Escaping the Time Poverty Trap: From Constant Urgency to Intentional Living with Cassie Holmes

Speaker A: When it comes to time and happiness, it is not about the quantity of time, how much you have available, or even how much you spent. It's absolutely about the quality of that time. And we can find extraordinary happiness in the hours of today.

Speaker B: Can you achieve extraordinary results while making the world a better place? I'm Bruce Kempkin and together we'll explore how. Welcome to Humanity at Scale Redefining Leadership podcast. Join me as I speak with visionary leaders and top experts to uncover the secrets of humanity centric leadership. Ready to rethink leadership? Let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to Humanity at Scale. So many leaders I talk with feel the same tension right now. The work keeps accelerating, the expectations keep rising, and even when teams are producing results, something feels off, People are stretched thin, attention is fragmented, and burnout feels closer than we're willing to admit. It raises a deeper question, what does it actually take to build high performance that lasts without breaking the humans inside of the system? Today's guest offers a scientific, deeply human roadmap for addressing that question. Cassie Holmes is a chaired professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. An award winning researcher on time and happiness, she's also the best selling authority, author of the book Happier Hour, how to beat distraction, Expand your time and focus on what matters most. A book grounded in rigorous research on how small shifts in how we spend and perceive time can dramatically improve our sense of fulfillment. Her work has shaped how people around the world rethink their relationship with time. Cassie, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thanks so much, Bruce. I'm excited to chat.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, you're a behavioral scientist who studies happiness, time and how people actually experience work, which is kind of cool. But before we dive into those concepts, I'd love to start with your journey. What first pulled you towards studying happiness and well being?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, particularly because I have been at, uh, business schools throughout my career. So my PhD was at a business school. I was a PhD in marketing and I was studying questions on like, how does thinking about actually time rather than money influence people's satisfaction with their, uh, decisions around like, material goods. But then I was like, wait, I don't just care about people's satisfaction with their choice of coffee or magazine or even home. What I really care about is their satisfaction with their broader choices and their satisfaction with their life overall. And so in my PhD, I was sort of led to think about also actually in the context of a business school with so much focus on money As a critical resource both in terms of investment as well as sort of aspired outcome. I realized that for me, time was the resource that was most critical as a barrier to satisfaction. But even as an outcome in itself, it's not just a means to an end. So it was back during my Ph.D. that was I was led to these two constructs. Time and then happiness, satisfaction with our lives. That drove me in the work that I do and I have been researching since then. And then more recently in the last five years, not just studying happiness, but but I developed a course where I've been teaching IT to our MBAs and our executive MBAs of applying the science of happiness to life design so that they can be informed based off of both my research as well as others, how should they be thinking about and spending their time so they feel greater happiness during their days and m greater satisfaction in their careers as well as looking back on their years without regret.

Speaker B: Awesome. So when you started looking at it, were you thinking about your own happiness as the motivation for the research or was this just sort of a researcher observing the world and thinking about happiness in the abstract?

Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean m very egocentrically. A lot of my research is driven by my own questions that I'm grappling with. And then I sort of figure that if these are things that I'm grappling with, then I suspect others are as well. So in terms of happiness, I was interested in what are decisions that I can make to influence my happiness. And as you look actually at the research, what are the contributors? You see that one's natural disposition has actually a really big effect, as do circumstances. So the things that people think like income level, marital status, these sort of things that you don't have immediate control over. But then there's a lot that we do have control over what we think about and do in our day to day have a big effect. And, and when I am lucky enough to have a naturally sort of happy disposition. But like everyone, I had a, uh, very unhappy experience in my life. And I was sort of interested in for anyone, regardless of their circumstances, regardless of their natural disposition, what are decisions that they can make so that they can feel better in their days and about their lives to both guide me out of my unhappy situation, but also for everyone across circumstances, disposition and in their day to day, what are decisions that they can make to influence how satisfied and happy they feel?

Speaker B: Great. So are you happier today?

