The mental health miracle of time affluence.

In the daily treadmill of work and life, most of us feel perennially short of time. But that's not all. This perceived lack of time adversely affects our mental health - in fact, even more than being unemployed does. This is one of the great ironies of our time. Studies show that we have more free time than ever before - some even say that we have just enough (2.5 hours a day). But this probably doesn't match our actual lived experience. This perception of time shortage is what psychologists call 'time famine'.

I've noticed this perceived shortage of time among almost all my friends. The very same people who once shared a leisurely college chai with you are today too busy to respond to your texts or pick up your calls. Someone is too busy climbing up the corporate ladder, another taking care of newborns or families, and some are busy for no apparent reason. I, in turn, perhaps do the same to them. My WhatsApp and email inboxes are overflowing with unresponded-to messages. Any invite I receive is instinctively met with groaning, and only after that given serious thought. I wish someone had warned me about this aspect of adulting.

This feeling of being constantly busy affects our mental health in many ways, including-

• Not doing things (outside work) that bring us joy. Over 70% of Americans either don't care about or hate their jobs. For many, happiness lies elsewhere.
• An inability to make spontaneous plans. Not doing so (i.e. living the same predictable schedule every day) can reduce the joy we experience.
• Reducing our ability to innovate or think creatively, which is known to increase both productivity and life satisfaction.
• Preventing us from investing in new skills or knowledge that can help us move forward professionally or personally.

I've experienced this first-hand in my life. I burn out easily. Having to be available for work constantly makes me feel less engaged with work overall. Oftentimes during my career, I found my work so engaging that I willingly worked weekend, early mornings or late nights (I even wrote a blog about it in mid-2018). At other times, a hard deadline or a difficult client/boss have made me do the same thing. In either case, I found myself in a rut every 6-9 months, when work starts feeling like an abyss of never-ending drudgery.

I've seen some friends and peers deal with that drudgery by switching jobs. But that isn't necessarily the right way out. The same cycle will perhaps repeat itself in the next job. Moreover, frequent job changes are said to make someone's resumé less attractive. Neither is the solution to sit tight and let yourself be consumed by this time famine. In addition to its mental health impact, research shows that time famine makes us worse human beings. For example-

• In an experiment where an actor feigned an injury, 63% of those who felt they had time on their hands stopped to help an injured person, compared to only 10% of those who felt they had no time.
• When people were reminded of the hours that they expected to work and their hourly pay rate, only 12% of participants in an experiment recycled their waste (v/s. 41% of those who didn't feel that time famine).
• Couples who save time by outsourcing their chores report having greater relationship satisfaction. Researchers say that it is equivalent to having a partner who is a good listener.

The challenge, as I noted above, is not that we don't have enough time - in fact, we have more free time than earlier generations. It is that our free time today is scattered throughout the day, rather than being concentrated in a few blocks. This means that even though we have more free time in total, we probably have less continous free time.

Unfortuanately, we aren't very good at utilising this free time. What do we do when we get 10-15 minutes free? We probably spend it scrolling through social media aimlessly, giving us very little by way of happiness. In short, we feel time famished because we don't know how to use our free time well. This is a vicious cycle that I've been trying actively to get out of.

Here are a few things I've done to increase my perception of how much free time I have, and to go from time famine to time affluence:

• I don't check my phone till I'm back from my 20-minute morning walk. The peace and solitude of the walk make me feel rich in time.
• I work out as soon as I'm back from work, so that I'm done with dinner by 9 PM and have a few hours of down time everyday.
• I try to keep my weekends free. When I have work, I try to get it done early (e.g. Saturday morning) than let it linger on through the weekend.
• I avoid scrolling on social media in unstructured ways. I try to keep dedicated slots of 10-20 mins through the day to check my feed.
• I read a bit every day. Even if it is 5 minutes. Reading makes me feel as if time has slowed down. Added bonus - it helps me sleep better.
• I'm always up for unplanned things. Like a mid-day meeting with a friend visiting my city. Or an impromptu drinking plan at work.
• Most importantly, I try to treat myself with kindness even (and especially) when I feel I've wasted time. Guilt and negativity helps none.

The unifying thought beyond these practices is to make the most of whatever free time I have. Very often, our work hours are determined by our workplace or managers; we have very little control over it. But through some mindful redistribution of time and activities, I've been able to create a higher perception of time availability for myself.

Mental health journeys are often determined not by the grand journeys of success or failures, but in the everyday trade-offs we make. It finds success as much in the renunciation of the worldly treadmills (bless those brave souls!) as it does in the little moments of freedom and joy that we can still weave into the tapestries of our days.