“Time is money” mentality causes stress and has serious health consequences

Thinking of time as money changes people’s decisions and makes them more stressed. A new study shows that a economic evaluation of time poses serious health consequences.

Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford Graduate School of Business, who experienced first-hand the university’s switch of the payroll software platform and its display of an hourly pay rate, researched how thinking of time as money changes people’s decisions about volunteering time and trading off working more hours for more money.

According to an article by Stanford Graduate School of Business, Pfeffer and co-author Dana R. Carney from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrate the physiological consequences of the economic evaluation of time. Their study concludes that people who are keenly aware of the economic value of their time — people who think of time as money — generally are more psychologically stressed and exhibit higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol that do people for whom the economic value of time is less salient.

The two scientists recruited 104 test subjects and paid them to work for two hours for a fictitious company. Before they started the job, 50 of the workers were asked to calculate their per-minute pay rate based on earning $57.50 for two hours of work, while the remaining workers were assigned the exact same tasks, but were not instructed to calculate their per-minute pay rate. In other words, both groups were guaranteed the same pay for the same two hours of work, but the first group proceeded with an upfront awareness of how much money they would earn per minute.

To test the physiological and psychological impact of that awareness, Pfeffer and Carney measured each subject’s salivary cortisol level — a physiological indicator of stress — at both the start and the end of their two-hour session. The results, Pfeffer says, were troubling. Cortisol levels were almost 25 percent higher in the time-is-money calculation group, whose members also seemed to find less pleasure during two breaks in the experiment in which they were allowed to look at art or listen to music.

“Cortisol is linked to all kinds of bad physical outcomes. A rise of almost 25 percent is a serious health consequence,” Pfeffer said.

“We’re moving in the wrong direction in many ways, and this is only one. People are continually calculating the economic value of their time. And all the research shows that when people are thinking about time and money, they’re not enjoying their lives. They become impatient. They don’t enjoy music, or sunsets. This calculation of what it costs to coach your kid’s soccer game is not a path to happiness,” he added.

The study “The Economic Evaluation of Time Can Cause Stress” notes that on the Greek island of Ikaria, people pay little attention to clocks — and live a very long time.