The Time Paradox

There are plenty of hours in the day, but time is one thing we never seem to have enough of. In The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd argue that the way we think of time plays an important part in how we live our lives.

The book introduces various time perspectives - do we think mostly about the future, the present or the past, and are our thoughts about them positive or negative? The authors give advice on what you should do to gain a better perspective on time - try to get a future perspective, but don't let it dominate your life. Zimbardo describes how he followed a future oriented university career, and on retirement realised that he should think of enjoying the present more.

The trouble is that the more I thought about what the authors were saying, the more problems I saw with it. Frenetic activity isn't necessarily due to thinking about the needs of the future. And much of what it thought of as present hedonism -overeating or gambling for instance - isn't so much about being happy in the moment as not knowing what will make you happy. The problems of boredom are hardly touched upon at all. In conclusion, the book has some interesting ideas and useful advice, but I don't think it lives up to its revolutionary claims.