Cassie Holmes

“[Happier Hour] has an intellectual heft that puts this a notch above similar volumes, and her presentation remains accessible and remarkably unstuffy throughout.”— Publishers Weekly starred review

Everyone who’s ever expressed frustration at not having enough time to do the things they truly enjoy has probably been met with this response: make time. For Cassie Holmes, renowned expert on time and happiness, it’s not about making time—it’s just protecting the time we already have. An award-winning professor of Marketing and Behavioral Decision-Making at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, Cassie’s research examines how focusing on time (rather than money) increases happiness, how the meaning of happiness changes over the course of one’s lifetime, and how much happiness people enjoy from extraordinary versus ordinary experiences. When we’re able to see our days, weeks, months, years, and careers broken down into the quality of our time, we can use that information to reconstruct our schedules, and lives, based on what we need. “In my empirical pursuit of happiness, I’m just hoping to help people of all ages find a bit more happiness in their lives,” Cassie says.

Cassie’s ground-breaking book Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most is a bright, deeply relatable guide to recharging and the ultimate antidote to overscheduling. Cassie reveals why having too much free time is as unsatisfying as too little (two to five hours each day is best), and how to build days that aren’t just full—but fulfilling. Katy Milkman, bestselling author of How to Change, calls “an absolute gem–useful, evidence-based, and a pleasure to read. Armed with the insights conveyed in Happier Hour, we can all find greater fulfillment in the time we have.”

Cassie’s research has been published in such top-tier academic journals as Psychological Science and the Journal of Consumer Research. Popular accounts of her work have been featured on NPR and appeared in The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Scientific American, The Washington Post, and many more. Her research on “giving time” was featured in New York Times Magazine’s “32 Innovations that Will Change Your Tomorrow.” She was called one of the Best 40 Business Professors Under 40 in Poets & Quants, and received the Early Career Award for her distinguished scholarly contributions to her field from both the Association of Consumer Research and the Society of Consumer Psychology. The course she developed and now teaches, Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, is among UCLA’s most popular for MBAs and Executive MBAs alike.

Previously, Cassie was a tenured faculty member and award-winning teacher at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and a B.A. from Columbia. She’s also a faculty affiliate with The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute—an interdisciplinary organization dedicated to the research, education, and practice of kindness.