You have a full hour until your next meeting. But you probably won't get the most out of that time, new research suggests. In a series of eight studies, both in the lab and in real life, researchers found that free time seems shorter for people when it comes before a task or appointment on their calendar.
In an online survey of 198 people, the researchers asked some participants to imagine they had a friend come over within an hour and "you're all set for the visit." The others were told they had no plans for the evening. All participants were asked how many minutes they could "objectively" read during the next hour and how many minutes they "subjectively" felt they could spend reading during that same hour. Regardless of whether they had a friend come over or not, participants said they objectively had about 50 minutes available to read. When asked how much time they felt they needed to read — the subjective measurement — until the friend came over, they found that they were still missing 10 minutes in their hour — about 40 minutes. The results also held up in real-life studies.
The researchers asked participants to provide their actual schedules for the next day. Participants indicated when each scheduled task in their calendar would start and how much time they would need before each task was prepared.
Participants were then given the opportunity to participate in a 30-minute or 45-minute study on that day. The 30-minute study paid $2.50, and the 45-minute study paid twice as much:$5. For some participants, the study was scheduled in the hour before they told them to prepare for their next appointment. The others were not scheduled against another appointment. Although they had ample time to complete the 45-minute study, participants who had an appointment within an hour were significantly more likely than the others to choose the 30-minute study over the 45-minute version. People also seemed to get more done when they didn't have a scheduled task hanging over their heads, the researchers found.
In a study of 158 college students, a researcher told participants when they arrived at the lab that the study sessions were running faster than expected, so she wanted to wait to see if more participants arrived. Some participants were reminded that they had a task coming up soon:they were told "they have about five minutes before we can start, you can do whatever you want before we start." Others were not reminded of their upcoming task and were simply told “they had about five minutes to do whatever you wanted”.
After the time elapsed, all participants wrote down what they did during the five-minute interval. The students reported doing things like sending a text message, checking email and visiting social media sites. But those who weren't reminded of a new task performed more activities (average of 2.38) than those who were told they had a task quickly (average of 1.86). These findings suggest that looming tasks on our calendar make us less productive.
