The pursuit of happiness requires free time | Danielle Roberts

Danielle Roberts argues that the pursuit of happiness is hollow when people lack the free time to pursue it. Although everyone has 24 hours in a day, the ability to use that time depends heavily on income and circumstances: someone who can pay for a housekeeper, nanny, and driver has a different degree of control than a single parent working two jobs. Roberts says time should be a universal human right, not a privilege allocated by wealth or background. She frames access to time as a civil rights and democratic issue, because people with no time to participate in public life cannot fully take part in democracy.

The standard 40-hour work week understates the demands people face. Roberts says the average American works more than 40 hours a week even before accounting for commuting, getting ready for work, and unpaid responsibilities such as caregiving, shopping, cleaning, and laundry. At the time of her talk, she said more Americans were working multiple jobs than the Bureau of Labor Statistics had ever recorded. For people working multiple jobs to survive, she argues, better time-management habits cannot resolve a lack of control over their time.

Roberts sees the problem as systemic rather than an individual failure to manage time. Technology and productivity gains have not necessarily given workers more free time, she says, because time freed up is often filled with additional work. She argues that organizations frequently design work around imaginary people with unlimited energy, rather than recognizing finite human capacity and the need for rest. Roberts cites more than $60 billion in annual corporate spending on wellness programs, alongside only 20% of the global workforce being engaged and 82% of the workforce being at risk of burnout. In her view, more wellness or resilience efforts cannot compensate for work that exceeds people’s capacity.

Her proposed “time amendment,” drawing on “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” would recognize time as a civil right, treat joy as evidence of a functioning democracy, and make rest infrastructure rather than a reward for retirement. Rest, she argues, restores the mental, emotional, and physical capacity people need for work, relationships, community life, and democratic participation. She also says historically marginalized groups have not had equal access to joy, rest, connection, creativity, and play. The goal is not simply to fit more into each day, but to ensure people have time for a life beyond work.

At work, Roberts points to reducing unnecessary meetings, replacing some meetings with asynchronous updates, protecting focus time, and reconsidering constant messages and after-hours communication. She says the average worker is interrupted every two minutes and needs time to refocus. Broader options include four-day work weeks, right-to-disconnect laws, and expanded bereavement and caregiver leave. But she cautions that service, gig, and healthcare workers understand their industries’ challenges best, and says their ideas need to be heard directly. More available time could also be consumed by taking on additional jobs, so greater time access does not automatically guarantee leisure.

Roberts connects her argument to her father, who laid tile for 40 years and received knee surgery for his retirement, and to her own experience working 60- to 70-hour weeks in advertising at age 23. Her mother died of cancer nine weeks after texting that she was unwell. Roberts says not to bet on a later that is not promised, or optimize the life out of one’s life. For individuals, she suggests keeping a phone out of reach upon waking, using apps to block social media at set times, and creating a work log-off ritual such as a walk or a favorite song. She reviews the previous week each Sunday, chooses one or two priorities for the next week, and focuses on those before taking on more. She also says people may need to slow down and regulate before deciding what they want or need.