Everyone has a different relationship with time; some people are always rushing, others seem to have all the time in the world. That makes this a topic students can connect to immediately. These questions cover everything from daily routines and work-life balance to bigger questions about how modern life feels faster than ever.
Questions are organized by level from beginner to advanced. A printable PDF of all the questions is available at the bottom of the page.
Beginner (A1-A2)
- What time do you usually wake up in the morning? Is that early or late for you?
- Do you like mornings or evenings better? What do you usually do at that time?
- How long does it take you to get ready in the morning? What takes the most time?
- How long is your lunch break at work or school? Is it enough time?
- What season is your favorite time of year? What do you like about it?
- Do you think your life is fast or slow right now? What does a typical week look like for you?
- Are you usually early, on time, or late? How do you feel when you are late?
- Do you wear a watch or use your phone to check the time? How often do you check it?
- What do you usually do on a slow, lazy day? Tell me about it.
- What is the fastest meal you know how to make? When do you make it?
- Who is the busiest person you know? What do they do all day?
Elementary (A2)
- What is the busiest day of your week? What makes it so busy?
- Have you ever felt like a day went by too fast? What were you doing?
- What is the most relaxing part of your day? Why is that time good for you?
- Have you ever arrived somewhere very late and missed something important? What happened?
- What do you usually do when you have to wait a long time? Why?
- What time of day do you have the most energy? Why do you think that is?
- Have you ever stayed up very late to finish something? What were you doing?
- Is there a time of day when you don’t like to be disturbed? Why not?
- What do you usually do in the first hour after you get home from work or school? Why?
- Do you like having a routine, or do you prefer every day to be different? Why?
Intermediate (B1)
- Do you think you are a good planner or do you prefer to do things at the last minute? Why?
- How much time do you spend on your phone every day? Do you think it is too much?
- Do you think life is faster now than when your parents were young? Why?
- What is the biggest waste of time in your daily life? Why is it so hard to stop doing it?
- Should schools and workplaces give people more time for rest and doing nothing? Why or why not?
- If you could have one extra hour added to every day, what would you do with it? Why that?
- Do you think multitasking, doing several things at once, actually saves time? What are the downsides of it?
- What do you think is the best age of your life so far, when time felt just right, not too fast and not too slow? What made that time so good?
- In many countries, people take a long break in the afternoon for rest or a nap. Would something like that work in your country? Why or why not?
- Do you think deadlines help people work better, or do they just create stress? Why do you think so?
- As people get older, many say that time seems to go faster. Do you agree? Why do you think that happens?
Upper-Intermediate (B2)
- Do you think people in big cities live at a faster pace than people in small towns or the countryside? What are the downsides of each?
- Do you think taking a long vacation is more refreshing than several short breaks? What are the good things about each?
- How has technology, smartphones, social media, instant messaging, changed the way people experience time? Do you think we have more free time or less than people did before smartphones?
- Some research suggests that people who feel they have enough time are happier than people who earn more money. How does your own experience compare to that idea?
- How is the way young people today spend their time different from how their parents’ generation spent time at the same age? What has driven those changes?
- Some countries have laws that limit how many hours per week people can work. What are the benefits and drawbacks of having those kinds of rules?
- When something takes much longer than expected, a project, a relationship, a goal, how does that affect the way people value it? Can you think of an example from your own life?
- Why do some people seem to enjoy a very slow, quiet life while others find that same lifestyle unbearable? What do you think drives that difference?
- What happens to the quality of people’s relationships when everyone is always busy and rushing? How often have you experienced that yourself?
- Why do some people feel guilty when they are not being productive, even during their time off? What can be done to change that mindset?
- In some cultures, being busy is seen as a sign of success, while in others, having free time is what people admire. How do these different attitudes toward time shape the way people in those cultures live and work?
- Many people say they never have enough time, yet they spend hours on their phones every day. What keeps people stuck in that pattern, and what does it reveal about how we actually prioritize our time?
- The idea of ‘work-life balance’ is talked about everywhere, but many of the most successful people say they never had it. Is work-life balance actually achievable, or is it just something people talk about but never truly practice?
- Fast food, fast fashion, same-day delivery, modern life rewards speed in almost everything. What are we gaining and what are we losing as a society by always choosing the fastest option?
- Parents today often fill their children’s schedules with activities, lessons, and structured events, leaving very little unstructured free time. What are the benefits and drawbacks of giving children such a packed schedule?
Advanced (C1)
- Some people feel that being constantly busy is something to be proud of. Why do you think busyness has become a kind of status symbol in some cultures, and what does that say about what those societies value?
- In many countries, older generations worked long hours out of economic necessity, while younger generations are pushing back for better work-life balance. What is driving that shift, and do you think it represents progress or a loss of something?
- Productivity culture tells people to optimize every hour: plan their sleep, batch their tasks, eliminate idle time. But some researchers argue that boredom and unstructured time are essential for creativity and mental health. How do you see that tension playing out in your own life or in the world around you?
- There is a growing movement of people choosing to ‘slow down,’ slow food, slow travel, working fewer hours, often in deliberate reaction to the speed of modern life. What do you think motivates this, and can it actually work as a long-term lifestyle in a fast-moving economy?
- As automation and AI take over more routine tasks, some experts predict people will have far more free time, yet earlier labor-saving technologies did not actually reduce working hours as expected. Why do you think that gap between prediction and reality keeps happening, and what might be different this time?
- Different cultures treat time very differently; in some, being 15 minutes late is normal, while in others it’s deeply disrespectful. What does a culture’s attitude toward punctuality reveal about its deeper values around trust, hierarchy, and relationships, and how do those values clash when people from different time cultures have to work together?
- People in wealthy countries often say they feel more ‘time-poor’ than people in developing countries, even though they work fewer hours and have more labor-saving technology. Why does having more resources sometimes make people feel like they have less time, and what does that tell us about the relationship between wealth, choice, and the experience of time?
- In many societies, people are expected to be ‘always available’ for example answering messages instantly, responding to work emails at night, or being reachable 24/7. How has this expectation reshaped the boundaries between work, rest, and personal identity, and who benefits most from a culture where no one ever truly ‘switches off’?
- Throughout history, people have measured time by the sun, by church bells, by factory whistles, and now by digital notifications. How has each new way of measuring time changed the way people think about their day, and what does our current obsession with tracking every minute say about how modern society defines a ‘well-spent’ life?
- Many people say their happiest memories come from periods when they were not focused on time at all: childhood summers, travel, falling in love. Yet as adults, most people structure their lives around tight schedules and productivity goals. Why do people keep building lives that are the opposite of what they say made them happiest, and is there a way out of that contradiction?