What our time perspective has to do with learning and change

A few days ago I stumbled across a video that has been around for quite some years: “The Secret Powers of Time” by Philip Zimbardo.

I only meant to take a quick look. What kept me watching was partly the unusual way the talk is presented. While Zimbardo speaks, drawings, terms and small scenes appear in time lapse. Thoughts become visible right away. It grabbed me surprisingly fast.

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What stayed with me even more is the central idea behind it.

People differ in how strongly they think and act from the past, the present or the future. Some base their decisions heavily on what will come of them later. Others orient themselves much more on what happens today and what immediate benefit something has.

That sounds rather abstract at first. The longer I thought about it, the more areas came to mind where exactly this question plays a role.

Continuing education lives on the future

I notice this most in the field of continuing education.

Almost every training course comes with a promise for later:

• better chances on the job market
• a new career
• new skills
• more security at work

That is understandable. Learning takes time and energy. Of course you want to know what it is for.

Still, I wonder whether we sometimes take it too much for granted that this promise of the future motivates everyone equally.

People who are changing careers in particular bring very different experiences with them. Some have a clear plan for the coming years. Others are at first much more occupied with next week or even the next day.

For them, the prospect of a better job in 2 years may not be enough. That is why learning also has to achieve something today. I keep finding it fascinating what happens when theory suddenly turns into something concrete:

• When someone sets up a server on their own.
• When a small program works for the first time.
• When a technical problem gets solved that seemed completely opaque before.

Such moments are small. Still, they change something.

Perhaps that is an important point: training should open up long-term prospects. At the same time, it needs progress that is visible in the short term.

The time horizon is part of almost every message, too

We constantly tell people that they should do something today so that things get better for them later:

• Companies should digitalize so that they stay competitive in the future.
• Employees should engage with AI because their work will change.
• People should keep learning because certain skills will matter more in a few years.

Many social topics work by the same principle. We often assume that the future is reason enough. Perhaps it is not.

People can understand a message completely and still act differently. Not because they failed to grasp the connection. Perhaps the promised benefit is simply too far away for them.

I find that especially interesting from a communication point of view. Finding the right message may not be enough. We should also think about the time horizon of that message.

“This training improves your career prospects” is something different from “After two weeks you will be able to do X on your own for the first time.”

Both can be true. But they speak to people in different ways. Since I started thinking about this, I see the time horizon in surprisingly many places.

The regional time perspective

Here in Heilbronn-Franken, too, we talk a lot about the future:

• About AI.
• About digitalization.
• About skilled workers.
• About the changes in industry and the working world.

That is right. A region like ours has to think about what will matter in five or ten years. Still, another question has become more pressing for me: how do we make this future concrete today?

I believe that events, continuing education and open formats for exchange can play a bigger role here than we sometimes assume. Perhaps that is also one reason why barcamps have fascinated me for many years. At a barcamp, nobody has to believe in a long-term benefit first:

• Someone brings a question.
• A session grows out of it.
• People exchange experiences.
• You meet someone or take away an idea you can try the next day.

Sometimes more comes of it later:

• A collaboration.
• A project.
• Maybe even a career change.

But the first benefit is there right away. That may be the deciding factor for many future topics.

We can explain to people how important AI, continuing education or digitalization will be in a few years. We should probably create opportunities much more often where they can experience today what of it is interesting or useful for them.

Maybe we need to explain the future less and make it tangible more often.