV. And then here you are saying like, I don't have time to do the things that really matter to you while like going, like meeting up with a friend for dinner. Well, yes, you do. And you see it in your own data. If you can like reallocate some of these hours that aren't necessary.
And maybe don't make you feel as great as you think and reallocate those towards activities that from this task, you're like, actually like, Oh, maybe it's not all social connection, but it's like, maybe your happiest activity was like, Meeting up with a friend for coffee. And like, ah, but it's so hard to do that in the busyness of our lives.
But you're like, oh, that is so important to me. Or like, oh, it's important for me to meet up with a friend. Like, what about like my partner, like the one on one date or that? So all to say, Seeing your own data can help inform what are those activities that you dedicate time to, protect time to as well as, what are some of those hours that you can free up from activities that you've typically been sort of mindlessly spending but maybe aren't as nourishing or necessary as you may have thought.
Lainie Rowell: I think this audit is so important and I did it as I was reading the book and I know you have it on your website where people can like download and track and I mean there's other ways to do it of course if you want to go analog or you want to go digital. But I do think it's really important because I feel like our minds lie to us.
I think we sometimes think that there's things we're doing. Like, I am going to so enjoy binge watching Netflix. And then, there's data that says that we actually don't really feel great about that. Now, of course, with the caveat that we're all unique and dynamic and all that fun stuff. But like you're saying, and I'm hearing you loud and clear, like, this is your data.
Like, you're auditing yourself. So you don't even have to listen to what the researchers said based on, like you said, averages, this is your life. You're actually doing this. And I think that's so important. There's things that I do, that once I start doing them, I love them so much.
Like, I'm a big non fiction person because, I just want to keep learning. That's, like, the nerdy thing about me. But if I pick up a really good fiction book and I just, like, drop into it, oh my gosh, I feel so happy doing it. But I have to understand that about myself to make the choice to do it, right?
Cassie Holmes: Absolutely. And as you said, the power comes from it being your own data. For instance, like that surprise, I've had a student they were reflecting on their observations from their own time that they had tracked.
And they're like, Oh my God, you know, here I am thinking that TV at the end of the day is like that thing that I really look forward to and it's like my sort of prize. But then they're like, actually, yeah, that first half hour. Got the high rating, but hour two, three, actually not only like middling, but actually it turns quite negative.
Whereas an activity that they dread like exercise and then they see how they felt coming out of it and it's like fantastic. And not only do they feel fantastic coming out of it. But that positive mood sort of carries over in their subsequent activities. And again, the power comes from them looking at their own data and having these insights of like, Oh, actually it's that first half hour.
It's like when you're just starting the TV show or the TV session. That's really fun, but that's really helpful because then maybe it is, you spread it out so that you have like, not every night you're watching three hours, but like you can have your half hour that is sort of the fun. Or for you when you're like, oh, coming out of. reading fiction, it's like, ah, like that sort of joy and the depth and the breadth, you know, of pulling you out into the world and you're in your, like, through your mind and these stories. But going into it, it's like like, do I have time for this? And like, is it really that worth it? And then you see your own data and you're like, oh, yes, it is worth it because it's like a nine out of 10 versus that even that first half hour of TV.
It's like. That's 6, you know.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, absolutely. So this popped into my head. I should probably save it till later, because I want to talk to you about Time Crafting. But there's this Instagram reel and it's like I would do anything to get eight hours of sleep. And then the other person says, well, you could go to bed eight hours before you have to wake up.
No, I'm not doing that.
We realize, like, maybe if I get a good night's sleep, I'll wake up and I'll feel so much better, but yeah. So we talked about the, the time auditing kind of really keeping track by the half hour, do it for a week, and then you'll really start to see some patterns.
You can do it, like I said, analog, you've got a great tool on your website. If you want to do a digital tool, I actually like, for those who are listening, I like the How We Feel app out of Center for Emotional Intelligence with Mark Brackett and others, but that's a nice one because it also has the emotion built into it, and so I think that's a fun one, just because we tend to have our phones with us, we could go down a whole rabbit hole about that, but at any rate, thank you Let's talk a little bit about, , after you do that audit, like, okay, well now here are the things that I really wish I could make time for, what do I make a move?
