GP document - Mindful Timekeeping

A psychological perspective-
A study by Psychologist Philip Zimbardo
Dr. Philip Zimbardo along with author John
Boyd, documented their study on time perspectives
in the book The Time Paradox. [13] The
most striking finding according to them was
that no two people’s attitude towards time are
identical. The survey sample included
thousands of people from America and Europe
from children to people of age 94.
Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (1997) [14]
is a tool (questionnaire) used to determine
underlying time perspectives that is influencing
a person’s life and decision making.
The Time Perspective Theory was formulated
after the study. It states, Time Perspective is
the partitioning of our personal ongoing
experiences into time frames, time zones and
temporal categories automatically and
subconsciously. These frames depend and
vary between people depending on their
personal life experience. The factors that
influence this are culture, geography, climate,
social classes, nations, religious beliefs,
education, economic and social stability. It
affects their actions, perception and emotion.
They become biased by learned overuse of
some frames and under use of others.
The study concludes that there are five key
time perspectives or attitudes towards time.
And each individual have in part all, with a few
of them predominant over the others.
The five time perspectives are:
1. Past positive time perspective
2. Past negative time perspective
3. Present hedonistic time perspective
4. Present fatalistic time perspective
5. Future time perspective
Negative past and Present fatalistic
perspectives are negative processes while the
others are positive processes. The key is to
develop a balanced time perspective by
minimising the use of negative processes
Table 1.1 shows the traits associated with each
of these perspectives.
Apart from the first five time perspectives, they
also identified Holistic Present, as a time
perspective that is associated with meditative
practices. It reflects neither the pleasure
seeking of present hedonism nor the
cynicism and resignation of present fatalism. It
is a healthy perspective to have. It was not
included in the inventory initially as the
associated traits were unclear. A research was
deviced in 2017 to develop a scale to further
study this time perspective. [15] The study
reiterates Holistic Present as Expanded
Present Time Perspective.
According to the psychologist, being conscious
about the frames of references are advantageous.
These time perspectives influence individuals
thoughts, feelings, and actions. Being
aware of it will enable people to get more out
of life and help in altering time perspectives
that are not useful. An ideal balanced time
perspective was defined to be moderately high
past positive time perspective with moderate
future and present hedonistic perspectives.
An independent study conducted in 2019, validates
the claim that higher levels of mindfulness
promotes a more balanced time perspective
with a reduced focus on negative aspects
of past and negative anticipation of future.
National Institute of Design | Graduation Project | 2020
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