'Give some of your time to get more of it'

A team at Wharton School of the Pennsylvania University in the US found that people who volunteer their time feel they have more of it, a feeling which makes them more effective.

"Although it seems counterintuitive to give away any of your time when you feel your time to be scarce, our findings suggest that even spending small pockets of time to help others can make people feel more effective, and like they can do a lot with the limited time they have," Cassie Mogilner, who led the study, said.

"Giving time makes people feel like they have more time," Mogilner told LiveScience.

It's not the first study to find benefit in volunteering. Last year, a research had found that people who volunteer live longer.

In the new work, published in the journal Psychological Science, a set of four experiments found that when it comes to easing the pressures of time, volunteering beats goofing off or otherwise making time for yourself, and even beats getting a sudden windfall of extra time.

In one experiment, 218 college students were assigned one of two five-minute tasks that had them either giving or wasting time. Giving time involved writing a short email to a gravely ill child.

In a survey after the assignment, those who gave their time reported feeling like they had more time than those in the other group.

Giving away time seems to boost your sense of efficiency and competence, the researchers explained.

You don't need to make a huge commitment to skew your perception of time. "Carve out 10 to 15 minutes a day to do something for someone else," Mogilner suggested.