The more that people are using their time to engage in social interactions to cultivate relationships, the more happiness they’re going to get from buying time
People believe material goods last—and they do last in a physical sense, but that doesn’t mean you continue to derive value from it.
It isn’t necessarily how busy your calendar is, but rather the internal state of anxiety and concern that you don’t have enough time to do the things you want to do.
Experiences are fleeting, but not in a psychological sense. They live on in our memories, they live on in the stories we tell. For example, people get boosts of pleasure from planning and anticipating experiences, like vacations—and then again when recalling those memories later. That’s partly because experiences often cultivate connection and feelings of belonging, whereas we’re more likely to consume material purchases alone.
We’re social animals, after all. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as soon as our basic needs—food, shelter, and safety—are met, the first thing we seek is companionship. Research on human flourishing confirms that cultivating meaningful relationships through institutions like work, religious communities, and marriage enhances our well-being, and is associated with better health and longer life expectancy.
Purchases that help to foster our social relationships—those are the purchases that are most likely to bring us longer-lasting, more enduring happiness.
The amount of disposable income we have makes a difference when it comes to buying time.
...psychologists found that when participants were primed to think of their time as carrying monetary value, they were more impatient and experienced less pleasure during leisure activities like listening to music.
One of the mistakes that people can make is that they think that material goods are a better financial investment, that they’ll last. But the material goods that pack the biggest punch are the ones that beget social experiences.
Positive social relationships are essential to human happiness—spend money in ways that advance your social relationships [and try to] minimize making comparisons to other people.
The more that people are using their time to engage in social interactions to cultivate relationships, the more happiness they’re going to get from buying time