Work For Humans | Episode Summary

Episode: Time Poverty at Work: What It Costs and How to Reclaim Your Time
Host: Dart Lindsley
Guest: Ashley Whillans, Behavioral Scientist at Harvard Business School
Date: July 15, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores the concept of time poverty at work—why so many workers feel chronically strapped for time, why financial perks often miss the point, and how organizations can intentionally design work environments where employees feel time-affluent, empowered, and able to thrive. Host Dart Lindsley and guest Ashley Whillans (author of Time Smart) dissect both individual and organizational reasons for time poverty, and discuss actionable practices at the policy, managerial, and personal level to reclaim time at work.

Key Themes and Insights

1. Understanding Time Poverty and Time Affluence

• Time poverty is not just "not having enough hours"—it’s a psychological experience of lacking sufficient time to do both what you must and what you want ([03:35]).
• Time affluence is defined by feelings of control and enoughness over your time. These two factors are closely linked but not identical ([06:05]).
• Unpredictable or uncontrollable schedules (not necessarily long hours) are the major drivers of time poverty ([06:05]).
  • "Where time starts to become unmanageable is when it becomes unpredictable outside of one's control." – Ashley Whillans [06:44]

2. Who Experiences Time Poverty?

• Counterintuitive findings: Wealthier individuals often feel more time poor because their time feels “more valuable” and losses of time are more acutely felt ([08:46]).
  • "When people's incomes rise, their time becomes more scarce because it is more valuable." – Ashley Whillans [08:57]
• Time-as-money mindset: Both highly-paid professionals and hourly wage workers can become time-stressed when they equate time with money ([12:29]).
• Frontline and lower-income workers: Time poverty is often due to low autonomy, rigid scheduling, and inability to "buy" time through services ([12:29]).
  • E.g., lack of shift-swapping leads to high turnover; simply allowing schedule swaps boosts retention ([15:36]).

3. Incentives, Performance, and Time Stress

• Pay-for-performance models increase time stress and can cause employees to focus on financial targets to the detriment of relationships and broader well-being ([16:31]).
• People in these systems fixate on incentivized output, leading to a sense of never having enough time for other important (but non-incentivized) aspects of work or life ([16:31]).

4. Organizational Case Studies in Time Design

a. GH Smart

• Radical flexibility: Employees control when, where, and how much they work; can accept/reject projects and progression is optional ([21:36]).
  • "You can actively reject an offer of a project if you don't feel like working on it." – Ashley Whillans [25:23]
• Tradeoffs: High individual autonomy can hinder the company’s ability to coordinate or drive collective initiatives ([26:58]).
  • “Flexibility at the individual level creates tension at the firm level and a coordination problem that has to be managed.” – Ashley Whillans [27:20]

b. Atlassian

• Process-driven time protection: Flexible hours/location, but strict rules on workflow—e.g., focus vs. collaboration time, AI-managed knowledge base, mandatory asynch and limited meetings ([32:04]).
  • "They are very prescriptive about what I want your time to look like on a daily basis to protect time and well being." – Ashley Whillans [32:26]
• Quality of time: Focus is on defragmenting work to create large, uninterrupted blocks and minimize “time confetti” caused by digital distractions ([35:16]).
  • "Constant connection to technology fragments our time into small pieces that easily go missing..." – Ashley Whillans [35:56]

5. The Business and Ethical Case for Supporting Employee Time

• Providing time-based rewards (even if unused) signals that the company values workers as people, not just as means to profit ([39:02]).
  • "Just the idea that you are offering... extra PTO after a really hard sprint, that even if the employee doesn't use it... that's sending a signal that you are the kind of organization that cares about its workers..." – Ashley Whillans [39:13]
• Beyond business ROI, there is an ethical imperative: “Irregardless of anything that we're talking about moves a company up and to the right in terms of profit, we should care about how workers feel because they're human beings.” – Ashley Whillans [41:00]

6. Policy-Level and Practical Interventions

• Organizational policies that genuinely reduce time poverty require both effective design (e.g., enforceable PTO, shift-swapping, default enrollment in time-saving benefits) and cultural reinforcement ([43:39]).
  • "You need to enforce these policies. A lot of companies have policies like PTO... but they don't actually do it. There's no enforcement or accountability mechanism." – Ashley Whillans [44:45]
• National context matters: Stringent labor laws and social policies (e.g., in Scandinavia or France) reduce time poverty. In absence, overwork becomes the norm ([53:56]).
• Behavioral barriers: Even when given time-saving rewards, most employees pick cash or material goods; time-saving perks should default to “automatic” ([50:00]).