Speaker A: I am, I will say I do. Not only am I driven, you know, my own research questions, driven by my own questions. But I ah, apply what I find to my own life. My poor family, they are subjected to my happy ways that are empirically tested. And uh, my husband is like, it's hard to argue with you when like, happiness is your objective and like, exactly. That's why you should listen to me always.

Speaker B: I love it. So when you started to research, what has surprised you the most over the years, as you've been thinking about sort of the notion of happiness and looking at it internally and researching externally. But what surprised you?

Speaker A: Well actually it sort of links to what I was just saying is that what uh, has surprised me is how much control we have over the happiness we feel in and about our lives. And this is surprising because I think a lot of this idea that circumstances will determine our happiness. But yes, circumstances can play a role. But really what has a much bigger impact is how we think about and react to those circumstances, what we think about and do in the day to day. And so it continues to surprise me, um, how much choice we have. And it's a good reminder because when we, you know, something bad does happen or we just wake up with in a more negative mood figuring out, you know, physiologically too, there are some sort of factors that play into how we feel. Understanding that like, oh, actually I can employ these tools and I can sort of get myself partway there by just doing things and thinking in such a particular way that research has shown, you know, make us happy. And then it's like, ugh, you can sort of like initially it seems like tricking yourself, but it's not really tricking yourself because then you actually catch on and what happened. Also, I should say when I'm using the term happiness, what I'm talking about is what we refer to in the academic literature as subjective well being. This includes both the enjoyment or the positive emotion that we experience during our events or during our days. But it also has this evaluative component, like how satisfied or happy we feel about our days and about our lives overall. And so looking at what are these things, things that we can do both to influence our sort of mood or sort of how we feel in the moment, but also that influence how we think about our experiences and about our life. It is understanding what are these behaviors and patterns of thinking that are more conducive to a happier way of feeling and thinking about our circumstances.

Speaker B: So I love that and I totally agree. I mean it's the basis of a lot of stuff that I've written to right, that the world exists, but we have a choice on how we respond to the things around there. Right. So you spend a lot of time researching and sharing ideas on how people can be happy in the face of all sorts of distractions and things at work. What are some of the basic premises and tools that you suggest that people can use to remain happy in this crazy world we're in?

Speaker A: Yeah, and honestly, like my focus, both empirically but as well as my. The lens lens through which I look at the world is really around this rule of time, of how do we think about and spend our time. Because I think for me, one of my biggest barriers to happiness was this sense of time constraint. And in our research we talk about it as time poverty. This feeling of just having too much to do, not enough time to do it. And it has these really negative effects making us feel so just making us really reactive as opposed to proactive in our decisions around how to spend our time. And then you see high anxiety levels, like great propensity to burnout, when we are spending our time in just this sort of flood of things coming at us and us all constantly reacting and almost like mindlessly reacting, like not sort of prioritizing. Well, what's actually worthwhile of ah, my time of just sort of responding and sort of getting through the day. And really a lot of the tools and strategies that I share, which I have again continued to implement in my own life, is thinking about, okay, actually our time is our most precious, critical resource because we only have one shot at this, right? How we spend the hours today sum up to the years of our lives. And we don't want to just move through it in this like hurried blur. We don't want to look back on our years with regret. So we can sort of get into this bigger question through different angles. But it is really about thinking about what matters to you. What are your priorities, what are your values, what are your goals? Um, such that those higher level thoughts or sort of matters then play into inform. How do we spend our hours today determining what do we prioritize since we can't get to everything. And instead of our time being driven by others requests, our time being driven by what matters to us most.

Speaker B: So I think one of the powerful distinctions you make when it comes to time as a central theme is how time is allocated and how time is experienced. Why do people tend to overlook or not quite understand those distinctions?

