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Be Present While Thinking on the Past and Future

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cutrell explores the common tendency to mentally dwell on the past or future automatically, often leading to anxiety and a lack of presence. He argues that while thinking about the past and future is not inherently wrong, it becomes problematic when done without purpose, causing us to miss the present moment.

Cutrell introduces the concept of intentional retrospection and future-thinking as a corrective practice. He emphasizes the need to create time for these behaviors rather than simply trying to stop automatic negative thoughts. The episode provides structured exercises to help listeners derive insights from their past experiences and constructively plan for the future.

The core of the discussion revolves around two key questions applicable to both retrospection and future planning. First, listeners are encouraged to ask, “What was/is my primary motivation?” based on evidence from their actions, not their ideals. This honest self-assessment aims to reveal true motivations and align future activities with stated priorities.

Second, Cutrell proposes a mortality-aware framing: asking how one would have acted differently in the past week or how one would spend the upcoming week if they knew they only had two months to live. This exercise is designed to sharpen focus on meaningful interactions and priorities, encouraging actionable changes like adjusting calendars or reaching out to loved ones, ultimately fostering greater presence and intentionality in daily life.

Recommendations

Tools

  • Linode — A cloud computing provider sponsored in the episode, offering servers and plans for various workloads, with a $20 credit for new customers using a promo code.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to living mentally in the past or future — Jonathan Cutrell introduces the common human tendency to ruminate on the past or anticipate the future, often automatically and without benefit. He distinguishes between unintentional, anxiety-driven thoughts and intentional reflection, setting the stage for the episode’s focus on cultivating purposeful thinking about time.
  • 00:03:16 — The need to create time for intentional thinking — Cutrell argues that simply trying to stop automatic thoughts is insufficient. Instead, he advocates for creating new behaviors by deliberately making time for structured retrospection and future-planning. This shift from passive rumination to active, inquisitive thinking forms the foundation of the practical exercises to follow.
  • 00:05:35 — Structured retrospective: shifting from descriptive to inquisitive — The host explains that effective retrospection involves moving beyond merely recounting facts. The goal is to become inquisitive, digging for new insights and connections between questions and past experiences. He suggests focusing on a specific period, like the past week, to apply the forthcoming exercises.
  • 00:06:39 — First key question: identifying your true motivation — Cutrell presents the first core question for both past and future thinking: “What was/is my primary motivation?” He stresses the importance of answering based on evidence from actual behavior, not idealized wishes. For the future, this question empowers listeners to plan activities that align with their true motivations.
  • 00:09:23 — Second key question: the mortality-aware perspective — The second exercise involves asking how you would have acted in the past week or how you would plan the upcoming week if you knew you only had two months to live. Cutrell clarifies that the goal is not to dwell on mortality but to use a shortened timeline to prioritize meaningful actions, particularly in interpersonal relationships, and to derive one actionable takeaway.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2019-10-16T09:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:12:53

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] at a fundamental level many of us are mentally living somewhere else we’re thinking about the

[00:00:12] future whether close or distant or we’re ruminating on the past and this probably isn’t

[00:00:20] a surprise to you this concept that we’re not living in the present moment

[00:00:25] is both in vogue but also timeless in today’s episode we’re going to talk a little bit about

[00:00:33] how to intentionally choose to think about the future and to reflect on the past rather than

[00:00:41] doing it unintentionally and the difference between the two my name is jonathan cutrell

[00:00:46] and you’re listening to developer t my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you

[00:00:50] find clarity perspective and purpose in their careers

[00:00:53] and

[00:00:55] and if you’re living like the average developer and you have a lot of things coming up you have

[00:01:02] plans you have events on your calendar you have holidays in the future you might be planning your

[00:01:10] travel months in advance and naturally that has us looking towards the future

[00:01:16] and simultaneously we’re looking back at the past perhaps less reviewing the events

[00:01:25] on our calendar and more thinking about that thing that we said in that meeting

[00:01:29] and so it’s easy to bounce between these two things we can imagine the future and use the

[00:01:37] past to try to predict the future of course this default mode of thinking is actually really flawed

[00:01:43] in the average person but perhaps the more stark reality that we need to face is that often we’re

[00:01:51] doing this without thinking about it we’re doing it automatically and we’re not doing it automatically

[00:01:55] when our mind is wondering whenever we are idle when we’re not engaging something intentionally

[00:02:02] like for example this podcast we’re thinking forward or thinking backward and the truth is

[00:02:09] even during this podcast you’re probably trailing off a little bit in your mind to think about

[00:02:15] something else that you’re getting ready to do what you’re going to have for lunch today or

[00:02:19] how that meeting is going to go tomorrow morning we should be clear that there’s nothing inherently

