Giving time as a gift

Receiving gifts is one of the five love languages (that occasionally do the rounds). Think of presents you can hold: square boxes, lovingly wrapped. Meanwhile, the thing most of us are actually short of is time – plain, usable time. Time that isn’t already shredded into confetti by errands, messages or lifemin.

And it’s odd, isn’t it, because time is the most important currency. You could get more money; you cannot get more Tuesday.

Ashley Whillans makes this point in her influential book Time Smart: we’re pretty casual about the tiny decisions that give away our time, or use it poorly, even though those decisions shape the texture of our days, and therefore, lives. We end up time-poor not only because life is busy, but also because time is treated like the cheap ingredient you can always add more of. As an aside, if you don't know how to spend spare time, solving that should be an important personal development project for you.

If you like giving gifts, have you ever considered giving time? (As long as the person who's receiving it knows how to spend it – same point I just made above).

Give someone time as a gift.

Not a we should catch up sometime, but a clear block where they’re free, to catch up, de-stress, do something nourishing, or just breathe. A moment that lets their nervous system recover and their inner weather settle. If you’ve ever done the Day Crafting Self-care Workbook, you’ll know how rare that is: rest that isn’t stolen, rushed, or comes with a side order of guilt.

Here are some ways to give time as a present. The theme is simple: remove friction, create slack, protect a pocket of recovery.

• Take a (don’t want to do) job off their list: the supermarket run, the tip, the returns, the pharmacy, the post office queue. Not tell me what you need but I’m going. Text me your list.

• Cook a double batch and drop round two portions labelled Midweek Rescue. Something that turns a future evening from scramble into oh thank God.

• Offer a childcare swap with a specific slot: Saturday 10–1, you disappear, I’ve got this. Or offer free babysitting or carer relief. The magic here is specificity: a real window, not a vague promise.

• Do the lifemin grind for them: booking appointments, chasing an insurer, sorting a bill, cancelling subscriptions. The stuff that drains the soul because it’s small, fiddly, and endless.

• Give them a quiet morning voucher: you handle breakfast, pets, and logistics, they get a slow start. If you’ve been around Day Crafting at all, you’ll know how much a morning can set the tone of the whole day.

• Take over a commute or a lift. Driving is rarely just driving. It’s also time and attention and low-level strain. Take that off them once, and watch what returns.

• Do a garden makeover or house tidy for them. Not necessarily a spring clean fantasy, it could be just one surface, one cupboard, one corner that keeps staring at them every day.

• Make a plan they don’t have to make: research and book the train, the table, the tickets, the accommodation. Decision fatigue is real issue for some people. Planning is invisible labour you can take. Hire a PA!

• A repair session: you come round with tools and fix the one small thing that’s been annoying them for months. The loose handle. The sticky drawer. The light that flickers like a haunted lighthouse.

• A proper walk and a proper listen: one unrushed hour, phones away, no fixing, no agenda. This is time that feeds Quality of Inner Life, not just the calendar.

• Buy time back with cash: a cleaner, a laundry service, a meal delivery, a taxi instead of the late bus. Whillans’ research is blunt here too: time-saving purchases often create more happiness than the same money spent on stuff, especially when they remove tasks people dislike.

• Cover a regular pressure point for a month: I’ll do the weekly shop every Sunday in January. Or I’ll do school drop-off twice a week. Or I’ll take the bins out every Thursday. Tiny, repeatable relief beats grand gestures.

You can also ask for time as your gift. That can feel cheeky, until you remember it’s more honest than pretending you want another object you’ll have to store.

A few script ideas:

• If you want to get me something, could you take one annoying task off my plate in January?

• I’d love two hours of uninterrupted time. You pick the day, you run interference.

• Instead of stuff, can we book a morning together where neither of us has to rush?

A final Day Crafting nudge, if you want it: time gifts work best when they’re designed like a good day. Intentional. Otherwise they turn into another sometime that never arrives.

What would actually feel like a gift of time for you right now?