Speaker A: Well, the fact that they don't often think about their time as so precious in general is sort of the first step. I mean, as I mentioned what really started my research, the business school, but really sort of in our culture and is this constant focus on money. And it's understandable that that, uh, plays into our decision making, because money is super quantifiable. You know, how much something costs, you know how much something has earns you. And the value of that is very apparent. What's interesting is that we don't readily think about how much time something will cost or how much time we're going to have to invest in something. And even when we think about, like, oh, if it's like two days, what does that mean? What's the value of it? And so even sort of shifting people's attention to recognize time as their more critical resource versus money, we see that it has really positive effects on people's happiness because it makes them more intentional with how they spend their time. And we see this actually in research. In our data, those who sort of naturally tend to focus on time as a more critical resource than money tend to be happier. They report greater satisfaction in their lives, greater happiness in their days. But also in my work, I have found that when I draw people's attention towards time, rather than money as their more critical resource, then it actually makes them happier because it makes them invest their time with greater intention and also paying greater attention when they're spending time on those really worthwhile activities. And so, like, I'm sort of making broad statements, and we can talk about how to make this more concrete. But again, it's like recognizing our time is precious when we start, like, realizing the finite nature of it. Uh, we can talk about how many times left do you have to do something that you love? And even taking that broad perspective of our time of, like, thinking. I have my students do this exercise where they project forward to their end of their life and write their eulogy. Like, what do they want to be said about them? How do they want to be remembered? And even not like, thinking about their own years and their life as a whole. What that really does is it highlights not only that time is finite and limited, our own time is finite and limited, but also that it highlights what matters to us with the time that we have. And then sort of like plays through or plays back to influence how we spend our hours today. And so a lot of folks actually react to my work and the book. It's like, yes, there are all these little tools and strategies to make sort of more of the time that we have in both investing in the things that matter as well as when we're spending on Those things that matter, making sure we pay attention. But even reading the book makes them just think about their time more often and more readily and their decision making, which has its own effects on happiness.

Speaker B: So it's interesting, it sounds like there are two sort of effects with the probably more effective focusing on time. One is that you get more intentional with the time that you have. But there's another piece of that which is the recognition that it's a finite resource. I would imagine in some cases that doesn't drive to happiness. I could imagine that drives to anxiety as well, right? Oh my goodness. I have all of these things I want to accomplish, but I have even less time than maybe I thought I had when I wasn't thinking about it. So how do you blend together the notion of intentionality with the finite resource of time that you have to make happiness?

Speaker A: Well, what we see in the work and what I absolutely sort of see pull through when I'm teaching the class and hearing from readers of the book, is that actually recognizing the finite nature of it, you might be like, oh, it sort of initially breeds that anxiety of like, oh my God, I will die. It's like, yes, but it's really not about death. It's about how do we make the most of the time we have. And taking that broader perspective highlights what matters. But also it sort of shifts us out of this like, sense of scarcity of today. Because time, poverty, what I was talking about before, this feeling of having too much to do, not enough time to do it is really at the day level, it's like my tasks in front of me and what am I going to accomplish today? What am I going to accomplish this week? When you zoom out and you're thinking about your years of your life overall, then again, it highlights what matters and it actually taking that broader perspective lessens that sense of time scarcity today. And it's like, oh, actually, if I think to zoom out and take this broader view, it's like, oh, what do I want to accomplish this year? It's not like today. And when you're thinking about your year, it's sort of pulling in these really higher order goals versus task orientation. And then not only if you're thinking about this year, you're thinking about like, oh, what about in the next five years? What do I want to accomplish? And again, that doesn't tend to breed this like, oh my God, there's too many things I have to like, check off my to do list. It's like, oh, actually, what really matters? Like, it almost like clears out the to do list of the noise and really sort of puts in front of you, oh, uh, what do I want to invest in? And so to answer your question, recognizing the limited nature of our lifetime versus the scarcity of the hours of today, the limited nature of our lifetime is actually what makes us more intentional with how we spend today. When we get into this time poor mindset where we're thinking about the limited nature of the hours today to get all the things done, then that's where you get this like anxiety and reaction and it just sort of feels like it's out of our control. And actually we do find empirically that this sense of time poverty is linked to lower sense of self efficacy. So we feel worse about our abilities to conquer what we set out to do. And so again, when we sort of shift our attention thinking about time instead, in terms of years and life overall, what matters? And then there's other ways that I have in our research that it points to thinking about time less reactive and more proactive. Then you see these positive effects where it reduces that sense of scarcity and urgency and really drives towards what's important.