Cassie Holmes: I think the audit is really helpful because, or the time tracking, is because it shows how much time you are spending on these activities as well as the emotion from them, but if even without spending the time, that there is a lot of power from simply reflecting and thinking back over your last three weeks, writing down what are those five times that you felt like the happiest, most satisfied. And again, this isn't me asking you in general what do you enjoy doing, it's you thinking back on your last three weeks, your own time and how you spent it. and identifying what are those ways of spending that produce the greatest amount of joy. From pulling out from the time tracking data, the top five, as well as this reflecting on sources of joy what you will sort of realize are, okay, what are some of the commonalities across these things?
Like, Is it for you, perhaps with social connection being so critical to our emotional well being, but the way people sort of find that social connection can vary. For some it is about being in this sort of group setting where you feel part of something bigger. For others, it is about going deep, in one on one interactions.
And so identifying for you, where is that source of connection? So that when you're wishing for or planning, what are those activities that you're going to protect time for you can be informed and deliberate. And I think there's this analogy that is so helpful which highlights the importance of prioritization, that it isn't just that sort of mindless reacting, but being really proactive of once you've identified these sources of satisfaction and joy of putting them into your calendar and protecting time for it.
And it's this analogy of the time jar, where it's like I shared in the first day of my classes, there's like a video that shows this professor walking to his classroom and he puts this large clear jar on the desk in front of the class. And then he asked, he pours golf balls into the jar and they filled to the top.
And he asked the students, is the jar full? And the students nod their head because it looks full, but no. And then he pours in pebbles and it fills the spaces between the golf balls up to the top. Is the jar full? No. Then he pours in sand into the jar and the sand fills all those spaces up to the top. Is the jar full?
And then, you know, nope. There was one more step. He pulls out two bottles of beer, pours one into the jar. And then he takes a sip and from the other and he sort of explains that this jar represents the time of your life. Those golf balls are the things that really matter to you, like that really sort of connection with your family and friends.
The part of your work that you do that's so in line with your purpose. The pebbles are the other important things like your job and your House. The sand is everything else. The sand is all of that stuff that fills your time without you even thinking about it. And what's really important to know is that had he poured the sand into the jar first, all of the golf balls wouldn't have fit.
That's to say that if we let our time get filled, it will absolutely get filled, but not necessarily with the things that matter to us. And so what we need to do is put our golf balls into our time jar first. Use your schedule. So it's not just putting them in anywhere, but actually use your schedule.
This is like where the time crafting comes into play. Use your schedule for those golf balls that you've identified, whether it's through the time tracking, whether it's through the reflecting on your sources of joy. You have identified these things that really matter to you and put them into your schedule, protect time for them, be proactive in how you spend your time and then the rest of the time will get filled, you know, like the sand, and you will see in your time tracking where your sand is that sort of gets filled without you really even recognizing or thinking about it.
But at least this way, being proactive, protecting time for the golf balls, scheduling those times, carving out time for those things that matter. Make it so that even though your schedule is full and at the end of the week you're like, oh my gosh, I was super busy. You don't feel depleted in that time poverty of feeling constrained from being able to do all that you set out to do because you have invested in the stuff that matters.
And so there is where you get the energy and the satisfaction and happiness.
Lainie Rowell: One of the things I appreciate about your work is You're very transparent that there are these universals. Like, we know that social connection is a good thing. And there's even been studies about this. Was it Eppley and Schroeder, the, like, the one on the train where they're like, do you like talking to people or do you not like talking to people?
And then they would make them talk to people whether they said yes or no. I'm butchering the description of this research and I know you know it, but.
Cassie Holmes: It's wonderful research and I love it. Yeah, so talking to strangers, like chatting someone up, even though we think it's going to be terrible and horrible.
