Present-Focused Perspective: Living the Now With Intensity

Where life happens

For many people, the present is just the required passage to something else: the goal, the result, the after. Not for you.

The present-focused perspective describes people who live the current moment with an intensity that other profiles find harder to sustain. In academic research, it’s called present-hedonistic.

Present-hedonistic, according to Zimbardo and Boyd

Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd (1999) proposed that each person divides their attention among past, present and future in a fairly stable way, and they measured it with a five-factor inventory (described in the article on the future-oriented perspective). Two of those factors refer to the present, and they shouldn’t be confused:

• Present-hedonistic: an orientation toward enjoyment, novelty and immediate experience. This is the factor behind this profile.
• Present-fatalistic: a sense that the future is already decided and that effort makes little difference. It has a very different psychological profile, more associated with hopelessness, and the quiz on this site doesn’t measure it.

The quiz statements that define this result talk about fully enjoying the moment, deciding based on how something makes you feel right now, and living in the here and now even if you have to improvise later.

A dimension of its own, not just impulsiveness

One of the first pieces of evidence that present orientation is a dimension with weight of its own came from the road. In three samples with 2,863 participants, Zimbardo, Keough and Boyd (1997) found that present orientation was associated with more self-reported risky driving, and that the effect held up when compared with nine other measures such as sensation seeking, impulsiveness or aggressiveness.

The finding doesn’t describe people with this perspective as reckless; it shows that the way you position yourself in time influences decisions in its own right, beyond temperament.

The other side is just as real. Ilona Boniwell and Zimbardo (2004) include a moderately high present-hedonistic score in the time profile most associated with well-being, and a study of 1,739 people (Zhang, Howell and Stolarski, 2013) confirmed that coming closer to that balanced profile goes hand in hand with greater life satisfaction and more positive emotions. Without the ability to enjoy the present, the time balance isn’t complete.

Savoring: this profile’s skill

Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff (2007) use the term savoring for the ability to pay attention to positive experiences and to prolong or intensify the enjoyment they bring. In their model, you can savor by looking back (reminiscing), by looking ahead (anticipating) and, above all, in the moment, which is where this profile stands out.

An example: at a lunch with friends that runs long, the person with a present-focused perspective is the one who suggests ordering another dessert, notices the afternoon light and says out loud what a good time everyone is having. That comment, which seems trivial, is one of the behaviors Bryant and Veroff describe as ways of amplifying a shared experience.

How it shows up day to day

• You fully enjoy what you’re doing, without constantly getting ahead of what comes next.
• You find it harder than other profiles to put off immediate gratification for an uncertain future benefit.
• You improvise with ease, even when that means sorting out the future as you go.
• Your mood and your decisions are closely tied to how you feel in the present moment.

The cost of living very focused on the present

The challenge of this perspective is that it can make long-term planning harder, along with saving effort, time or resources for future goals.

It isn’t that planning is impossible. When the present asks for one thing and the future for another, the scale tends to tip toward the now, and that has a cost for goals that require sustained effort over a long time. The combination that research describes as most favorable doesn’t require giving up enjoyment: it means saving long-range thinking for the few goals where the long term really matters. That’s where the outlook of someone with a future-oriented perspective complements this profile well.

This result describes a self-reported tendency, not a diagnosis. Want to see how your time perspective is split between past, present and future? Take the quiz on your relationship with time.

Sources

• Zimbardo, P. G., and Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1271-1288.
• Zimbardo, P. G., Keough, K. A., and Boyd, J. N. (1997). Present time perspective as a predictor of risky driving. Personality and Individual Differences, 23(6), 1007-1023. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(97)00113-X
• Boniwell, I., and Zimbardo, P. G. (2004). Balancing time perspective in pursuit of optimal functioning. In P. A. Linley and S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive Psychology in Practice (pp. 165-178). Wiley.
• Zhang, J. W., Howell, R. T., and Stolarski, M. (2013). Comparing three methods to measure a balanced time perspective: The relationship between a balanced time perspective and subjective well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 14(1), 169-184. doi:10.1007/s10902-012-9322-x
• Bryant, F. B., and Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.