Quick overview

Everyone has a primary time focus: either Future-focused, Present-focused, or Past-focused of which lean positively or negatively. Being future focused it was helpful to learn how people who are present or past focused view the world.

My notes

There are Six Time Perspectives:

• Past-negative
• Past-positive
• Present-fatalistic
• Present-hedonistic
• Future
• Transcendental-future

Find your type at http://www.thetimeparadox.com/surveys/.

How Time Works

If only there were such a person to call upon for investing time. To help figure that out, you’ll have to become your own time investment planner and ask yourself these questions:

• What do you want out of life?
• How can you make your time matter?
• What is the right use of your time?

Whatever you choose to do costs you the opportunity to do something else. The notion of opportunity costs recognizes that your investment resources are scarce and that there are expenses associated with choosing one investment over another. The opportunity costs that you incur with your time and money are omnipresent but always unknown and unknowable. No matter how you choose to invest your time, you face the costs of forgoing another activity—perhaps limitless opportunities—for the one you choose. With money, you have the conservative option of keeping it in the bank, but not so with time. Whether you like it or not, you spend time every moment of your life. It continually seeps out of your pocket. We are “the clocks on which time tells itself” ( Richard II, Shakespeare). Once you recognize that your investments of time have opportunity costs, you can become more conscious of how you make your choices about time, and learn to make happier ones. Remember that people are more likely to regret actions not taken than actions taken, regardless of  outcome.

Time matters because we are finite, because time is the medium in which we live our lives, and because there are costs (lost opportunities) associated with not investing time wisely.

A fundamental difference between physical laws and psychological principles is that physical laws are unchanging, but psychological principles are elastic: They bend and change according to the situation and frame of reference. You have some control over how these psychological principles bend and when they apply. The psychological term for this process is “construal,” which refers to the way that each of us understands and explains the world. Once we understand psychological principles and the world, we can choose to construe the world in the way that is most productive, given our needs and resources.

The Past

When you have control over your present, you can control your past and your future. In fact, you can reinterpret and rewrite your personal past, which can give you a greater sense of control over the future.

Psychologically, what individuals believe happened in the past influences their present thoughts, feelings, and behavior more than what did happen.

The Present

The future, like the past, is never experienced directly. It is a psychologically constructed mental state.

The Future

It makes sense that belief in yourself would influence your behavior, but it turns out your conceptions of other people influence their behavior as well. In one study devoted to what has become known as the Pygmalion effect, the psychologist Robert Rosenthal told a group of teachers that he had identified a small number of children who were poised for a great intellectual growth spurt during the coming school year. In fact, Rosenthal had randomly selected those particular children, who were no more likely to experience an intellectual growth spurt than other children in the classes. Rosenthal and his team observed both the children and the teachers during the course of the school year, at the end of which all the children took standardized tests. On average, the children who had been identified as likely to experience a growth spurt scored higher than other students because the teachers’ expectation of the children’s performance influenced the way they interacted with those students and, ultimately, the way the students themselves behaved.

Nothing succeeds like success. Early success rewards effort, practice, and discipline. It also reinforces the notion that your actions can yield desirable consequences. Early repeated failure breeds a sense of helplessness and makes you shun that arena of performance where you failed, be it school, work, or sports.

Making Time Work for You

Time, Your Body, and Your Health

The key to relieving depression lies not in untangling the Gordian knot of the past but in accepting and planning for the uncertain future.

Maintaining past-negative attitudes by thinking and talking about them repeatedly is not a good strategy. Put the past to rest and build on it the vision of a better future.

In moderation, the present is a wonderful place to be, but in excess, it robs you of your ability to learn from the past and plan for the future.

Stress causes heart disease for all personality types, not just Type A’s, but only when that stress is unpredictable and you have no control over how to respond to it. When stress is predictable and you can control how to respond to it, stress does not have a significant effect in causing heart disease

In an impressive series of studies, Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen found that anything that constrains our sense of an unlimited future shifts our motivations and priorities away from future goals and toward present emotional satisfaction. A limited future encourages us to make choices that enhance our positive emotional state rather than, for instance, to pursue an education or other future-oriented activity.

New Year’s resolutions to stop smoking, lose weight, quit gambling, reduce credit card debt, or stop compulsive shopping are all useless unless you can delay gratification and reject short-term gain for anticipated bigger later gain, a key aspect of emotional intelligence (EQ).

Life Choices and Money in Balancing the Present and the Future

Quite often “I decided in favor of X” is no more than “I liked X.” . . . We buy the cars we “like,” choose the jobs and houses we find “attractive,” and then justify these choices by various reasons. 15

Love and Happiness

Our ability to reconstruct the past, to interpret the present, and to construct the future gives us the power to be happy. We must just take the time to use it.

Business, Politics, and Your Time

Life and business are marathons. Like the first Greek marathon runner, all people and many businesses die at the end of the race. However, between now and the end, because you can do new things does not mean that you should or must do them. Evaluate how you use your time in terms of both present and future goals. What do you want today, what do you want tomorrow, and how can you best balance the two?

Continually ask the big questions:

• What do I really want out of my life?
• What am I doing to get what I want?
• What is the best way to get from here to there?

People are risk-seeking in the domain of losses. This means that people avoid risk after having secured a sure gain.

When a person does not have a concept of the future or believes there is no future for him, the future cannot be taken from him.

Keyes reminds us of an obvious truth that most futures ignore: “We chose to rush and be busy. We can choose to slow down and cut back. This is in our power. But making such a choice is not easy.”

Resetting Your Psychological Clock and Developing Your Ideal Time Perspective

In this time-perspective reconstruction therapy, you don’t just recall some good experiences to offset the bad ones. You are reweaving your past from the vibrant fabric of the present. You mentally alter the past to be what you would have liked to happen, what should have been, or might have been.

The self-actualizing person is primarily Time Competent and thus appears to live more fully in the here-and-now. Such a person is able to tie the past and the future to the present in meaningful continuity; appears to be less burdened by guilts, regrets and resentments from the past than is a non-self-actualizing person, and aspirations are tied meaningfully to present working goals. There is an apparent faith in the future without rigid or over-idealistic goals. 14

Life is short, but there may be some purpose in the spark of life. Discovering what that purpose is and where it is to be found is what life is all about.

Where can you find purpose? Like success and happiness, our purpose exists in the present, and we constantly strive toward the future to maintain it. What it is for which we strive is up to each of us. The important thing is that we strive toward something.

The Golden Rule of Time. It reads, “Use your time as you would like others to use theirs.” Would you like others to work hard so they can use the talents that they possess and you and they can benefit from them? Would you like them to be able to reflect warmly on the success their talents have brought them? Would you like them to immerse themselves in the pleasure of the moment?