We actually feel happier from talking to a stranger because it increases that sense of connection.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, so in your work, you're talking about these universals. Like, look, we know social connection is gonna make you happier, but you also honor and acknowledge that we all have our preferences. So, how you do that social connection, like, how you, Cassie, do it versus how I do it could be very different.
It doesn't make one better than the other. It's just, that's how we're gonna do our social connection. We need to get it in there. We need to prioritize it.
Cassie Holmes: Yeah, and also even those things like exercise. That is something that the research points to as being really a source of energy. It's a mood booster.
Not only is it good for us physically, but it's good for us emotionally. But how we exercise, there's individual variation on what form of exercise, whether you want it to be solo, whether you want it to be outside, whether you want it to be aerobic, we are all quite different in what form of exercise gives us that energy and that mood boost.
So I think again, to your point, it's really important to informed by the sort of like broad ways to identify your sources of satisfaction of ways of spending that are fulfilling and mood boosters. But actually being more specific and identifying it for yourself. And also, I think the understanding that we are different in terms of our values and in terms of our purpose, like what drives us.
There's a lot of individual variation there and for purpose, it sounds like this really lofty thing. People are like, oh, if I'm not a priest or a nurse, I have no purpose. But in fact, we do. And it's trying to identify what your purpose is.
What is your sort of underlying goal? What really drives you? What's your why? And There's a really helpful exercise that I have my students do, which is the 5 Whys exercise. And this is to help people identify their source of purpose. So asking first, what do you do? And this can be professionally or sort of not professionally, but what do you do?
And then asking yourself, well, why do I do that? Oftentimes that first answer is sort of superficial. If you're at work, it's like, to make money. But there's lots of ways you can make money. Why is that the work that you're doing? And then asking yourself for your initial answer, well, why is that important to me?
And then your next answer for that, why is that important to me? And as you're answering the whys of each of your sort of layers it really is clarifying it, like gets you down in that fifth layer of like, oh, what drives me is this And what drives you is going to be different than what drives anyone else.
And this is really helpful because as we're driven towards these like general notions of success, well, what does success mean? Like, it can't be about money because there's always like more money one can have or want. It can't be sort of respect because like respect based off of what?
But when you're very clear for you, what is your own purpose? For me, it's about creating and disseminating knowledge about what makes people happy. Yes, I'm a business school professor. That's like the superficial answer, but why do I do this? And understanding that that's what drives me is disseminating this understanding of how we can feel better in and about our lives.
That's like, Oh, not only do I use that as a filter of how to spend my time, the particular activities to say yes or no to, but also it makes it really satisfying, even if it's like a sort of seemingly menial task when it's like in service of that. I'm like, okay, or even the tedious task that's in the service of that.
I'm like, It feels less onerous. And so I think that identifying your purpose is so helpful in guiding your why in guiding how you spend the hours of your day, but there's also another way to really sort of clarify. Bye. What really matters to you, and that is in your values.
And that is by taking this broader perspective of your life, that is not thinking first about the hours of your day and how do I fill the days, but really thinking about the years of your life and how do you want to spend your life? How do you want to be remembered? And I have yet another exercise that I have my students do, which is writing their own eulogy.
And at the face of it, it sounds like something that's not very happy at all. And here it is, like I'm teaching a happiness class, but it is so empowering because projecting forward to the end of your life and then articulating how you will be remembered is really clarifying about what matters to you, what are your values, what is this also sort of gives some color to your purpose as well.
And with that clarity from taking that broader perspective of time, it can inform how we spend today's hours.
Lainie Rowell: I love these practices and the five whys, like, to really stay in that question, go five layers deep, is really intentional, really thoughtful, and really does give you that clarity.
And you have other practices too, like, maybe we'll have time to talk about the time left, which is, by the way, one that can really tick people off.
Cassie Holmes: It's activating, yeah.
Lainie Rowell: It could be activating. That's a good way to say it. I'll, I'll explain it in a minute. But just, I think that when we appreciate that time is finite, we have to just pause, do these practices to really reflect. So we get clarity about how to move forward. Because I sometimes think about time, like a closet, like your closet space.
