Time Affluence: How to Buy Back Your Freedom by Reclaiming Your Time
Feeling as if there’s not enough time in your day not only to complete the things you have to do, but also the things you want to do? That feeling is a commonly shared human experience.
In a previous post about micro-retirements, I discussed how that lifestyle concept provides a way to intentionally and systematically enjoy your personal and leisure time throughout your younger years versus preserving that time for your mid 60’s. However, micro-retirements require significant financial privilege that many of us simply don’t have.
In this post, I want to highlight some practical ways in which you can reclaim some of your “lost” time to help prioritize what brings you joy and a sense of purpose outside of work and the exhaustive to-do list. While we can’t always control external factors and life’s uncertainties, we can identify what drains and fulfills us, empowering ourselves to create a plan and systems to enhance the latter.
The Psychology Behind Having More Time
Reclaiming your time is about you being in control of your calendar rather than your calendar being in control of you.
Time affluence is having the freedom to choose how you spend your time coupled with the feeling that you have ample time in your day to do the things you want, value, and need to accomplish without burning out. It’s a psychological state of feeling that you have autonomy over your time, rather than just having more free time hours in your day.
Research indicates that experiencing time affluence is a stronger predictor of subjective well-being and lower stress than material wealth.
Parkinson’s Law
Working too much can be related to a behavioral phenomenon known as Parkinson’s Law. Coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a 1955 essay for The Economist, the law states that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” It describes how a task will expand in its duration, overcomplication, or complexity to fill whatever time we give ourselves to complete it rather than what’s required. It can potentially lead to procrastination and inefficiency.
For example:
Cleaning: If guests are coming over in a few hours, cleaning the house will be casual. You might get side-tracked and decide to declutter the catch all kitchen drawer. It’s easy to become distracted. But if you receive last minute notice that guests are arriving in 20 minutes, you will laser-focus and efficiently speed-clean.
So how can we create the feeling of time-affluence and minimize giving into Parkinson’s Law?
The key to time affluence is actively treating our want-to-do’s as non-negotiable priorities. What are your biggest priorities? Schedule them first. There are 168 hours in a week. Where in those 168 hours are you leaking time? Doom scrolling? Notification clearing? Binge-watching? Over-scheduling?
Identify what are the biggest time-stealers or energy drains in your day. Start with awareness and then take action with intention and boundaries.
Create a list of activities and people that bring you fulfillment are meaningful to you.
Create a second list of the amount of time you spend on people, work, tasks, and experiences in your day to day.
Compare the two lists and identify where they are misaligned. Are you spending less time on the things that matter most to you? Where is most of your time being spent? Where can you reasonably and sustainably adjust these two lists so they better reflect your priorities.
Artificial Deadlines
Creating artificial deadlines can help support efficiency by minimizing the time you have for a task and encouraging your brain to focus. It also helps buffer against falling behind if an unexpected emergency arises and your time needs to be redirected elsewhere. Whatever the actual deadline, create a personal one that shortens the original.
You can try the “half-time” rule. However long a task will take you, cut that time in half. If you think writing a work report will take four hours, give yourself two. The constraint encourages efficiency. And if you get it done in half the time congrats! Now you have time to do something personal and meaningful.
Time Boundaries
Assign a strict time block of when to work on what’s important to you to help prevent your time and energy from creeping into other areas of your life. Put it on your calendar, set an alarm to start or set a timer for when to finish. Whatever your most meaningful or positively impactful task is schedule it in the morning if possible.
This time management strategy is known as “eating the frog.” Completing your prioritized task before anything else on your list helps boost momentum, reduce procrastination, and reduce fatigue since our energy and focus are usually peak at the start of the day.
Under-schedule Your Day
Scheduling is a great way to keep track of commitments and ensure you’re making time for what matters. Scheduling 100% of your time, however, doesn’t leave any breathing room for interruptions or emergencies. Try only scheduling 60–70% of your day. Leaving the remaining 40-30% open helps buffer against delays, time scarcity, and feeling rushed or overwhelmed.
The Waiting Room of Life
Sometimes we just have to wait. There will be many moments in life where you are stuck waiting in line — at airport security, the grocery store, the DMV, a doctor’s office, or the coffee counter. So be prepared. You can keep a book with you or keep a list of podcasts in your playlist that you’ve been meaning to listen to.
Or you can take that time to check in with yourself. Take some deep breaths, relax your shoulders, bring your attention to your posture, and adjust accordingly. If self-care is a priority, don’t let those little moments of interstitial time slip by when you could use it to reclaim your mental peace.
More strategies for time autonomy:
Advocate for flexible work arrangements like remote work.
Delegate household duties or, if possible, outsource time-heavy chores if the time saved outweighs the monetary cost.
Meal prep for the week.
Use meal delivery services or online grocery shopping.
Say “no” to non-essential commitments to preserve your personal time.
Build a substantial emergency fund to buffer against unexpected events, reducing financial stress and the pressure to work overtime.
Group all errands (groceries, post office, car wash, gas) into a single weekly geographic loop rather than making multiple separate trips in drastically different directions.
Establish a strict digital curfew a couple hours before bed.
Incorporate deliberate 10-minute micro-breaks between cognitive tasks for stretching, movement, or deep breathing to prevent burnout.
Limit your open browser tabs to six, encouraging you to finish tasks instead of collecting digital clutter.
Use voice notes to send texts or compose rough drafts and initial thoughts in your notes app, cutting composition time in half.
Automate recurring bills, savings contributions, and investment contributions.
Set a strict end time for social meetups to protect your evening wind-down time.
Waking up in the morning and feeling that you don’t have enough time to do what really matters is never a good start to your day. Hopefully some of these strategies prompt you to consider new ways you can create more time affluence to connect with loved ones, practice self-care, and pursue personal passions.
Remember, small changes add up.
Be intentional in the choices that support your mental health and overall well-being.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!!!
I hope today you’re met with kindness, especially from yourself.
💚💚💚
References
Jacobson, K. (2026, August 26). Micro-retirements: a lifestyle strategy rather than a financial one. Your Money Counselor.https://yourmoneycounselor.substack.com/p/micro-retirements-a-lifestyle-strategy
Parkinson, C. N. (1955, November 19). Parkinson’s law. The Economist. https://cat-v.org
Yoon, S. Y. (2026). Time affluence and health: a scoping review of conceptual and methodological patterns. Frontiers in Public Health, 14, 1824268. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1824268
Comments