What Should You Choose: Time or Money? – The New York Times

even when we held constant the amount of leisure time and money respondents had (as well as their age, gender, marital status, parental status and the extent to which they valued material possessions), the people who chose time over money were still happier.

This article in the NY Times is relevant to the Careers in Psychology course that I teach. We fairly often focus on money (i.e., annual income) at the exclusion of time (i.e., family togetherness). One reason is that money is easily quantifiable whereas time is less easily quantifiable. One of the points in this article is that money is a finite resource, whereas time seems infinite. But what if you quantify the finite nature of time?

I think that is one thing that aging trends to do: focuses our attention on the finite nature of time on the planet; thus, time may have the same or more value than money.

So, to the degree that we remind people of the finite nature of time, would it make money a less attractive option? For example, we might have people calculate the finite number of Saturdays we have left, versus simply imagine what they might do on Saturdays in the future, and measure their desire to make money working on the weekend. If they are made conscious of the finite number of Saturdays, their desire to work on Saturday might be reduced.

Source: What Should You Choose: Time or Money? – The New York Times

Published by

Dana C. Leighton, Ph.D.

I am a social psychologist, broadly interested in the psychological basis of peace and conflict. I am working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a Program Analyst, leading our survey research to better understand how our disaster response is promoting equity in service delivery, workforce readiness, and recovery and mitigation efforts.

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