You always fill your closet. I have never come to someone's house, opened their closet, and there's just like, a ton of space on one side, or like, cavernous cupboards above, we always fill it, and that's, the same thing's gonna happen with time, we always fill it. So we have to be super intentional about how we do it.
And, so do you wanna share a time left? , I'll tell you if you, if you do it when it comes to like, how many times you see your parents, people get mad, they don't like that one, but go ahead, you'll explain it better than I can. Okay. Yeah, I'm speaking from experience because I did this with my husband.
Like, he was so mad.
Cassie Holmes: He got mad. Yeah.
So, the reason this is important is given the time that we spend, you know, we feel so time poor and we're like, oh my god, I don't have time to do the things that I want. But if you actually are looking at how you're spending your time already, there's so much goodness that's already right there in the time that you're spending.
There's so much joy, but it's really easy not to notice it. Because we've gotten used to it and it's become part of the fabric of our lives. And hedonic adaptation is the psychological tendency to get used to things over time. So, when you do the same thing again and again. You're with the same person over time.
They stop having as intense of an emotional effect on you. And now it's good that we're adaptive when bad stuff happens, cause it makes us resilient, but we also get used to the good stuff such that we stopped noticing it. For example, having a meal with your parents, for example, for me, my coffee dates, I have a weekly coffee date with my daughter Lita.
I've had a student sort of observe that taking their dog for a walk is something that's part of their sort of daily life, which, in reflection, is actually a really beautiful source of happiness and joy of being outside with this fuzzy friend, but when you're doing it again and again, we stop noticing, we stop paying attention, we stop feeling as much joy as we could from life's joys.
Now, how do we offset our propensity to hedonically adapt? How do we offset hedonic adaptation so that we continue to feel the joy from life's joys? One is recognizing that just because that activity is sort of a quote unquote everyday activity now, it doesn't mean that it's going to continue to happen every day.
And certainly not like it does now. And so one way to really bring this home is to count how many times do you actually have left to do this activity in the way that you're doing it now that brings you joy and counting how many times have you done it in the past so that you can actually calculate the percentage of your total times doing this activity in your life.
What percentage do you have left? More often than not. It is much less than one thinks. So my daughter for our coffee dates, this is like such a source of happiness for me because it's when the two of us go to the coffee shop and you know she has her hot chocolate, I have my flat white, we munch on croissants and it's time for just the two of us to chit chat and be together.
And we've been doing this weekly since she was three, when I was sort of on the way from dropping off the carpool of the big kids to meet her on campus at my office. So we do it weekly since she was three. Now she's nine. And I calculated that we have, you know, when she's 12, she's probably going to want to go to the coffee shop with her friends instead of me.
And then she's going to go off to college. And then. She's gonna, you know, live somewhere across the country, probably. So I calculated we have about 36 percent of our coffee dates together left. That is a much less than half. And she's only nine years old. Now, at first, like your husband might be like, dude, why are you making me realize this super sad thing?
And the answer is because it is very powerful and affecting. It changes the way that we spend our time. First of all, it makes us prioritize that time, noting that there's only so many left, even when we're feeling super busy, even when we're feeling super time poor. It makes us make the time. It also affects how we engage during those times, because often even when we're spending the time, we're like distracted, right?
We're on our phones, we're thinking about planning for what's next. It's just like, oh my gosh, I have things to get to, let's like get through with this. But having counted, it's like, no way, Like, I don't want to be thinking about what's next. This is the time that matters. So it makes us pay attention. And it also, it doesn't require a whole lot of time in order for those moments to have a really big effect on our happiness.
And so back to your very initial question of how do we make our time rich? Is it about having more time? And the answer is no, it's not about having a whole lot more time. And it also doesn't even require spending a whole lot of time. on any particular activity, but it does require when we're spending that time in these ways that really matter to us of making them count, right?
