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