Your Past, Present and Future Selves — do you like these guys?

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”
The Doctor in “Doctor Who”, episode “Blink”

A side-remark in a recent posting:

“… planning the day this way only during the morning of that day and only as the first thing at work might help here. Then it’s an active decision in the moment, compared to something my past self left me days ago (I still have a love-hate relationship with that guy, but so does he. And if we could work together better, that guy in the future might look more happy and less desperate.)”
OmniFocus and iCal for Realistic Tasks-for-Today Planning

reminded me that I wanted to write a posting in the style of “leave gifts for your future self”. It’s a fairly easy thing to do … is there something you can do in the moment to make your future a bit less sucky? Like leave yourself some coffee where you will be later, or do things to improve yourself that will pay out in the future?

The inverse of this meme:

Meme, Source unknown.

But in combination with the side remark, I began to think more in the lines of “Making friends with your other selves”. And yeah, there is research on Time Perspective (e.g., Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory), how people view the past, present and future, and where their focus is. But I mean it more in the sense of working together.

After all, at least until you die, you continuously create all three of them. And while you cannot change the past, you can at least reflect on the past and change your present behavior to make the world a bit better for when your future self becomes your present self. And yeah, this way, you can improve the past. By leaving yourself a better past.

And yeah, while the present self moves across that timeline, changing the ratio of future to past self, with your past becoming larger (more time), the future self smaller (less time and less options), that ratio is not the only thing that changes.

Hmmm, just a thought.