Nautilus

Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness, But Time Just Might Do It

While on vacation in distant locales, people often find that time moves quite differently than in the places they’re used to. In the tropics, we settle into the grooves of “island time” and relax thanks to a more leisurely rhythm. A trip to a big city can leave us exhilarated but also drained by the energetic whir of life there.

The different paces of different and his colleagues have studied the speed of life in cities around the world and across the U.S. In a they measured how fast solitary pedestrians in a downtown core covered a distance of 60 feet (being careful to exclude those who are obviously window shopping), timed how long it took to complete a simple commercial transaction, and recorded the accuracy of randomly selected clocks in the downtown business area. 

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Nautilus

Nautilus10 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
How AI Can Save the Zebras
Tanya Berger-Wolf didn’t expect to become an environmentalist. After falling in love with math at 5 years old, she started a doctorate in computer science in her early 20s, attracting attention for her cutting-edge theoretical research. But just as s
Nautilus3 min read
The Power of Regret
One of the primary motivators of human behavior is avoiding regret. Before the legendary behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky formalized prospect theory and loss aversion, they believed that regret avoidance was at the root of the h
Nautilus3 min read
Unraveling The Evolution Of Flight
The archeopteryx, a small animal that lived around 150 million years ago, resembles a cross between an ancient Jurassic dinosaur and a modern-day bird. Measuring about 20 inches long from its teeth to the end of its long tail, it had black-feathered

Related Books & Audiobooks