Suddenly getting back an hour you had set aside for plans changes how you perceive time.
News that plans have been canceled — like a work meeting — can feel like an unexpected gift of freedom. That returned hour changes your psychological sense of time and affects how you use it.
“An hour saved by a canceled plan feels longer than 60 minutes, and that mismatch from expectations creates a unique sense of possibility,” explained Gabriela Tonietto, lead author of a study on time management at Rutgers University.
In earlier work, Tonietto examined the hidden costs of overplanning, the benefits of having nothing to do, and the constant feeling of running out of time.
In a new study, she and colleagues at Ohio State University, the University of Toronto, and Peking University examined why canceled plans create a sense of freedom — and how that alters people’s sense of time. The findings were published on the University of Chicago Press website.
Why a Canceled Meeting Feels Like Freedom — and Why Time Stretches
The team recruited more than 2,300 participants from university campuses and online platforms such as Prolific. The researchers ran seven surveys measuring psychological and behavioral responses to a sudden time windfall.
In the first four surveys, respondents compared saved time — for example, a canceled meeting — to other periods of free time of the same length. Statistical analysis showed that an unexpectedly saved hour feels longer than an expected hour of free time.
Next, the researchers analyzed how people spent the suddenly available free time. In three surveys, participants reported their planned and actual behavior when they had extra free time. When given an extra hour, they often took on longer tasks.
For example, an office worker who suddenly had an unplanned free hour would start a 45-minute task instead of a 30-minute one.
Given unexpected free time in their schedule, the worker would walk to a café instead of quickly grabbing a cup of coffee in the break room. In other words, participants felt a buoyant sense of possibility — they felt they could do more.
Last-minute meeting cancellations often led people to choose leisure over work.
You probably shouldn’t expect your boss to start randomly canceling meetings because of the study. But as Tonietto advised, next time a meeting is canceled, “take advantage of it and make the most of it.”
Photo: Unsplash
