Volunteers who used money to save themselves time were more content than volunteers who purchased themselves physical stuff. Karen Hopkin reports.

花钱来节约时间的志愿者们比那些购买实物的志愿者们感到更加满足。卡伦·霍普金报道。

撰文/播音：卡伦·霍普金（Karen Hopkin）

翻译：郭鑫鹏

审校：杨枭

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. [Ashley V. Whillans et al., Buying time promotes happiness]

我们都知道金钱不能买到幸福。但是一个最新的研究表明，这句话存在漏洞。一个研究团队发现，购买那些能够节约时间的服务比直接购买实物可以带给人更大的满足。这项结果发表在期刊《美国科学院学报》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.

可以很肯定地说，我们中大多数人经常会感觉时间不够。哈佛商学院的艾希莉·威廉斯（Ashley Whillans）是这项研究的负责人，她将这种频繁的情况描述为“时间饥荒“。和其他类型的饥荒一样，长期的时间不足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 like our life is spiraling out of control, thereby undermining our personal well-being.”

“当我们发现我们没有时间完成待办事项时，会感觉我们的生活正在失控，这会损害我们的健康。“

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，威廉斯和她的团队想知道金钱是否可以用来购买时间而让人轻松一些。像是雇佣其他人来打扫房屋、修理草坪，或递送货物。

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.为此，研究者们邀请了美国、加拿大、丹麦和荷兰超过6000个人来为他们生活的满意度排序，来估计他们每月花了多少钱在日常琐事外包和购买时间上。

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.

他们发现那些喜欢用钱交换自由时间的人会感到更满意——这与他们的收入和每周工作时长无关。

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.

在接下来的研究中，研究者们设计了一个较小的实验，他们给志愿者们40美元来购买自己想要的东西。同一批参与者们也获得了另外40美元，让他们使用这些钱来节约时间。这再次验证了，购买时间更容易鼓舞情绪和减少焦虑。

These findings may be hard for some people to, well, buy:

一些人可能会很难相信这些结论：

“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.”

“即使在有着850名百万富翁的样本中，只有一半多的调查对象花钱来购买时间。这些结论与一个认为我们并不总是花钱来提升幸福的文献相一致。“

Even when we should know better.

即使我们明白得很（节约时间会更快乐）。

“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.”

“我个人意识到这点是当我不久前搬去一个新城市时，我有很多事需要做。我需要数据使我相信，购买时间可以让我的生活更轻松，更快乐。“

—Karen Hopkin