Speaker B: If you're enjoying this episode, make sure to follow or subscribe so you never miss a conversation. We've got plenty more great stories coming your way. Now I'd like to shift into sort of organizations. If you're a leader in an organization, you have to worry about your view of time, but also how you're driving and enabling or forcing the people who work with you and around you their sense of time. What did your research show about how leaders should think about their role in organizations?

Speaker A: Yeah, and it's a good question. I, uh, will say that my research is very focused on individual decision making. But certainly in my course what I have is when we're talking about our sort of happiness at work and how you like from an individual perspective, you should be investing in those sort of work activities that are in line with your goals and purpose. And hopefully you can figure out how your own purpose and goals align with that of your organization. But I ask my students, I give them the assignment of like, okay, based off of what you've learned about drives, your own individual happiness or well being, what are some organizational practices that you would think about implementing to foster this well being among the team or within the organization? And what's neat is hearing some folks sort of come up with their very own idea, but then some actually pull from things where they work. Uh, they're like, oh, actually, and one of like Related to time. One organizational practice that keeps coming up as very effective and important is having periods of either the day or the week where there's no meetings. And that is not so that, you know, people go and catch up on their errands. It is more so that they can actually get the work done. Is like instead of again, what meetings do is they almost like create work. And it doesn't leave time for folks to actually dig in and do the deep thinking, get into the flow state. You know, when we are like get to work, uh, at our very best, we're so immersed in what we're doing that we lose sense of time even. But it's impossible to get into a flow state when you are continually reacting to things coming in, whether via email, whether, you know, on your phone or distractions in the office space. So figuring out how can you sort of protect time within people's work days or work weeks so that they don't have to deal with. I used to do was wake up at four in the morning so I could actually get work done before the workday started, you know, and all the destruction. So really sort of understanding the role of being intentional with time and allowing your team to be intentional with their time. We actually have some really neat data that's yet to be published where we are looking at what are the ways of spending time that contribute or affect people's sense of time poverty. And what we find is that when people are spending their days across a greater number of categories of activities, not individual activities, but categories, then they feel more time poor. And what's interesting about that is that that also says like, oh, if we can actually structure our days so that you're not having to span across both work, both like errands, childcare, home care, all of those things like within a day and are uh, socializing, but actually sort of be very intentional. These four day work weeks where you work longer hours within a day, our findings sort of suggest that that would be potentially really effective because then within a day you can be super focused on work. But there's a day during the week where you can catch up on all those errands, the appointments, the stuff that potentially like pulls someone out of their workday and then the weekend is saved for socializing. So it's not within a day trying to span different categories, but over the week, fine, to span categories. So that while we're looking at it at an individual level, absolutely has implications for the organizational level.

Speaker B: So if there's an employee out there and I'm sure there are many listening who are saying sounds great but I have no control over my calendar. Like I have all these meetings. So there's a bunch of people out there who are crying time poverty. What's your advice to them?

