In 1845 a man builds a small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts and lives there for more than two years. His name is Henry David Thoreau, he is just over twenty-seven, and he is not running away from the world: he is running an experiment. He wants to find out what he truly needs in order to live well.
That experience became “Walden”, published in 1854. In the chapter “Economy”, Thoreau offers a definition that still holds today: the cost of a thing is the amount of what he calls life that must be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. What matters is not the price on the tag, but how many hours of work, how much effort, how much time taken from the people and passions we love it takes to obtain it and keep it.
It sounds like a philosophical provocation, but psychological research has circled around it. In a 2017 study in the journal PNAS, Ashley Whillans and colleagues surveyed 6,271 people in the United States, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands. Those who spent money to buy time, for instance by outsourcing unpleasant chores, reported greater life satisfaction, and the effect showed up at different income levels. In an experiment with 60 people, spending 40 dollars to save time improved mood more than spending it on a material purchase. The message, as with Thoreau, is that time is no minor detail: it is the currency we pay everything with.
A caution, though: Thoreau isn’t asking us to move into the woods, or to give up everything. He asks us to do the accounting honestly. That new phone, that bigger house, that habit that keeps us running: how much life do they cost us? And do they give back enough of what matters?
Try a small exercise with pen and paper. Pick one recurring expense or commitment and ask yourself: how many hours must I work, or how much stress must I bear, to afford it? Then ask whether it is worth it. If the answer is no, you can simplify. If it’s yes, you have confirmed a conscious choice, and that is a lovely gift too.
Happy reflecting, and happy Saturday: may it be a day in which we spend our lives on what truly matters to us.
Sources
- Thoreau, H. D. (1854). Walden; or, Life in the Woods, chapter “Economy”.
- Whillans, A. V., Dunn, E. W., Smeets, P., Bekkers, R., Norton, M. I. (2017). Buying time promotes happiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(32), 8523–8527. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1706541114
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