To Buy Happiness, Spend Money on Saving Time

有钱不一定幸福，但花钱节约时间，却可带来幸福感

We all know money can’t buy happiness. But according to a recent study, there may be a loophole. A team of researchers finds that shelling out for services that save time can bring greater feelings of life satisfaction than, say, simply buying more stuff. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

我们都知道金钱买不到幸福。但最近的一项研究显示，这句话可能存在漏洞。一组研究人员发现，与简单地花钱买更多东西相比，购买能节省时间的服务更能提高人们的生活满意度。这项研究结果发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。

It’s safe to say that most of us regularly feel crunched for time. So much so that we are experiencing what Ashley Whillans of the Harvard Business School, the lead author of the study, describes as a "time famine." And like any famine, this chronic lack of time takes its toll on our health.

可以说，我们大多数人都经常感到时间不够用。这种感觉非常普遍，我们的这种状态，被该研究的首席作者、哈佛商学院的阿什莉.威兰斯称之为“时间饥荒”。跟其他所有饥荒一样，长期时间紧张会对我们的健康造成损害。

"When we feel like our to-do lists are longer than the hours that we have time in the day to complete them, we can feel as if our life is spiraling out of control, thereby undermining our personal well-being."

“当我们感觉一天中的可用时间不够完成要做的事时，我们就会觉得生活正在失去控制，继而破坏我们的个人幸福。”

Well, if time is money, Whillans and her team wondered whether money that’s used to buy time could offer some relief. Like paying someone else to clean the house, mow the lawn, or deliver the groceries.

如果时间就是金钱，威兰斯和她的团队想知道，用来买时间的金钱是否会给人带来安慰。比如雇人打扫房子、修剪草坪或者送货上门。

To find out, the researchers asked more than 6,000 people from the U.S., Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands to rate their overall satisfaction with life, and to estimate how much money they lay out each month to outsource unenjoyable daily tasks or otherwise purchase some time off.

为了找到答案，研究人员请来自美国、加拿大、丹麦和荷兰的6000多人对他们生活的总体满意度进行评估，并估算他们每个月会花多少钱外包无趣的日常工作或通过其他方式花钱节省时间。

And they found that respondents who willingly swap funds for free time also report feeling more content—regardless of their income or how many hours they work each week.

他们发现，那些愿意用金钱来换取空闲时间的受访者同时也是生活满意度更高的人——无论他们的收入有多少或者每周工作多长时间。

To follow up, the researchers conducted a smaller experiment in which they gave volunteers forty bucks to buy a little something for themselves. The same participants got another forty dollars that they were told to spend on something that would save them time. And again, buying time was more likely to elevate mood and alleviate anxiety.

为了跟踪研究，研究人员进行了一项小实验：他们给每名志愿者40美元，让他们给自己买些小东西。然后再给同一批志愿者40美元，让他们将钱花在可以节省时间的事情上。结果再次表明，购买时间更有可能让人提升情绪和缓解焦虑。

These findings may be hard for some people to, well, buy:"Even in a sample of 850 millionaires, just over half of our respondents spent money to buy themselves time. These findings link to a broader literature suggesting that we do not always spend money in ways that promote happiness."

不过，这些结果可能还是很难让一些人花钱节省时间：“即便在850位百万富翁的样本中，也只有超过一半的受访者会花钱为自己节省时间。这些发现与一个更广泛的文献联系了起来，该文献表明，我们并不总是把钱花在提升幸福的事情上。”

Even when we should know better.

即使我们应该知道那样做更好。

"Personally I know that when I recently moved to a new city I had a lot of errands to run. I had to let my own data convince me that buying time would make my life easier, less stressful and happier."

“就我个人而言，我最近刚搬到一个新城市，我知道我有很多事情要做。可我不得不用自己的研究数据来说服自己，花钱购买时间会让我的生活更轻松、更少压力、更幸福。”

来源:科学美国人