Speaker A: Yeah, I would say that people actually have more control than they think. There are absolutely some jobs and some professions that have less control than others. But again, across the board people have more control than they think. And something that I would really recommend folks do is actually track their time. So in this time tracking exercise, over the course of the week, for every half hour, write down what you're doing and rate on a 10 point scale how do you feel coming out of that activity? While tedious to do, there's so much wonderful information in this data collection for oneself. At the end of the week you can look at where are you actually spending your time? What are those activities that are really sort of absorbing so many hours and minutes, but also you can see what are those activities like, how do they actually make you feel? Because we're not very good at predicting how activities will make us feel. And so you often see folks have this sense of like, oh, the thing that I see so enjoy doing is my TV watching at the end of the day and it's like, yeah, maybe the first half hour felt really good, but when they say yes to next episode, you know, three hours in every day of the week, then that's a lot of time. Or the social media, it's like you think it's only a few hours or a uh, few minutes here and there, but seeing how much time that actually adds up to, but it's not just how much time you spend, it's like how do you actually feel? This sense of like, oh, that's my fun thing. But then they look at their, how they actually felt and they're like actually it wasn't that fun. And looking at ah, among their work activities, what are those ways that they're spending that are sources of satisfaction? What are those ways of spending that are not how much time is actually being spent on the things that matter? What in those are there pockets in the day that actually get wasted? And so this amount of information and these various dimensions of information, both sources of satisfaction as well as sources of absorbed minutes and hours, is really helpful to what it tends to do is make people realize, oh, actually I do have a little bit more control than I think. There are these things that I can eliminate so that I have more time for the things that matter to me, whether it's in the professional realm or personal realm, um, but also, and something that we haven't talked so much about is that uh, it's also the impact of how we spend our time positively. It isn't so much tied to how much time you spend on the activity. That is you can get a lot of like when I talked about what is happiness is like how we feel in our days, but it's also how satisfied we feel about our days and about our lives. And we can, if we're intentional about what we're spending on, protecting time for those things that matter, but also paying attention during those times that really matter, removing those external distractions and also sort of savoring some of that good stuff, those good times, then they can have uh, an outsized effect on how we feel about our lives. So this is all to say it doesn't require spending a whole lot of time and our entire days on things that feel great. It's like actually you can feel really great about your life and about your day overall with just like uh, an awesome half hour, you know, like if you're really thoughtful about it. So it's not about quantity of time available or even how much time you spend on any activity. It's absolutely about the quality of that time.

Speaker B: So I love the notion of savoring because I think it's funny, when my kids were bar mitzvah and for those of you who don't listen, we're Jewish, they go through that. The rabbi sat down with us and explained that a long time ago the old rabbis put in place rituals like bar and Bat Mitzvah and explained that the purpose of those rituals is, I love this, is to slow down time. That if you think the world keeps going on and on and on and if you don't take those moments, and it was exactly about savoring, that if you don't take those moments in time to deeply observe, then you're just in this middle of this constant flow of ever ending time. So savoring to me really resonates. Is there a way that people can savor things at work even if their portfolio of things they do are not always the types of things they would on their own want to savor?

Speaker A: Yeah, there's so many ways into answering that. And I agree that savoring is so important. And I see in my work that actually we can find extraordinary happiness in ordinary moments from savoring. And uh, that also we see this effect, that it's actually as we recognize our time in life is limited, we are more likely to savor the moments that we're spending because we realize just how precious it is. And so we see an effective age. As people get older, they're more likely to savor and notice the goodness in the time. Because as we get older, we tend to recognize that our time is in fact limited. But also we found that we can have people recognize even younger people that their time is limited for the good stuff, and then it actually makes them savor more. But also, as you said, it's not just this sort of like paying attention during and recognizing the preciousness of the time, but it's also during our work activities instead of just sort of moving through things and checking them off the list of actually recognizing what is the value of what we are contributing. And I talked a little bit about recognizing our purpose before and one's own purpose in the book Happier Hour, as well as in my class. I have students do this exercise because oftentimes it sounds sort of lofty and intractable of like, purpose, what is my purpose? But the five Whys exercise allows one to ask, like, why am I doing the work that I'm doing? And usually our initial answers are sort of superficial or it's like money or like the job description. But then if you ask yourself, well, why, if money, why is this the work I'm doing in order to make money? And then your answer for why is that the work? Then you're like, well, why is that important? And when you answer to yourself 5 layers of why, it really reveals what drives you, what is intrinsically motivating. So it's not. These are the general notions of success, success. But it's like for you, what is successful? Like, what is it that drives you? And the reason this is so helpful is recognizing what truly, like, intrinsically drives you in your work. Is that a. It, uh, helps you decide where to spend your time. So it helps you to filter out the sort of noise and really focus and say yes to those activities that are sort of in line with that purpose and contribute to it. It also makes the unfun parts of your job when you realize how it actually is. Playing through and contributing to your goals is like, okay, it makes it feel less onerous. But the cool thing that it does is when you've done an activity or like you have a win that is in line with what you've identified as your purpose. It's almost like that's uh, like a sort of high impact savoring that it like really leads to celebration because you have true Sense of reward, of, like, oh, what I'm doing matters and I am making progress. And so instead of just sort of moving through and, like, what's next? There's a lot of opportunity to celebrate and savor the good stuff and those little wins along the way.