7. Cultural Differences and Status Quo Bias

• Regions with strong Protestant work ethic and traditional face-time cultures (e.g., US Northeast, Japan) see higher time stress—even when workers desire change ([53:56]).
  • "There's both an interest and need [in time flexibility], and also a strong resistance because of the status quo bias..." – Ashley Whillans [56:23]

8. Individual Strategies: Negotiation and Micro-Affluence

• Individuals can and should negotiate for time flexibility, schedule control, and manageable scope—not just salary ([62:47]).
  • "You have a lot more power than you think... we do a disservice to you by not teaching you the skills, tools, communication frameworks for negotiating how much you're going to work..." – Ashley Whillans [64:30]
• Cultivate leisure as a habit: Practice time affluence in small intervals; meaningful breaks and self-reflection matter ([62:47]).
• Attention vs. time: It's not just about hours, but where your focus goes—even outside of work ([71:36]).

Notable Quotes & Moments

• "The experience of not being in control over one's time has a stronger negative effect on... happiness, stress, divorce, manager rated creativity, productivity than objectively how much discretionary time you have available." – Ashley Whillans [04:27]
• "We have a psychological predisposition to believe what is valuable is scarce and what is scarce is valuable." – Ashley Whillans [09:05]
• "If you allow people to be able to work within their capacity, and even to work a little under their capacity, that builds up... resilience, space, energy... that can then carry over into other solutions, longer term innovative projects." – Ashley Whillans [29:14]
• "We expect constant responsivity, or at least we think we need to be constantly responsive to be a good worker." – Ashley Whillans [36:08]
• "We need to be making sure that the policies that organizations have and the practices that they engage in protect worker well being full stop." – Ashley Whillans [42:00]
• "While this has been a fun time having these conversations [about experimental workplace design], I Don't know if that's going to be at all relevant to me until I am in a position to change things." – Ashley Whillans, on students' skepticism about changing legacy organizations [59:00]
• "Leisure is a habit... Founders and leaders need to cultivate it in 5, 10, 15 minute increments." – Ashley Whillans [63:19]

Timestamps by Segment

| Time | Segment/Topic | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:03 | Defining time in the context of work and happiness | | 03:35 | What is time poverty? | | 06:05 | Control vs. enoughness; unpredictability as major stressor | | 08:46 | Relationship between wealth/income and time stress | | 12:29 | "Time is money" mindset—across income levels | | 16:31 | Pay-for-performance and its impact on time poverty | | 21:36 | Organizational case study: GH Smart | | 32:04 | Organizational case study: Atlassian | | 35:16 | Fragmentation, "time confetti", and deep work | | 39:02 | Time-based perks as ethical signals | | 43:39 | Policy interventions and challenges | | 53:56 | Cultural/national differences in time poverty | | 62:47 | Personal strategies for time affluence and negotiation advice | | 71:36 | Attention vs. time; closing insights |

Key Takeaways

• Time poverty is a psychological state magnified by lack of control, unpredictability, and cultural expectations—not just hours worked.
• High incomes don't immunize against time stress; attachment to "time is money" thinking makes even leisure stressful.
• Organizations have many design levers: from flexible job structures (GH Smart) to structured, time-protective processes (Atlassian), to enforced or default policies for leave and benefits.
• Policy and culture must work together; government requirements can ease time poverty but must be equitably enforced.
• Individuals should practice time affluence in small ways and negotiate for autonomy.
• Both business and moral arguments support reclaiming time at work—but lasting change requires systemic shifts, not just perks.

For More on Ashley Whillans & Her Work

• HBS Faculty Profile & Publications

“Subtract, protect, negotiate, add time in any way that you can personally and professionally, even if it's in a five minute increment.”

— Ashley Whillans [71:00]