The Time Paradox The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd

The Time Paradox The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd

This book is about changing your perspective on time. It focuses on different views of the past, present, and future. The basic views discussed are Past-negative, Past-positive, Present-fatalistic, Present-hedonistic, Future, and Transcendental future. This is an organization schema which I find interesting, but a bit contrived.

The authors claim that having an overly present view of time can lead to hedonism and low impulse control, having a negative view of the past can create depression and stress, having an overly future orientation can limit your enjoyment of the present. Their goal is to help a person have a more balanced view of time. They claim that time is your most valuable asset because it cannot be recovered.

I liked the idea of a Transcendental future viewpoint, a view that there is more to this world than our current life time, either in the religious or philosophical sense leads to greater happiness. People who believe in god, religion, or have a clear positive philosophy tend to live better lives. This includes ideas like environmentalism, ethics, and a world view embracing hope.

This book does not tell you how to manage your time. It helps you think about and unveil what your own viewpoints on time are. The authors give several questionnaires and exercises to make you think about planning for the future, how you see your place in time, creating goals, and have an inventory on time to complete; the ZPTI (Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory).

This book is written for a general audience. It is a popular psychology title. There is an extensive bibliography and index. I enjoyed reading it. There was quite a bit to think about.

Daily Thoughts 3/12/2010

Portrait of Palmer Cox : Frontispiece Frontier Humor, Chicago: Donohue, Henneberry, c.1900

Daily Thoughts 3/12/2010

Today has been extra busy. We had an extra group of people show up which required a little extra work, but it went well. I checked the displays and read two copies of the New York Times book review. We are buying most of the material in the book review. I also showed a film today. Today was quite busy.

I finished reading The Time Paradox today. The book is mainly about how we view time focusing on the past, present, and future. It reminds us not to be too hedonistic in the present, lose track of what is important by focusing too much on the future, and hold extremely negative views about the past. This is not about how to manage time, but how to view and reflect on time and what it means to you.

I am about to start reading the New How Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy by Nilofer Merchant. It is published by O'Reilly books. I rather like the way O'Reilly formats their books. They have an excellent grasp of layout and graphics in their books.

Daily Thoughts 3/11/2010

The Reader, plaster statuette by Jules Dalou, circa 1871- 1879. Petit Palais Museum Collection, Paris. Photographed between 1902 and 1904.

Daily Thoughts 3/11/2010

We had a person over from the system to explain Overdrive for us which provides a variety of ebooks and downloads. They also showed us the itouch which is a internet only version of an apple device, a sony reader, a mp3 player, and a toshiba netbook. The netbook seemed to be the most complete of the inexpensive internet devices. It ran around $300. It is a little smaller than a laptop.

We looked at a variety of formats of ebooks, varying from Adobe epub, to the propietary apple download format. We should be getting a link to ebooks fairly soon. I am looking forward to it. I might take a look and see if there is anything which is worth downloading. We are also going to do a session on Microsoft Publisher.

The one thing which impressed me most about digital rights management part of Overdrive for libraries is the amount of software which people had to download to use the ebooks as well as all the extensive agreements which you have to click accept before using a digital book. It seemed quite long and complicated. Hopefully, they will streamline this in the future. It is much easier to just download a book for free from Creative Commons or Project Gutenberg.

Today has been fairly quiet. I checked the displays and checked on the shifting of the paperbacks. They probably will be done with the paperbacks in the next couple of days. I also spent some time going over how the projector works for a film on Saturday.

There are a couple more books on my desk, The New How Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy by Nilofer Merchant and A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel. I am particular fond of Alberto Manguel's writing. I enjoyed reading his last book, The Library At Night.

I read some more of The Time Paradox. They are writing about the different advantages and disadvantages of having a future orientation, present orientation, and past focused orientation. Sometimes, I find it enjoyable to just relax and be in the present. The Time Paradox was Library Journal best book of the year in 2008.

Daily Thoughts 3/9/2010

2002 Tunisian stamp picturing a mosaic of Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil). This mosaic is over 1700 years old. It is in a Roman villa in Tunisia.

Daily Thoughts 3/9/2010

Today, I checked the displays to make sure they were in order. I also made sure we had a sign up sheet for the poetry program. The shifting of the fiction collection is moving along nicely. Our computers are being worked on toady.

I made a few adjustments to my orders for tomorrow and read the latest issue of Booklist.

Last night, I finished reading Jack Campbell, The Lost Fleet Relentless. It was engrossing towards the end. It starts out slow then builds quickly. Right now, I am reading The Time Paradox The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd. It is a book about different ways to view time and orientations towards time.

I have another book which looks quite interesting sitting in front of me, Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene. This book is about the neuroscience and invention of reading. I am hoping it gives some interesting insights.

On the train home I read some of The Time Paradox. I learned a few things, I am future oriented with a focus on transcendence after death. I don't view past experience in a positive light and I am not fatalistic or deterministic in my outlook. I believe in choice and free will. This is pretty much true. The name of the inventory was called the ZTPI ( Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory). I find psychological inventories entertaining and sometimes useful.