Time Smart
A review of

Time Smart

How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life

Ashley Whillans • Harvard Business Review Press • 2020

If Money Isn’t Everything, What Is? 

by Ariel Courage

Everyone knows that time is money. But time can be so much more, affording you fond memories, enriching experiences and profound connections with others. Behavioral scientist Ashley Whillans highlights some unexpected upsides of seeking happiness – and how exactly you should pursue it. 

Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane traces the rise of its hero, Charles Foster Kane, from obscurity to the heights of wealth and influence. Although this may sound like a happy story, Kane’s trajectory is tragic. A seemingly unimportant memory from his humble childhood haunts him; a moment of idle play and uncomplicated joy. By the end of his life, Kane laments, “If I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.”

People often see this story as a cautionary tale about the corrupting influence of power, or as a political allegory. But it is also about money and time, and how the former can distort the latter.

Comment on this review