Speaker B: So I'd love to give you a moment to savor, which is you've done a lot of research. You've, like, impacted so many people's lives, both with the book, your work, and in your classes. When you think about the impact that your work has had on people and society more broadly, what makes you the most happiest about that?

Speaker A: Well, it's actually having done the five whys exercise. I recognized what drives me. What my purpose is, is to create knowledge about what makes people happy and disseminate that knowledge about what makes people happy so that I can help individuals choose and find greater happiness in their lives. And so when any individual lets me know how some aspect of what I have shared through my work has impacted them, it is so joyful. And it happens when I get an email from a former student or a reader. It happened yesterday when I was at a holiday party where, uh, a woman was like, oh, my gosh, I read your book, and it's just made me. And then I asked her to share what piece of it has sort of played through to influence you in your life. And she shared her sort of morning ritual that she has developed and sort of savored since. And just hearing the different ways that these learnings have helped people be happier, then I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm so excited. I'm, like, living out what I'm setting out to do.

Speaker B: Awesome. So I was going to move into my closing set of questions, but I do want to sneak one more question in. So for any of our listeners at this point who are still not bought in to the fact that they can control their own happiness, they love the ideas, but they're going, you know, life is just, I, uh, have all this going on. What's your last argument to them about taking control and finding the happier hour that they have?

Speaker A: It's such a good question because it does sound really daunting of like, oh, my gosh, what are all these things I have to do to make myself happier? And it sounds like I don't even have the time to think about, let alone do it. But the good news is that tiny little things can have really tremendous effects. And even implementing one tool, one strategy, and for different people, it's like, different strategies prove Effective, but just implementing one, then it gives you that recognition like oh, actually even little things can have a big effect. And maybe the thing I would start with is doing that time tracking audit of like finding sources of satisfaction in the day already or doing that eulogy exercise. Not writing down maybe your whole eulogy, but just thinking forward. Assuming you live a long life 90 years on your passing, what three words would you want to be said about you? And those three words are so clarifying on what matters to us and just thinking about that, which takes not too much time. You can do this in the shower, you can do it while driving to work, you can do it while walking the dog. Just thinking about what those three words are will then find their way into influencing how you approach some of the time of your day. And so it doesn't require any drastic life altering changes, just with again, a little intention and in some cases paying a bit more attention through savoring, you can find and choose to feel happier.

Speaker B: Awesome. So let's move on to my four closing questions I ask all of my guests. The first one is what's one leadership skill that you believe will become even more important in the future?

Speaker A: I think that the way we connect with each other humanly is so critical and showing up, even if it's not in the same space in place, but absolutely showing up with each other through interpersonal interaction is going to continue to be the thread that allows us to persist not only happily, but sort of sustain our well being at a very fundamental and basic level.

Speaker B: Awesome. Now if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how organizations operate, what would it be?

Speaker A: It would be to recognize that productivity is not about quantity of hours put in or quantity of sort of. Actually, it's really quantity of hours put in that it is absolutely about the quality of those hours so that you sort of actually produce real outcomes, not just sort of checking and ticking.

Speaker B: Awesome. And what's one final piece of advice you like to leave with our listeners who are awesomely inspired by your push for happiness?

Speaker A: I guess I would go back to what I said before, that when it comes to time and happiness, it is not about the quantity of time, how much you have available, or even how much you spent. It's absolutely about the quality of that time. And we can find extraordinary happiness in the hours of today.

