The Next Best Thing You Can Do Is Broaden Your View of Time

The second best thing you can do for your life is to get in the habit of taking a broader view of time.

I didn’t appreciate this until last week. I was wasting time on Twitter and came across a new study on the topic: “A broad view of time predicts greater subjective well-being.” (PDF here.)

While the title’s not as bold as my claim, I got so excited upon reading it that I had to share it with you.

How Broad Are You?

The first of four studies in the paper, which I’ll call the “The Broad Paper” from now on, introduces a quick assessment:

The Broad View of Time scale.

Give it a shot:

The Broad View of Time Scale

For each question, answer from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Then add up your total.

I try to take a broad view of my time—thinking in terms of years instead of hours.

I take a bird’s eye view of my time, looking down and seeing all of the moments in my life at once.

I tend to view my time as if I am looking down on a calendar, seeing all of my days and weeks and months laid out.

I make decisions thinking about my whole lifespan.

I got a 6 + 5 + 4 + 6 = 21 out of 28.

You?

The average of 483 participants from The Broad Paper’s study was 17.3. Good for those people. What’s extremely good for you is working toward raising your own score.

High Broadness, High on Life

Let’s start with The Broad Paper’s final sentence:

“[T]hose who think more about the years of their life than the hours of their day tend to feel happier in their days and more satisfied with their lives overall.”

Happier! More Satisfied! Huge, right!?

Right…?

“Big whoop, Chris.” You might be thinking, “The same can be said for exercise, friendship, having a purpose, and eating Dairy Queen Blizzards.”

I’m with you. But here’s the rub: A broad view of time boosts the likelihood you prioritize all the things that are most beneficial to your big picture. Consider the flip side: When you live hour-to-hour, you’re prone to neglect fitness, friendship, finding purpose, or locating the nearest DQ.

“But what about optimizing where you live?” says my smartass two-month-younger self, “Isn’t that most important?”

Yes, a downhill playing field in the game of life is indeed a massive advantage. But you’ll play on that field like five-year-olds play soccer, chasing the ball with no strategy, unless you adopt a broad view. A broad view of time is like having a coaching staff¹.

Broad’s Bevy of Benefits

If I still haven’t convinced you that a broad view of time is the second most important thing you can do for your life, maybe these dozen downstream benefits from The Broad Paper will compel you.

I’ve taken the liberty of translating them from Academia-ish into simple terms, along with examples:

No Mo’ FOMO². “It’s 2 a.m. and I’m changing diapers while my friends are having tons of fun at the festival. Yay! We’re all doing meaningful things.”
More Sustainable Pacing³. “I wish I had a huge professional network. Rather than try to go viral on Twitter or LinkedIn, let’s see if I can’t coordinate a call with one person a week.⁴“
Less Overwhelm. “I’ve got way too much on my plate. Where do I start? Hmm… Before I dig in, I’m gonna go for a walk.”
Better Bounce-back-ability. “What horrible luck I’ve been having! Oh well. It’ll make for a good plot twist in my story.”
Less Pressure for Perfection. “Ugh, that was colossally unproductive! Meh. No big deal in the grand scheme of things. And a good lesson for the future, too.”
More Balanced Life. “Why am I rushing to send out this newsletter? Ten years from now, I won’t care about having sent it a day late. I’m going to go play volleyball.”
Fewer Dumb Money Moves⁵. “Actually, you know what? Maybe I don’t need to buy the timeshare today. I’ll think about it and get back to you next week.”
Healthier Lifestyle Choices. “Rather than order a second Blizzard today, I’ll come back and have another next week.”
Less Urgency, More Importance. “Some technical glitch has messed up TheZag.com. Annoying. But fixing it can wait after family dinner.”
Better Navigate Life’s Maze. “Looks like this career’s hit a dead end. Dang. Good thing I’ve got a good 40 years left to go back and try another path.”
Less Defense, More Offense⁶. “Yeah, there are lots of downsides to moving abroad. But think of the possibilities! We can always move back if it sucks.”*
Extra Satisfaction: “My kids are being super annoying and demanding, but soon enough I’ll be nostalgic for these times, so I weirdly enjoy it.”

I hope these benefits make you want to broaden your view of time ASAP. The next question is How?

How Do You Broaden Your Time Horizons?

The Broad Paper’s fourth study tests one strategy for broadening your view of time.

Participants were given one of two prompts:

“Write down three things that you would like to accomplish before the end of today.”
“Write down three things that you would like to accomplish in your life.”

Later they were assessed on the Broad View of Time scale. Unsurprisingly, group two scored higher.

So yeah, hot tip number one for broadening your view of time:

Remind yourself to take a broad view of time.

Obvious as it may sound, I wasn’t doing so. So I’ve added a prompt to my ever-evolving life-organizing system. If you haven’t got such a system, that’s the best first step you can take for broadening your view of time:

Set up a system for working on your life instead of in it⁷.

Other ways to broaden your time:

Broaden other things, too. The Broad Paper mentions the benefits of experiencing expansive views of nature, expanding your self-concept to include others, and broadening your set of options when making choices.
Get a physical reminder. Maybe a Life Calendar poster, a Memento Mori medallion, a life countdown clock, or a tattoo on your forehead.
Get older. A popular approach! The shorter your remaining life gets, the relatively broader it becomes.
Minimize minutiae. ‘Minutiae’ is the catchall term my friend Michael L. (Hey Mike!) uses for all the annoying tasks that distract us from taking a broader view.
Write letters to your future self. Writing them and reading them compel you to think beyond today, among many other benefits I’ve droned on and on about before.
Absorb broadening stories. Lose yourself in books and movies about the importance of a broad time horizon. This transports you into the minds of the protagonists so your brain experiences what they do. One recommendation: A Short Stay in Hell. (Read my experience.)
Decide when you’ll die (?). Neville Medhora plans to die at 85. Cementing how much time he has left improves his ability to figure out how to make the most of it.

