We don't have enough time to do this, we don't have enough time to do that. But a new study suggests that when we give our time away, it helps us feel like we have more time.
Researchers from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Business School and the Yale School of Management found that when a person volunteers his or her time, it makes us feel more efficient, and therefore like we are less stressed and hurried.
The study included results from a number of experiments. In one of the experiments, 218 students at a university were asked to do one of two five-minute activities. One activity required writing a letter to a sick child, while the other activity involved counting the number of letter Es in pages and pages of Latin words.
Then, after the tasks, the study participants were asked to say how much time they felt like they had. The researchers found that the participants who wrote the sick child a letter were the ones who felt like they had lots of time, compared with the ones who had to count the Es.
The new study will be published in the journal Psychological Science.
Want to know more health benefits of volunteering? Click through this slideshow from our partner iVillage.com:
