Abstract

How people spend their time says a lot about the organisation of their daily lives. It reveals the temporal organisation of the societies they live in: what happens when, how often, how long it lasts, in what order, and within which context. It reveals inequalities and challenges of sudden changes such as the COVID-19 pandemic. It reveals to be fertile ground for scientific-philosophical discussions about what time actually is. It reveals to be a meaningful statistical proxy for inequality, wealth, and happiness. It reveals to be an almost infinite source of scientific research in many diverse disciplines, but also a challenge to continue to supplement this source with data in times of digitisation, smart statistics, and privacy and data security sensitivities. In short, time reveals everything.

Time Reveals Everything provides a state-of-the-art glimpse in the hourglass of time use research, in which leading scientists from the field of time use research demonstrate what it is, how it can be conducted, and how it can be used. By providing an overview of the key insights, current debates and challenges in performing time research, it is an invaluable source for time researchers. This publication is also relevant for anyone interested in (the implications of ) the temporal organisation of societies as well as the challenges, opportunities and inequalities of everyday life. For scholars from a wide range of scientific disciplines, statisticians, students, policy makers, social workers, journalists, … for everyone, time has something to reveal.