Scientific Strategies to Reclaim Time and Live A Happier Life
Speaker: Ashley Whillans, PhD; Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School
Moderator: Hiroe Ohyama DMD, MMSc, PhD; Co-Chair of JCSW Work/Life Subcommittee

Thursday, December 15, 2022 | 12:00 – 1:00 | Zoom

There's an 80 percent chance you're poor. Time poor, that is. Four out of five adults report feeling that they have too much to do and not enough time to do it. These time-poor people experience less joy each day. They laugh less. They are less healthy, less productive, and more likely to divorce. In one study, time stress produced a stronger negative effect on happiness than unemployment. How can we escape the time traps that make us feel this way and keep us from living our best lives? In this talk, Author and Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans will share proven strategies for improving "time affluence" and happiness, even for the busiest among us: working parents. The techniques Whillans provides will free up seconds, minutes, and hours that, over the long term, become weeks and months that you can reinvest in positive, healthy activities. The science-based strategies Whillans presents will help you make the shift to time-smart living and build a happier, more fulfilling life for you personally, and a more productive and fulfilling life for your team.

Ashley Whillans is an associate professor in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit, teaching the Motivation and Incentives course to MBA students. Professor Whillans earned her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of British Columbia. Her research seeks to understand the associations between time, money, and subjective wellbeing. She is particularly interested in understanding how individual, organizational and societal factors like gender, workplace policies, and income inequality predict how people value and spend time and money, with possible implications for well-being.