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Helping others makes us feel like we have more free time: study

If you have a lot of free time on your hands, you probably wish you had more. According to new research in a forthcoming article for Psychological Science, people who fill their time by helping others feel that they have more time than those with nothing to do.

"Compared to other ways to spend time -- wasting time, spending time on oneself, and even getting a windfall of time -- spending time on others makes people feel as if they have more time," says Cassie Mogilner, marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and co-author of the study, entitled "Giving Time Gives You Time."

"Spending time on others makes people feel effective, capable, confident," she says. "You feel that you've accomplished something with your time."

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Mogilner and her team carried out several experiments, including interrupting a university classroom to tell the 136 participants they would have to spend 15 minutes editing high-school essays for at-risk students. Half were given an essay to mark, while the rest were told that there were no more that needed editing, and that they could leave early. Those who did the editing reported that their time was less scarce and that they had more spare time than those who were allowed to leave early.

In another experiment, 218 university students were told to spend five minutes either writing an encouraging letter to a sick child, or counting the "e's" in a Latin text. Those doing the menial task of counting "e's" felt they were more time constrained than those doing the more meaningful letter-writing.

It was the hunt for more time that led to this study in the first place.

"We realized that the resource that's the most constrained in our lives is time," says Mogilner. "We wanted to see if there's a way that we could expand people's perceptions of time."

And it seems the best way is to give our time away instead of keeping it for ourselves.

"Our tendency when we feel time constrained is to hoard our time for ourselves," says Mogilner, "or relax and try to rejuvenate. But neither of those do increase the feeling of efficacy that spending time on others does."

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The findings don't surprise Leigh Anne Saxe, a Toronto-based happiness coach and career counsellor at CareerCycles.

"When people are doing something where they feel they have a sense of purpose that is bigger than themselves," she says, "they get into a place where time stands still. Time opens up for them."

But while this might mean we could be less stingy with our time, it doesn't mean spending every moment helping others is the key to perpetual bliss.

In one of Mogilner's experiments, her team found there was an upper limit. If you spend too much time on others and aren't able to look after your own affairs, you will start to feel short on time.

Saxe agrees. She argues that while it's important to help others, we can't ignore our own needs.

"You have to be selfish in order to be selfless," she says. Doing things for others is a good way to make ourselves, and others, feel better. But you can overdose on altruism.

"Some people in the helping profession feel very burnt out," says Saxe.

Have you noticed that you feel like you have more free time when you are helping others?

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