Feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list can certainly make you unhappy, but a new study released last week suggests that more free time will not actually make people as happy as they commonly believe it will.
The researchers collected data from two large-scale surveys, which included more than 35, 000 replies. They found that people with up to two hours of free time a day generally had higher levels of well-being than those with less time. But people who had five or more hours of free time a day generally said they felt worse.
So the free-time "sweet spot" might be two to three hours per day, the findings suggest. "While being too busy can cause stress, having more time is not always better, " said Marissa Sharif, an assistant professor at The Wharton School, in a press release.
Experts note, for example, that some adults struggle with the "retirement blues, " which can be due to a lack of stimulation (刺激) and structure, among other things. The "sweet spot" seems to have something to do with how people spend the extra time they have, the researchers behind the new study argue.
They conducted several smaller online experiments. In
one they asked participants to imagine having 
to seven free hours per day, and to imagine spending that time doing "productive" things (like exercising) or to imagine doing "unproductive" activities (like watching TV). The participants believed their well-being would suffer if they had a lot of free time during the day - but only if they used it unproductively.
Though that experiment was hypothetical, which is one limitation of the new research, it's certainly in line with other researches showing that being in a state of "flow" can be good for people's mental health. In other words, how people use their free time matters.
"In cases when people do find themselves with excessive amounts of spare time, such as retirement or having left a job, " Sharif said, "our results suggest these individuals would benefit from spending their newfound time with purpose. "
