Have you ever thought about how often you check the time during the day? It’s probably at least 50 times a day since we’re constantly looking at our phones. We conduct our lives on a schedule that is designed to keep us organized and productive, but the way we actually view time is extremely complex and subjective. Our time perspectives dictate how we react emotionally to the world around, form judgments, and the actions we take. Much of this is unconscious and habitual, but it has a considerable impact on our health status.
The subject of time perspectives fascinated early philosophers such as Aristotle and Kant, who were interested in exploring the experience of past, present, and future. This laid the groundwork for the concept of temporal or time perspective theory that later emerged in the field of psychology. The term "time perspective" refers to the degree to which individuals focus on the past, present, or future, and is an indication of motivation that influences a variety of behaviors (Loose & Vasquez-Echeverria, 2023). Our outlook on life determines our recurring thought patterns and also our beliefs about the future. Whether this is more optimistic or pessimistic, it has a direct relationship to the nature of our daily functioning.
The Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory is regarded as one of the most important measures of temporal perspectives (Levasseur et. al., 2020).
It encompasses five different dimensions:
This model has since been expanded to include future-negative, which reflects worry and anxiety, and present-eudaimonic, which refers to a mindful present focus. The future dimension has since been replaced with future-positive (Stolarski et. al., 2019).
Time perspectives affect our........