Buổi 42: Reading – Matching information & short-answer (vì sao ta luôn thấy thiếu thời gian?)

Always in a hurry

(Bài đọc tự viết; nội dung ở mức phổ thông, không có số liệu thật.)

A Ask people how they are, and a surprising number will reply that they are busy. Researchers sometimes describe a persistent sense of not having enough time as “time poverty”. The puzzle is that, in some countries, studies that ask people to record exactly how they spend each day suggest that leisure time has not fallen as dramatically as this feeling implies – at least for many groups. How people feel about their time and how they actually use it, in other words, do not always match.

B One explanation concerns the way free time is now experienced. An evening that once consisted of a single uninterrupted block may today be broken into dozens of fragments by messages and notifications. Even if the total number of free hours is similar, fragmented time seems to feel shorter and less restful, because it is rarely long enough to become absorbed in anything.

C A second explanation is economic. As incomes rise, each hour can be converted into more money, and the opportunity cost of doing nothing increases accordingly. Some economists have suggested that this makes idle time feel wasteful, so that people fill their leisure with activities and feel guilty when they do not. Paradoxically, then, greater prosperity may make people feel poorer in time.

D A third factor is the sheer number of ways to spend time. When options were limited, choosing how to spend an evening was simple. Now there are always more films to watch, more places to visit and more people to keep up with, and this abundance can leave people with a nagging sense that they are missing out on something better.

E It would be wrong, however, to suggest that time poverty is merely a matter of perception. Some groups genuinely have very little free time: people who combine several jobs, for instance, and those who care for young children or elderly relatives alongside paid work. For them, advice about “slowing down” can sound not only unhelpful but faintly insulting.

F Popular remedies tend to focus on the individual: switch off notifications, set aside protected time for deep work, learn to say no. These steps can help, and there is no reason not to try them. But they have limits. For people whose working hours change from week to week, a more effective change might be predictable schedules, which would allow them to plan their lives with some confidence. Time, in short, is partly a personal resource and partly a social one.