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Time Perspective Inventory

Assessing your orientation toward time
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How do you perceive and interact with time?

The Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) is used to assess your orientation towards time. This inventory explores how you view and relate to the past, present, and future.

The ZTPI explores five different time perspectives:

  • Past-Negative: How much you focus on negative past experiences
  • Present-Hedonistic: How much you seek present pleasures with little concern for future consequences
  • Future: How much you plan for and strive to meet future goals
  • Past-Positive: How much you reflect nostalgically and positively on your past
  • Present-Fatalistic: How much you feel powerless about the future and resigned to fate

Note: This survey is not a diagnostic tool. It is designed to help understand your personal time perspective, which can influence decision-making, goal-setting, and overall well-being.

Instructions: Please read each statement carefully and indicate how characteristic or true it is of you. There are no right or wrong answers, so please be as honest as possible in your responses.

How characteristic or true is this of you?

I enjoy stories about how things used to be in the “good old times.”*
I find myself tuning out when family members talk about the way things used to be.*
Happy memories of good times spring readily to mind.*
I feel that it’s more important to enjoy what you’re doing than to get work done on time.*
Even when I am enjoying the present, I am drawn back to comparisons with similar past experiences.*
I like my close relationships to be passionate.*
Ideally, I would live each day as if it were my last.*
Fate determines much in my life.*
Familiar childhood sights, sounds, and smells often bring back a flood of wonderful memories.*
I take risks to put excitement in my life.*
Life today is too complicated; I would prefer the simpler life of the past.*
I get nostalgic about my childhood.*
I keep working at difficult, uninteresting tasks if they will help me get ahead.*
I try to live my life as fully as possible, one day at a time.*
Since whatever will be will be, it doesn’t really matter what I do.*
I like family rituals and traditions that are regularly repeated.*
I am able to resist temptations when I know that there is work to be done.*
It doesn’t make sense to worry about the future, since there is nothing that I can do about it anyway.*
It’s hard for me to forget unpleasant images of my youth.*
I find myself getting swept up in the excitement of the moment.*
Spending what I earn on pleasures today is better than saving for tomorrow’s security.*
My life path is controlled by forces I cannot influence.*
I often think of what I should have done differently in my life.*
Meeting tomorrow’s deadlines and doing other necessary work comes before tonight’s play.*
On balance, there is much more good to recall than bad in my past.*
I’ve taken my share of abuse and rejection in the past.*
I’ve made mistakes in the past that I wish I could undo.*
It upsets me to be late for appointments.*
I make lists of things to do.*
I meet my obligations to friends and authorities on time.*
I complete projects on time by making steady progress.*
Before making a decision, I weigh the costs against the benefits.*
Painful past experiences keep being replayed in my mind.*
When listening to my favorite music, I often lose all track of time.*
It takes joy out of the process and flow of my activities, if I have to think about goals, outcomes, and products.*
There will always be time to catch up on my work.*
Life today is too complicated; I would prefer the simpler life of the past.*
I believe that getting together with one’s friends to party is one of life’s important pleasures.*
Taking risks keeps my life from becoming boring.*
I do things impulsively.*
I think about the good things that I have missed out on in my life.*
It is important to put excitement in my life.*
If things don’t get done on time, I don’t worry about it.*
When I want to achieve something, I set goals and consider specific means for reaching those goals.*
Often luck pays off better than hard work.*
I believe that a person’s day should be planned ahead each morning.*
I prefer friends who are spontaneous rather than predictable.*
I take each day as it is rather than try to plan it out.*
It is more important for me to enjoy life’s journey than to focus only on the destination.*
The past has too many unpleasant memories that I prefer not to think about.*
My decisions are mostly influenced by people and things around me.*
Things rarely work out as I expected.*
You can’t really plan for the future because things change so much.*
I often follow my heart more than my head.*
I make decisions on the spur of the moment.*
It gives me pleasure to think about my past.*
Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1271–1288. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1271

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