Vacation, Vacation, Vacation!

Paige Weatherbee
Sep 4, 2021
3 min read

In a world of hustling and grinding, it's hard to see a vacation as an investment that will earn you happiness. In fact for some people the time off may be daunting and seen as a waste of money. This is especially true if you are running your own business, because your time is money right?

It turns out that placing more of an importance on your time and how you enjoy it, will bring you more joy than placing more importance on money. Now, you're probably thinking, okay sure but that's only true if I have more money and I can afford to take time off and go on fancy vacations. In a way you are right, the idea of having free time to do what we would like, implies that we are already have enough money or safety accumulated to meet our basic human needs. If we don't have what we need to cover our basic needs then free time becomes a luxury; however, if you do have your basic needs met, then time is no longer a luxury in your life but something you can allocate as you would like.

In the Science of wellbeing course at Yale, Laurie Santos explains that by shifting how we view time we can better cultivate happiness. The course presents research that looked at what made people happier; chasing time or chasing money. Based off the research by Whillans et al., they found that those people who prioritized time over money were happier than those that prioritized money. What they mean by prioritizing time, is that, in general, they were more willing to work less hours and make less money if it meant they got more time to enjoy doing the things they loved.

Now, the sad reality is that in the research by Hershfield et al., they found that more people value money over time. In other words, they would rather work more hours to earn more money, even if it meant sacrificing their time. For some this is probably no surprise in a society where we idolize wealth and the grind. But why do we idolize the money if the science is saying that it is time that will make us happier?

What this boils down to, is shifting out perspective from "time is money" to seeing time as something to enjoy. This shift is by no means easy, but it is something that is encouraged in the Science of Well-being class to help people better cultivate happiness.

At this point, you may want be to give you all the answers and tell you what you need to do to shift your mindset and value time over money - or you're thinking I'm crazy and still want to earn money - and the answer is that you need to start thinking about the times when you could be doing non-money earning things with your time. Once you have those times, it's up tp you to figure out how you can implement that change into your life. For some people, its a vacation. For others, its making sure you have time set aside to just do nothing, or to sit down and be in no rush to finish reading a book or sipping a cup of coffee. Whatever it is that brings you joy and is part of free time away from work, is the point of prioritizing time over money because once you begin implementing more time, you may find other areas to do the same and continue to shift your perspective.

All that said, I encourage you to look at whether you are prioritizing time or money, and make the shift to cultivate more happiness. Beyond that, I highly recommend the Science of Wellbeing course on Coursera as it goes beyond this and looks at other ways to cultivate happiness. But if you don't do any of that, I at least encourage you to enjoy your vacation and take as much of your mind off earning money during that time, because your happiness is important, not only to you but to the people in your life.

Here are to vacations and time, may they come often and with smiles.

Link to Coursera Happiness Course

- The Science of Wellbeing Couse

Research Links