Mental Time Travel Exercises

This article “How to do mental time travel” offers practical exercises to help you engage with your past and future selves. These exercises encourage adopting a long-term view and gaining a vast perspective on life, as well as your place in the world. Here is a list of the mental exercises that can help you gain clarity and meaning, and avoid harmful short-term thinking: 

• Conversation with Future Self: Imagine asking your future self open-ended questions to make better present choices.

• Empathy for Future Generations: Visualize the lives of future people to foster concern for long-term issues like climate change.

• Temporal Windows: Spend time each week reflecting on the long-term past and future by observing your surroundings.

• Generational Thinking: Consider your place in the timeline of your family and humanity to feel more connected to the past and future.

• Future-Gifting: Do something now that will benefit your future self or future generations.

• Long-Term Communities: Engage with communities and movements that promote long-term thinking and effective altruism.

• Alternative Time Perspectives: Learn from different cultural views on time to enrich your understanding and approach to the future.

— CD