Review: Exploring the depths of the 'Time Paradox'

What do you want out of life? What are you doing to get it? And what, you might ask, does time have to do with these questions?

Everything, according to psychologists Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd, who have used three decades of pioneering research to come up with some fascinating new theories about how your time perspective shapes your life.

In The Time Paradox, Zimbardo and Boyd explore how understanding those attitudes can bring success, better health and greater fulfillment — but this is not just another self-help book.

The conclusions are based on real science.

Zimbardo is a past president of the American Psychological Association and renowned for his 1971 Stanford prison experiments; Boyd became Zimbardo's research partner at Stanford, where he got a doctorate in psychology, and is currently research manager at Google.

They have interviewed, analyzed and observed thousands of people, using questionnaires and exercises included in the book that readers can use to determine if they are primarily driven by concerns with the past, the present or the future.

Past-oriented people, for instance, base their decisions and actions on memories rather than on current experience. They are less likely to take chances, to make new friends or to expose themselves to new music and art.

Present-oriented people focus on events in their immediate physical and social environment.

Less educated people are more likely to live in the present; they tend to be less concerned with work and more cynical.

And future-oriented people?

They have the discipline to resist instant pleasures. A future orientation is essential "for success in school, business, the arts and athletics," say both Zimbardo and Boyd, but it can also mean sacrificing family, friends and sex.

It was Zimbardo's now-infamous Stanford prison experiment that led to his interest in time research. In that experiment, 24 college students were randomly assigned to be "prisoners" or "guards" in a mock prison. They quickly began acting out their roles, with guards becoming sadistic and prisoners showing passivity and depression.

"How can our long-held identities be changed so quickly?" he writes. "What is it that makes different people react to situations differently? Searching for answers, I began my research into time perspectives."

What he and Boyd discovered helps explain the behavior of people ranging from suicide bombers to disgraced Enron executives.

Be forewarned: There's a lot of repetition and belaboring the obvious in this book, and some material may come across as more simplistic than profound.

Even so, with so many of us obsessed with schedules and multitasking, carving out a few hours to read this book could help us rethink what is important and bring more balance in our lives.

Elizabeth Bennett is a freelance writer in Houston.