Speaker B: Awesome. Now, last question. Where can listeners follow your work and learn more about happier hour?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean the book. There's also the audiobook so that. And if one doesn't have the time to Sit down and read. You can listen. And then on my website, Cassie Mholmes m.com I will sort of put my latest research and then on, um, LinkedIn, but I don't through my own time tracking. I realize social media is not where I enjoy spending time, so you won't really find me there.

Speaker B: Well, I will tell our listeners and, uh, I'll read a few. Her book is amazing. Her work is amazing. I think that if more and more people understood and sort of listened to your research and took it in and internalized it, that I believe that that is one of the major pushes for what I believe in is humanity at scale. So, Cassie, thank you for joining me today and maybe more importantly, thank you for your body of work.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. This was a treat. And thank you for all that you do.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Cassie Holmes. Now let's dive into the After Show, a segment where I'll reflect on the key takeaways from this episode. Welcome to the After Show. As I was listening back to this conversation with Cassie, what stayed with me wasn't a tactic or a tool. It was the question she kept returning to. How does time actually feel? As we move through our lives, we spend a lot of time optimizing schedules and chasing productivity. But Cassie kept pulling the conversation underneath that to the lived experience of, of time, the constant sense of rush, the way attention fractures, and how burnout or, uh, dissatisfaction often shows up not because people don't care, but because the way time gets filled leaves little room for meaning. This wasn't about slowing down for the sake of it. It was about becoming more intentional with the limited time we actually have. Coming out of that conversation, five insights really stood out for me. The first is that time, not money, is the resource we consistently mismanage. Cassie made a simple but powerful point. We're trained to think carefully about money because it's visible and measurable. But we really apply the same discipline to time. As she explained, just shifting our attention to time as the more critical resource changes how intentional we become. And that alone measurably improves. Well, being leaders often underestimate how much this mindset shapes daily decisions. The second insight is that burnout starts with time poverty, not personal failure. One phrase Cassie used that really struck out with me was this notion of time poverty, that feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. She described how that state makes people reactive, anxious, and more prone to burnout. What's important here is her framing. Burnout isn't about resilience or toughness. It's the predictable, uh, outcome of living in constant urgency without space to prioritize. The third insight is that zooming out reduces anxiety. Zooming in creates it. I loved her distinction between thinking about time in hours versus thinking about time in years. Cassie explained that when people fixate on the scarcity of today's hours, stress goes up. But when they zoomed out thinking about the arc of their life, or even just the year ahead, it clarifies what matters and quiets a lot of the noise. Perspective, not pressure, is what drives intention. The fourth insight is that the quality of time matters far more than the quantity. Cassie came back to this again and again. Happiness isn't about having more time or doing less work. It's about how time is experienced. She pointed out that a single, deeply meaningful half hour when someone is present, engaged, and aligned with what matters can have an outsized impact on how people feel about their entire day or even their life. That's a direct challenge to cultures obsessed with hours, utilization, and constant activity. The final insight is that leaders shape how time is experienced whether they meet it or not when we shift it to organizations. And Cassie was clear that leaders play a huge role in shaping human experience through time. Design meetings, interruptions, expectations, availability. These aren't neutral practices like protecting focused time or creating meaning. Free blocks aren't perks. They're structural choices that determine whether people ever get into flow, feel agency, or find meaning in their work. So I'll leave you with this one. One question to sit with when you look at how you spent your time this week, does it reflect the life you're trying to build or just the demands you're reacting to? That's it for now. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And remember, you are the flame that can spark humanity at scale. One decision, one conversation, one moment at a time. Thanks for tuning in to Humanity at scale. Redefining Leadership Podcast Remember, true leadership isn't only about achieving short term results. It's about creating a lasting, positive impact on all of the people you touch. Join me next time as we uncover more insights and strategies for humanity. Centric leadership. Until then, I'm Bruce Temkin encouraging you to lead with purpose and empathy and to be the spark that elevates states humanity at scale.