Time to connect with friends

I’ve mentioned it here before: social connection – as in hanging out with friends — isn’t only essential to our quality of life, but it’s critical to our health. Friendships and support boost our immune function, stave off depression, and ease a bunch of other nasty things that make us feel, well, icky. Still, we’ve become so busy (Read: rushed) and dependent on social media, that we regularly substitute a technological chat for the real thing.

I have a couple of things to say about that: 1. Stop doing that. 2. Make time for friends.

But how? We are busy, overscheduled, overwhelmed, and just plain tired. With all that’s going on, how do we find the time we need to connect with friends?

One answer, that is both surprising and easy, (always a plus), is to simply think about the time you do have.

A study published in the journal Psychological Science indicates that people who think about time, plan to spend more of it with the people they care about. People who think about money, tend to fill up their calendars with work obligations.

In the experiment designed by Cassie Mogilner of the University of Pennsylvania, adults throughout the U.S. were prompted, by puzzles and exercies,  to think about time or money. Then, they were asked how they planned to spend their time the next day. Those who were primed to think about money, said they would spend more time working. Those who thought of time, planned to spend more time with friends.

In another experiment, Mogilner found that those people who did spend more time with friends were happier than those who thought more of money and spent more time working.

Here’s the deal. Connecting with others is essential to our lasting health and vitality. By thinking about the ever-dwindling resource time, you may be prompted to spend some of what you have on the people that matter most. In the end, everybody feels better and that’s time well spent.