So in your experience, what would you say are the most common time management pitfalls, especially for administrative professionals, and how do you feel they could be avoided?

So professionals everywhere, but particularly those in interconnected roles like administrative assistants worry that if they don't respond right away, they're going to seem uncommitted.

So this is the idea of the mere urgency effect.

But research suggests that actually those who are the most productive and add the most value to their organizations are the ones that aren't the most responsive.

And they're also the ones that take the most breaks and vacations where they truly disconnect.

When we're constantly always responding to the sea of email, the flurry of communication, we're letting other people's tasks get in the way of things that might be our important priorities that are going to add strategic value in the long run.

So I think that's the thing I see most often is this mere urgency effect.

So as we're talking about kind of setting these priorities and figuring out how to manage the time, how can administrative professionals set realistic time management goals and what exact practices do you feel they should adopt to maintain that healthy work-life balance? So I think

Match days deserve Pepsi.

Time poverty is a pervasive problem.

It's been getting worse, and it affects people all over the world.

We often think about poverty in terms of financial terms, not having enough money, but something that's really detrimental to our subjective wellbeing is not having enough time.

So this idea of being time poor, having too many things to do and not enough time in the day to do them, afflicts 80% of working Americans today, and affects working employees all over the world, and can have stronger negative effects on happiness than being unemployed.

[upbeat music] I really wanted to understand whether some people were more broadly oriented to thinking about giving up money to have more free time, or whether some people were more strongly oriented to give up time in order to have more money.

So I developed this survey tool, which is really simple.

Paying someone to do your disliked tasks can also provide a much needed boost to your social life.

When you outsource something you don't like, you not only get to spend more time with people you care about, but you're less thinking about all these other things you have to do while you're socializing.

And so it buys us out of some of this dread, this anticipation of having to come home from a nice social event on the weekend and have a million chores to do before the work week starts.

And we've also started looking at the effects of time-saving services, house cleaning, uh, someone to mow your lawn, on relationship satisfaction.

And we have some findings suggesting that couples who make a concerted effort to outsource in a typical month experience greater relationship satisfaction because they're less negatively impacted by daily stressors, and that effect on relationship satisfaction is just about as good as having a partner who's a really good listener.

[laughs]

Is this a strategy everyone can use, or is this just for wealthy Harvard professors who can afford a house cleaner?

I get this question a lot, "Isn't this just for rich people?" Most of us listening at least are lucky enough to have some discretionary income at our disposal, so then we want to start thinking, "Well, if I have $100 a month, $200 a month, $300 a month, how can I start thinking about spending that money in a way that might best promote my happiness?" And there are small things that we can all do around the margins.

Eighteen plus.

Time poverty is a pervasive problem.

It's been getting worse, and it affects people all over the world.

We often think about poverty in terms of financial terms, not having enough money, but something that's really detrimental to our subjective wellbeing is not having enough time.

So this idea of being time poor, having too many things to do and not enough time in the day to do them, afflicts eighty percent of working Americans today and affects working employees all over the world and can have stronger negative effects on happiness than being unemployed.

I really wanted to understand whether some people were more broadly oriented to thinking about giving up money to have more free time, or whether some people were more strongly oriented to give up time in order to have more money.

So I developed this survey tool, which is really simple.

Eighteen plus.