Review: The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life

The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life by Philip G. Zimbardo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time-based personality types

In our work, we have consistently found that time perspective plays a fundamental role in the way people live. People tend to develop and overuse a particular time perspective—for example, focusing on the future, the present, or the past. Future-oriented people tend to be more successful professionally and academically, to eat well, to exercise regularly, and to schedule
preventive doctor’s exams. The “late” seminarians and other individuals who live in fast-paced communities are likely future-oriented and so are less willing to devote their time to
altruistic pursuits.

In contrast, people who are predominantly present-oriented tend to be willing to help others but appear less willing or able to help themselves. In general, present-oriented people are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, to gamble, and to use drugs and alcohol than future-oriented people are. They are also less likely to exercise, to eat well, and to engage in preventive health practices such as flossing their teeth and getting regular doctor exams.

Consequently, future-oriented people are the most likely to be successful and the least likely to help others in need. Ironically, the people who are best able to help are the least likely to do so. In contrast, present-oriented people are less likely to be successful but are more likely to help others. Again ironically, individual who are most likely to help others may be those least likely to help themselves. The situation is more complicated when we consider people whose primary time perspective is the past. For some, the past is filled with positive memories of family rituals, successes, and pleasures. For others, the past is filled with negative memories, a museum of torments, failures, and regrets. These divergent attitudes toward the past play dramatic roles in daily decisions because they become binding frames of reference that are carried in the minds of those with positive or negative past views.

Surveys: https://www.thetimeparadox.com/

Stoic, quote from Epictetus - "It's not things that upset us but our judgments about things"

We authors believe that the past matters, but it matters less than Freud and the behaviorists claimed. Everyone is affected by the objective past but not completely determined by it. And it is not the events of the past that most strongly influence our lives. Your attitudes toward events in the past matter more than the events themselves. This distinction between the past and your current interpretation of it is critical, because it offers hope for change. You cannot change what happened in the past, but you can change your attitudes toward what happened. Sometimes changing the frame can alter the way you see the picture.

HOW DO YOU BECOME FUTURE-ORIENTED?

No one is born with a future time perspective. No gene pushes people into a future time zone. You become future-oriented by being born in the right place at the right time, where environmental conditions help transform little present-oriented babies into restrained, successful, future-oriented adults. These conditions include:

Living in a temperate zone
Living in a stable family, society, nation
Being Protestant (or Jewish)
Becoming educated
Being a young or middle-aged adult
Having a job
Using technology regularly
Being successful
Having future-oriented role models
Recovering from childhood illness

Living in a Temperate Zone

Preparing for seasonal change involves planning and modifying behavior to fit the changing weather. For that reason, people become used to anticipating worse weather in winter and summer than in the usually glorious fall and spring. In contrast, living in a mildly tropical climate is being in paradise with an extended lease. It is always the same season, only with more or less rain.

Living in a Stable Family, Society, Nation

When you focus on the future, you make decisions that anticipate consequences. In predicting the pluses and minuses that will result from a given action, you assume there is sufficient stability for you to make that judgment possible. A stable government and family allow you to predict what actions will generate desired rewards or, indeed, if there will ever be the promised reward for chores you do now. In general, stable, reliable environments are likely to be the best breeding grounds for budding futures.

Being Protestant (or Jewish)

The concept of original sin in Christian doctrine is based on Eve’s succumbing to her present-oriented appetite when the serpent tempted her to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. All Christians have been paying for her moment of “weakness” ever since, and are often reminded that “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” After the Protestant Reformation, Calvinists in particular came to believe in predestination—the idea that God had predestined some people to be saved and others to be damned. The worldly sign of this destiny was apparent in one’s worldly success and accumulation of wealth. The Protestant work ethic generated a new hardworking class of entrepreneurs. In general, even today the gross national product of primarily Protestant nations is greater than that of Catholic nations.

Being Jewish is likely to push one toward future orientation, because Jewish tradition honors scholarship and education as a means of personal and community advancement. Education in academic settings is all about goal-setting, planning, delaying gratification, and anticipating rewards for progress, the building blocks of a solid future-oriented foundation.

Becoming Educated

Education makes a student more future-oriented. Schools teach delay of gratification, goal-setting, cost-benefit analysis, and abstract thought. Cynics would argue that the subtext of a program for success is learning to respect authority: staying in one’s seat, knowing one’s place in the hierarchic ranking of intelligence, and learning to tolerate boring lectures, all in the promise of securing boring jobs. Nevertheless, education is the boot camp that trains presents to become futures.

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