You have a remarkable talent – the ability to step outside the present, and imagine the past and future in your mind’s eye. Known as ‘mental time-travel’, some psychologists propose it’s a trait that allowed our species to thrive. (View Highlight)
If I ask you to imagine what you did yesterday, or what you’re planning for tomorrow, you can conjure up rich scenes in the theatre of your mind. Not only that, you can turn back the clock to picture past eras – Shakespeare’s London, ancient Greece, the dinosaurs, the Big Bang – before spinning the dial to imagine deep futures, from our grandchildren’s lives in the next century all the way to the day the Sun becomes a red giant, billions of years from now. (View Highlight)
Yet many people don’t make as much of this talent as they could. In the accelerating, information-rich, target-driven culture of the early 21st century, the present often dominates thoughts and priorities instead. (View Highlight)
Obviously, there’s much going on in the current day that deserves our attention: not just urgent global problems that lead the news, but precious moments of individual joy, fulfilment and happiness too. We need to be present-minded sometimes. However, too much focus on the ‘now’ can also lead to the kind of harmful short-termism that infuses business, politics and media – a near-term perspective that worsens many of the long-term challenges we face this century, such as the climate crisis. (View Highlight)
Short-termism is, to an extent, culturally driven, from the near-term incentives of modern capitalism to the relentless barrage of 24-hour media. But it’s also compounded by a host of unhelpful human habits and biases too, such as our ‘present bias’, whereby we tend to prioritise short-term rewards over long-term benefits (the classic example is the marshmallow test, in which some children can’t resist eating a single treat now, rejecting the chance to chomp two later on). We also have a ‘near-far’ temporal bias caused by the fact that our brains tend to equate time with space. As a consequence, the present appears close, obvious, salient, concrete; the past or future, by contrast, is roughly drawn, abstract, unimportant. (View Highlight)
I’ve learnt that there can be multiple benefits to consciously cultivating a longer view – and not just because it banishes harmful short-termism. I think of mentally time-travelling out of the present as a form of exercise. If practised regularly, it can lead to greater perspective in these tumultuous times, as well as being a source of hope and meaning. A longer view provides a deeper, richer awareness of how we fit into the human story – and the planet’s – and reveals just how fortunate you are to be here, right now. The geologist Marcia Bjornerud calls this perspective ‘timefulness’. (View Highlight)
This is not escapism: on the contrary, the long view can reveal what truly matters in the present – what to be mindful of, and what to ignore. The upshot is greater clarity about one’s choices and priorities amid the cacophony and distractions of life in the mid-2020s. (View Highlight)
Before you begin taking steps to develop a longer-term view, it can help to get a sense of your current time perspective. Some people are more inclined to be present-minded while others are more past- or future-minded; and these perspectives also come in positive or negative varieties. (View Highlight)
