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Adobe Stock Health Discover the real formula for having a good day: no, it's not a matter of luckTime management is "crucial", but we don't do it well: "We don't know how to delegate or rest"
Friday, 27 March 2026, 14:56
If we care about someone, there are two questions that never fail when we see them: how are you and how was your day.
They usually go together because one influences the other: if you have a cold, your day was not a good one. And if you've had a day full of difficulties, whatever they are, you won't be doing well either. But as easy as it sounds, there's a lot more to the equation. A good day depends on a lot of variables. Can they all be kept under control? Or rather, is there a magic formula to put them in order so that the result is precisely that, to have a good day?
A group of Canadian researchers at the University of British Columbia believe it is. Well, exactly what it says is that depending on how we distribute our time, the result can be the desirable one. And that there is an 'ideal' distribution that, if we respect, it is more than possible to have what we want so much: a great day. The data comes from the US Time Use Survey, in which participants answer how much time they spend on more than 100 different activities.
The ideal, according to social psychologist Dunigan Folk, director of the work, and his team, is to dedicate six hours to work and another six to family. From there, two hours to friends, another two to sport, an hour and a half to socialising with strangers and only one to screens (whether mobile, computer, tablet...). With this on the table, the question to ask is obvious: is it possible to organise our daily lives according to these criteria to ensure that every day is perfect?
The figure
15 minutes
would be the ideal maximum time to get to work, according to Dunigan Folk's work.
María Antonia Carmona, member of the Coaching Psychology Section of the Official College of Psychology of Catalonia, is clear: no general formula can guarantee this result. "The study is very thorough, but at no point does it define something that is very important: what happiness is, the basis of having a good day. And it's important to do so because it's not the same for you as it is for me," she says. Her Galician colleague Ana García Rey agrees: "The time we dedicate to each section has to be in line with our own values and purposes", which obviously differ from one individual to another.
So the first thing we have to do is to sit down and reflect on what is important to us and from there try to organise ourselves.... But be careful not to forget that we live in a world where there are things we cannot change. "I don't like the philosophy of 'if you want to, you can'. You can want to work six hours, as in the survey, but maybe you can't do it," adds Carmona. In fact, in Spain it is impossible: reducing the working day from 40 to 35 hours a week is costing Pedro Sánchez's government more than a few hard times with his government partners and employers. And most of the self-employed lack the hours in the day to make their accounts balance.
A timeline
But this doesn't have to be an insurmountable obstacle to our happiness. If we work an average of eight hours a day, we have another 16 hours to go, so it's time to get down to work. How do we start? "By making a graphical activity log to see where we spend our time based on our last few days. That would be the baseline," explains García Rey. From there, it would be time to check whether we are really doing well and being satisfied "or to identify areas for improvement".
"In psychology we use a tool, the wheel of values, which is divided into eight spheres: family, work, personal development, physical health, emotional health.... First we have to assess the degree of importance each of these areas has for us and then the degree of satisfaction according to the results we obtain from our organisation. It is when we cross-reference the data that we will realise whether we are sacrificing one for another without being aware of it and whether we are happy with it or not. For example, family for work," says Carmona.
- But what if work is more important to me than family?
- Nothing, if it doesn't cause you any problems. Although you would have to interpret what that means in terms of no problem. You would also have to see, if you have a family, what they think about it.
Knowing how to manage our time is "decisive" for having a good day. The thing is that we don't do it very well, in general terms: "We overestimate the time we have. We don't calculate well. We don't prioritise well. We waste hours on activities that we could postpone or delegate.... And we don't allow ourselves breaks," says García Rey. Because, be careful, taking a break does not mean picking up your mobile phone and checking your social networks.
Less networking, more talking
"The time we spend on this chapter has gotten out of hand since the pandemic. Many of the patients who come to therapy are surprised when they check the time they spend using their mobile phones outside of work and see that it amounts to three, four or even five hours a day, and above all that it occurs at the end of the day, in the evening," says the Galician psychologist. If we look at the Canadian researchers' formula, which in this section is applicable to our country, it is only one hour.
This is where we can carve out many minutes to spend on two activities on which having a good day depends a lot: spending time with the family and socialising. Because one of the conclusions reached by the Canadian researchers' article is precisely that having social interactions is a source of wellbeing...Even if they are brief and with strangers.