如何克服“时间饥荒”，提高幸福感?

如何克服“时间饥荒”，提高幸福感?

Ashley Whillans' summer started with what she calls "time famine."

阿什利·惠兰斯的夏天始于她所谓的“时间饥荒”。

Time famine, a term that first emerged in the scientific literature around 1999, refers to the universal feeling of having too much to do but not enough time to deal with those demands.

“时间饥荒”一词最早出现在1999年左右的科学文献中，指的是人们普遍认为有太多事情要做，但没有足够的时间来处理这些需求。

After earning her doctorate degree in social psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada, Whillans was offered a coveted assistant professorship at Harvard Business School. Last month, Whillans and her husband uprooted to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States -- and it was overwhelming, she said.

在加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚大学(University of British Columbia)获得社会心理学博士学位后，惠兰斯获得了哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)令人垂涎的助理教授职位。上个月，惠兰斯和她的丈夫搬到了美国马萨诸塞州的剑桥-她说，这让人不知所措。

"I had multiple demands on my time. I was immigrating to a new country. I was trying to move to a new city. I was trying to move to a new job," Whillans said.

“我有很多事情要做。我要移民到一个新的国家。我想搬到一个新的城市。我想换份新工作。

She felt as if there weren't enough hours in the days leading up to her big move, she added. In that moment, Whillans thought about her own research on how to buy time. Suddenly, she put her research findings into action.

她补充说，她觉得在她大搬家之前的日子里没有足够的时间。在那一刻，惠兰斯想到了她自己关于如何争取时间的研究。突然，她把她的研究成果付诸行动。

"We find that spending money on time-saving purchases promotes daily happiness and reduces negative mood, because it protects us from the time stress that we feel in our daily lives," Whillans said. "So, I definitely have used in the last few weeks time-saving services," such as grocery delivery or house cleaning services, car services like Uber or Lyft, or paying a teen in the neighborhood to mow the lawn.

惠兰斯说:“我们发现，把钱花在节省时间的购物上可以促进日常幸福感，减少负面情绪，因为它可以让我们免受日常生活中的时间压力。”“所以，在过去的几周里，我肯定使用了节省时间的服务，”比如杂货送货或房屋清洁服务，优步(Uber)或Lyft等汽车服务，或者花钱请附近的青少年帮忙修剪草坪。

Spending discretionary dollars on time-saving purchases may protect you from the detrimental effects that a time famine can have on your happiness, suggests a new study of which Whillans served as lead author.

一项由威兰斯担任主要作者的新研究表明，把可自由支配的钱花在节省时间的购物上，可能会让你免受时间匮乏对幸福感的有害影响。

How so? Buying time could provide a buffer against such time famine, thereby promoting overall well-being and happiness, according to the study, which published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.

怎么会这样?根据周一发表在“美国国家科学院院刊”上的这项研究，购物的时间可以为此类时间饥荒提供缓冲，从而提升整体幸福感和幸福感。

The new study included self-reported data on 6,271 adults from the United States, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands. The data were collected through questionnaire-based studies and an experiment.

这项新研究包括来自美国、加拿大、丹麦和荷兰的6271名成年人的自我报告数据。这些数据是通过问卷调查和实验收集的。

The adults, of various income levels, all shared information about whether they tend to spend money -- and how much -- on time-saving purchases, as well as how satisfied they feel with their lives.

不同收入水平的成年人都分享了关于他们是否倾向于在节省时间的购物上花钱——以及花了多少钱——以及他们对生活的满意度的信息。

The researchers found that, regardless of income level, spending money to buy time was associated with greater life satisfaction. They also found that the negative effects of feeling stressed for time were reduced among those who reported making time-saving purchases, such as paying others to clean their home or run errands, for instance.

研究人员发现，无论收入水平如何，花钱买时间与更高的生活满意度有关。他们还发现，时间紧张的负面影响在那些表示购买省时物品的人身上有所减轻，比如花钱请别人打扫房间或跑腿。

"What we actually find in our data is that the role of time-saving purchases is independent from the role of income in predicting happiness," Whillans said.

“我们实际上在我们的数据中发现，省时购物的作用与收入在预测幸福方面的作用是独立的，”惠兰斯说。

"Across studies we find that people who spend money in ways that allow them to have more free time report greater life satisfaction," she said. "The way that people are spending money, and in this case, spending money to buy themselves free time, has a similar positive association with happiness as how much money people make."

“通过研究，我们发现那些花钱让他们有更多空闲时间的人报告说他们的生活满意度更高，”她说。“人们花钱的方式，在这种情况下，花钱买自己的空闲时间，与人们赚多少钱与幸福有着相似的正相关。”