Happiness Means Being Just Rushed Enough

Scientific American: Happiness Means Being Just Rushed Enough

… However, despite this broad consensus, and its obvious health and quality-of-life implications, there seems little empirical survey evidence that daily life is truly speeding up. …

… In that 1965 survey, we found 24 percent of respondents aged 18-64 said they “always” felt rushed, and 48 percent said they had no excess time. When we repeated the questions in the 1990s, these figures had risen to 35 percent “always” rushed and 55 percent with no excess time, where they remained, more or less, until we last asked the questions in a 2004 survey.

This set the stage, then, for our repeating these questions in two separate surveys in 2009-10. Quite contrary to our expectations, both of these surveys now show decreases in Americans feeling “always” rushed particularly among the busiest group of those aged 18 to 64 — a 7-point drop in feeling always rushed to 28 percent — and a drop to 45 percent in those feeling no excess time. …

… Almost 50 percent of respondents who feel least rushed and who also feel least excess time report being “very happy”, almost twice as high as the rest of the US public. It is an elite group, making up less than 10 percent of the population. They not only seem happier by ignoring the “rat race” and subscribing to a philosophy of “Don’t hurry, be happy,” but by organizing their lifestyles to minimize spells of boredom and lack of focus as well. Thus, there seems dysfunction in having either too much or too little free time. In a society that otherwise seems obsessed with speed and the latest IT gadgets, this would seem to offer a path to a more contented lifestyle.