Dr. Laura M Giurge

This course is available on the Executive MSc in Behavioural Science. This course is not available as an outside option.

Time is the most pervasive aspect of our lives. Every day we make decisions (or decisions are made for us) about how or with whom to spend our finite time in our personal and professional life. But what is time and how do we calculate its value? Why do we fail to optimally allocate our time? How does time affect our motivation, productivity, and well-being? Why is it so difficult to eradicate inequality in time-use at work and at home? What can leaders and employees do to protect desired work-life boundaries? And if time is our most precious resource, why is time theft not a crime?

This course seeks to address these questions and more by drawing primarily from management research and featuring real-life examples across industries and cultures. Students taking this course will gain a multidisciplinary perspective on managing time at work and beyond; will learn to think critically about their own experience and use of time, and how this shapes their expectations and behaviours in their personal life, at work, and in society; they will be able to recognize the barriers that prevent them from pursuing activities that are beneficial for them; will gain knowledge about how innovations and the growing knowledge economy has changed the way we think about time; and will learn how to formulate solutions that enable positive behavioural change in the way they use and experience time across all aspects of their lives.

Given that how we spend our time is how we live our life, this course is set up to be highly interactive and experiential. Students taking this course will not only learn about the theoretical insights on time but will also get to apply the science on time by engaging in various evidence-based exercises.

15 hours of lectures and 7 hours and 30 minutes of seminars in the ST.

1) Group project: From Monday to Thursday, you will work as a group to analyse a real time-related challenge that you will select with the help of a ‘Time Canvas’ template. On Friday, you will submit your template on Moodle and give a short-timed presentation in-class.

2) Individual 1-page proposal on the topic of the summative (max 800 words). Identify and evaluate a time-related challenge of your choice and propose an intervention to solve it. The time challenge can be psychological, behavioural, or structural; it can occur at the individual, collective, organizational, or societal level; and it can manifest in your personal or professional life, or at the intersection of the two. Like the summative assignment, in the proposal you will need to cover the following topics (you can decide the order in which you cover these topics): a) introduce the time challenge, b) explain what we know from prior research, c) identify what we don’t know about this challenge and why it’s important to address this gap in our knowledge, d) propose a (behavioural) intervention to address this challenge and argue why this intervention would be effective based on the knowledge gained through the class material and through your own literature review, e) discuss additional ways in which decision-makers (e.g., organizational leaders, policymakers) could address the identified time challenge. You will receive individual feedback, and this will help you develop your op-ed.

Blagoev, B., & Schreyögg, G. (2019). Why do extreme work hours persist? Temporal uncoupling as a new way of seeing. Academy of Management Journal, 62(6), 1818-1847.

Brodsky, A., & Amabile, T. M. (2018). The downside of downtime: The prevalence and work pacing consequences of idle time at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(5), 496–512.

Feldman, E., Reid, E. M., & Mazmanian, M. (2020). Signs of our time: Time-use as dedication, performance, identity, and power in contemporary workplaces. Academy of Management Annals, 14(2), 598-626.

Giurge, L. M., Whillans, A. V., & West, C. (2020). Why time poverty matters for individuals, organisations and nations. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(10), 993-1003.

Gonsalves, L. (2020). From face time to flex time: The role of physical space in worker temporal flexibility. Administrative Science Quarterly, 65(4), 1058-1091.

Pai, J., DeVoe, S. E., & Pfeffer, J. (2020). How income and the economic evaluation of time affect who we socialize with outside of work. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 161, 158-175.

Shipp, A. J. (2021). My fixation on time management almost broke me. Harvard Business Review.

Templeton, E. M., Chang, L. J., Reynolds, E. A., LeBeaumont, M. D. C., & Wheatley, T. (2022). Fast response times signal social connection in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(4).

Young, C., & Melin, J. L. (2019). Time is a network good. Current Opinion in Psychology, 26, 23-27.

Coursework (20%, 500 words) and essay (80%, 1500 words) in the ST.

1) Exercises (20%): To really understand the science of time, you need to apply it. For that reason, one part of the assessment comprises several exercises (both in and outside class). After each exercise, you will need to submit a brief reflection on how the exercise affected you. The exercises will be debriefed in-class.

2) Essay + Annotated bibliography (80%): You will write an essay (max 1.500 words, excluding the bibliography) that is grounded in academic literature but follows the structure of an op-ed article (e.g., Harvard Business Review style). In your op-ed, you will need to identify and evaluate a time-related challenge of your choice and propose an intervention to solve it. The time challenge can be psychological, behavioural, or structural; it can occur at the individual, collective, organizational, or societal level; and it can manifest in your personal or professional life, or at the intersection of the two. Like the summative assignment, in the proposal you will need to cover the following topics (you can decide the order in which you cover these topics): a) introduce the time challenge, b) explain what we know from prior research, c) identify what we don’t know about this challenge and why it’s important to address this gap in our knowledge, d) propose a (behavioural) intervention to address this challenge and argue why this intervention would be effective based on the knowledge gained through the class material and through your own literature review, e) discuss additional ways in which decision-makers (e.g., organizational leaders, policymakers) could address the identified time challenge. Like op-ed articles, you will use hyperlinked (not in-text) citations.

Along the op-ed, you will need to submit an annotated bibliography that contains a) a list of scientific references that you used for the op-ed, and b) a short text below each reference (1-2 sentences only) describing why exactly the reference is important in the context of your op-ed. You should follow the reference style. A successful annotated bibliography should show understanding of the sources included and not be a mere description of the sources.