Last but the opposite of least, a strategy so important it gets its own section:

Don’t Trust Your Own View

Your own broad view of time is hopelessly biased and probably lazy. So:

Recruit someone else to act on behalf of all of your future selves.

Their job:

Hold you accountable to not just think broadly, but act accordingly.
Combat the sense of complacency that can come with thinking “I’ve got plenty of time.”
Reality check you against self-justifying excuses.
Provide feedback on your performance and second opinions on your plans.
Brainstorm enjoyable challenges so you minimize the need to delay gratification, which is overrated.
Remind you to get your head out of the present’s stinky ass and take a big, refreshing whiff of the broader picture.

Such a person is not easy to find. They have to understand your values. They have to have your best life’s best interests at heart. And they must have a broad view of time. But if you find such a person, you’ll be forever grateful for having done so.

Finding the right person to help you apply a broad your view of time is the best thing you can do for your life.

I don’t have such a person yet. But I have experienced some of the benefits from the Systematic Brilliance trial cohort I’ve been leading this May.

My goal going in was to help each participant implement their own system to help them benefit from a broader view of time. So far, so good! What I didn’t anticipate was how beneficial it has been to me to have the other participants pressure me to practice what I preach.

I expect to run a second cohort of Systematic Brilliance in July. It’s not going to be as cheap as the current cohort ($50), but it’ll still be cheaper than any in the future. Click here for more information if you’re interested:

Go Broad

Another Super Beneficial Thing to Try

Somewhere around fifth or sixth on my rankings of best things you can do for your life is to not take the word of bozos like me, a.k.a. think critically.

Try it yourself. Share with me your counterarguments:

Why aren’t having a broad perspective of time and finding someone to enforce it upon you the best things you can do for your life?
What do you think is even more important for a good life?
What downsides of a broad perspective of time might we want to be wary of?

Please comment or email me with your critical thoughts.

Footnote Fetish?

For those of you who know the really juicy stuff’s down below:

I’m actually not a fan of the “game of life” analogy. I prefer looking at it like a performance. Using this analogy, adopting a broad view of life is akin to bringing in a composer.

I dumped the “playing the game” for “performing” a few years ago, when I thought through some questions to come up with my own definition of “winning at life.” Here’s my definition:

Winning at life is putting on the best performance I can given my situation so that, when my show’s over, I feel like I had a blast, others are grateful for it, and my output continues to echo and inspire.

Related to putting on a great performance, I’m infatuated with the question, “How can I be a more perfect instrument?” See my post on a “truly productive life” for more. ↩︎
A while back I did a deep dive into the psychology of fighting FOMO and resurfaced with a weapon:

NoMO FOMO — not missing out, focusing on meaningful objectives.

Post and video summary here. ↩︎
I love the strategy of ‘radical moderation,’ which I found in the excellent book, Richer, Wiser, Happier. (My top takeaways from the book here.)

The gist: Shoot for sustainable, long-run progress rather than short-term gains that leave you so exhausted you either give up and roll back down to your original status quo or feel life is a constant grind.

For more on this, see my post about finding life’s optimal difficulty level. ↩︎
I’m getting way more proactive about setting up with calls with people who are doing interesting things and who are interested in what I’m doing. If that sounds like you, sounds like we should chat! Please send me an email to coordinate. ↩︎
Related quote on how a broad view of time improves financial decision-making:

“If you want to do better as an investor, the single most powerful thing you can do is increase your time horizon.” – Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money.

For more on this, check out my five favorite tips from Housel’s book on how to be smarter with your money here. ↩︎
⭐️ This footnote gets a special star for being related to a thought-provoking concept that I recently came across and now can’t get out of my head.

Here’s the excerpt from You Can Change Other People by Peter Bregman and Howie Jacobson:

“In How to Have a Good Day, Caroline Webb writes about the ‘Discover-Defend Axis,’ a feature of the human brain that approaches each situation with a fundamental question: ‘Is this a threat or a reward’ When we’re in Defensive Mode, our brain literally loses the ability to seek out and recognize new opportunities. Instead, we focus on avoiding or mitigating bad things. In fact, Defensive Mode shifts resources into the limbic ‘Fight or Flight’ centers of the brain and away from the frontal cortex that does planning, strategy, and other sophisticated future-oriented tasks. Discovery Mode, on the other hand, engages parts of our brain that excel at flexibility, creativity, positivity, and exploration—exactly the qualities we need to find opportunities that take us to a better place. What happens when our brains get stuck in Defensive Mode? We lose the ability to spot and act on opportunities.” ↩︎
Based on my hands-on experience with my Pure Productivity guinea pigs, the best first step to creating a system for working on your life is simple:

Start keeping track of what you do.

Whenever you finish one task (eating, working on a project, reading emails like this), log the time and what you did. Be super concise and objective. No judgments or stories, just reports. It sounds boring—it is!—but it opens up an extraordinary can of purely productive worms.

Here’s the story of how I started “lifelogging,” as I call it.

And here’s another shameless plug to consider joining the next Pure Productivity cohort. ↩︎