Secret Powers of Time
Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.
Time orientations:
- past-negative, past-positive
- present-fatalistic, present-hedonistic
- future, transcendental futures
What is the optimal time perspective?
- High in past-positive time perspective
- Moderately high in future time perspective
- Moderately high in present-hedonistic time perspective
- Low in past-negative time perspective
- Low in present-fatalistic time perspective.
A person who is intensely future-oriented has an enormous advantage over his competitors. While we all have limitations, we can maximize our efforts over longer periods of time. Our time is irreplacable. Money can be made and lost. We can never get our time back. We can save future time by delegating work that doesn’t make us better.
We can be fanatical about not wasting time. This is most important when we are young, because most young people do not understand this, and this is when we can gain our biggest lead.
When we are young, we are in the presence of people who are fast starters. The star athletes. The whiz kid who never studied in high school. The prom queen. We knew them in school. But when we look back at the careers of those who were fast starters, they often faded in the stretch.
There is nothing easy about success. Easy come, easy go. But we can have a future orientation, self-disciple, and refuse to waste time.
Never Stop Compounding 