It's about the quality during it so that as you're reflecting on You know, our happiness in life. What is happiness? It's how we feel in our moments, but it's also about how we feel about our days and how we feel about our lives over all that satisfaction. These little moments, if we're paying attention, can have a tremendous impact on the satisfaction we feel about our lives.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, I think of it as the savoring of it, right? There's a gratitude practice. I encourage people to actually create a savoring practice because it's so helpful. To me, it really not only slows time, but it slows time in a good way, but it just really helps me to stay out of that feeling like I'm in time poverty.
Like, no, I have, even if it's just five minutes to savor a cup of coffee or to watch the sunset or sunrise, if you're a morning person, which I'm not.
Cassie Holmes: Yeah, in our research, we have found the value of savoring, of noticing and soaking up those little moments. And what we found is that actually As we get older, we become more prone to savor, like we're more likely to savor those simple moments.
But it's not actually about age. It's about when we feel older, we start recognizing that in fact our time is precious. And with that understanding that our time is limited, it makes us so much more pay attention more and soak up and notice and savor those simple pleasures. And so we found in our data that even when you're looking at younger people having them recognize that their time is limited, much like that counting times left exercise does, what it does is it makes people savor.
Because. It's this sort of assumption of abundance and assumption of like we will always have more time which makes us not sort of notice and sort of settle into and soak up and savor those those times that we're spending them but there's so much happiness and joy that's available to us if we pay attention.
Lainie Rowell: My kids this is something I've been trying to model for them, and I did the times left, and so how many holiday seasons do I get left with my kids, because, you know, they're going to go off to college.
My kids are now 11 and 14. So how many have we had in the past? So like, I only have about a quarter of them left. My son, he walked up to me last night and he's like, when are you going to do the stovetop potpourri? And I'm like, oh my gosh, he appreciates those little things.
This stuff I put on the stove that makes the house smell good. And like, he's like, He appreciates that. So not to pat myself on the back, but I am trying to pass it on because I think whether we're parents or educators or whatever it is, we can be kind of talking out loud about what we're doing to hopefully model and get this to the youngers so that they appreciate it.
Cassie Holmes: Totally. But those traditions and there's even research that shows that families who have shared holiday traditions are more likely to gather for the holidays and they enjoy the holidays more. Because what it's doing is it's connecting you to each other over these times.
So that stovetop potpourri is that way? Yeah. That is something that like, yes, Christmas might look a little different and you might gather in different ways and it might not be every year because maybe they have a partner and then it's like, you know, there's lots that goes on in the future.
But those traditions. do hold you together. They keep you connected. And so yes, it's helpful to recognize that there's only a few left so that you totally soak it up and instead of being like super mad of like, Oh, there's so much to do for the holidays to make this special. It's like, Oh my gosh, I only have a few more to actually get to make special.
And so that shift in mindset makes us make the most of the time.
Lainie Rowell: I think that's why I stretch the holidays. The turkeys taste the same with the tree out or not. All right. Well, I know I have to get you out of here pretty soon, but I do want to ask you, like, what is something that you can't share enough or you haven't had a chance to share before?
Just something you want to make sure we all know.
Cassie Holmes: I mean, we've touched on it, but to really sort of drive home the point that when it comes to time and happiness, so often in the sort of sense of time poverty, we feel like time is the obstacle and the challenge and the barrier towards our happiness.
But in actuality, it can be the solution, because if we spend our time intentionally and we pay attention during those times, we can make it so that the values or purpose of taking this broader perspective of time and thinking about the years of our life can inform how we spend those hours today, such that in the coming years, we don't look back with regret.
And then over the course of it, we can feel satisfied and fulfilled.
Lainie Rowell: Thank you so much for your work. How do people stay in touch with you? What's the best way to connect with you and your work?
Cassie Holmes: Well, the book, Happier Hour from my own time tracking, I learned that social media is not where I enjoy spending time, so I am not really on social media other than LinkedIn but on my website, CassieMHolmes.com that's where folks can find about my latest research.
Lainie Rowell: Amazing. I will make sure to put that all in the show notes and of course the Thrive Global article. Cassie, thank you so much for your time and thank you all for listening.
Cassie Holmes: Thank you for having me. This was really fun.