[00:02:26] wrong about thinking about the future or inherently wrong about thinking about the past

[00:02:32] but where we end up going wrong where we go off the rails is when that energy is pointed in those

[00:02:39] directions without any real benefit or purpose and when we are missing out on whatever is happening

[00:02:47] in that present moment

[00:02:48] you

[00:02:49] so if it makes sense to think about the future and the past on occasion then how can we do that

[00:02:56] without kind of defaulting through these useless modes these kind of anxiety driving modes of

[00:03:03] randomly thinking about something that has happened in the past and the negative ramifications that it

[00:03:08] might have on our future well there’s no single method for doing this first it makes sense to

[00:03:16] address the fact that you have to make time for this

[00:03:19] and we’re talking about creating a new behavior but there’s plenty of discussion on stopping that

[00:03:27] old behavior in other words stopping the automatic thoughts especially automatic negative thoughts

[00:03:34] and focusing on that present moment but for the sake of today’s episode let’s talk about that

[00:03:40] new behavior the intentionally thinking forward and thinking backward behavior we’re going to

[00:03:46] take a quick sponsor break and then we’re going to come back and i’m going to give you some

[00:03:49] structured ways of thinking in a retrospective manner in other words thinking about your past

[00:03:56] and then constructive ways of thinking about your future but first let’s talk about today’s sponsor

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[00:05:18] T 2019. That’s developer T 2019 at checkout. Thanks again to Linode for sponsoring today’s

[00:05:26] episode of developer T. So let’s intentionally perform a retrospective. And the idea here is to

[00:05:35] try to pull out insights. You don’t want to just go over the facts of what happened. That can be

[00:05:41] helpful sometimes. But what you want to do is dig out new insights that maybe you didn’t feel

[00:05:48] didn’t experience in the moment that you are thinking about. So rather than being descriptive,

[00:05:55] you want to shift that concept to being inquisitive. And this is going to be true for

[00:06:02] future thinking as well. Inquisitive. This means that you’re answering from a different

[00:06:07] kind of thought process. Instead of remembering something, you are constructing the kind of the

[00:06:13] connections between the question and the experience that you had.

[00:06:18] So for the sake of these exercises, we’re going to assume that you have some event or some period

[00:06:24] of time in mind. Perhaps it’s the last week. And you can kind of focus on that period of time,

[00:06:32] either in the past or in the future. And the first question that I want you to ask about both the

[00:06:39] past and the future, this one applies in both directions, is what was or what is my primary

[00:06:48] motivation? This week, based on all of the activities that I spent my time doing, could I

[00:06:55] make a case for myself based on that evidence that some particular thing was my motivation?

[00:07:03] And it’s critical here that you don’t substitute a wrong question. And that is, you don’t substitute

[00:07:10] the question of, what do I wish my motivation had been? This is very easy to do. If you look back and

[00:07:17] you say, what was my primary motivation? You may have an idealistic motivation, something that you

[00:07:23] value and that you explicitly care about. But if you look at your actual behavior over the past

[00:07:30] week, what would you say, based on that evidence, was your true motivation? And remember that the

[00:07:38] whole point here is to become better, to improve based on this retrospective look.

[00:07:47] And you’re not going to improve if you can’t be honest with yourself. So be kind to yourself when

[00:07:56] the answer to what your motivation was is less than ideal. Don’t beat yourself up over this,

[00:08:02] because that’s what you’re going for. You’re trying to find out what kinds of things are

[00:08:07] motivating me, and what do I wish was motivating me? Now, looking forward into the future,

[00:08:15] you can use the same concept of motivation.

[00:08:17] What is my primary motivation? But now, you can do the opposite. You can say, how can I

[00:08:25] choose my activities to match my motivation? How can I plan my week to actually match my

[00:08:34] priorities? If you look at your week plan, and you’ve got a bunch of meetings, or you know you’re

[00:08:40] going to spend your time in a particular way, and it doesn’t match up with that motivation,

[00:08:45] now you can ask yourself,

[00:08:47] why? What does my plan say about my true motivation? But the great thing is that at

[00:08:55] this juncture point, you now have the power to change it. So that’s the first question,

[00:09:01] both retrospectively and into the future, what is my, what was my motivation? And the second

[00:09:09] question is also for both retrospective and into the future, but it’s formed a little bit

[00:09:15] differently for each. In the retrospective, I’m going to ask myself, what is my motivation?

[00:09:17] In the retrospective version, we’re going to look at the past week and ask ourselves a very

[00:09:23] difficult question. If we knew we only had a couple of months to live, and put a specific

[00:09:29] number on it, if we knew that we only had two months, for example, to live,

[00:09:34] what would we have wished we had done differently last week? Now, the reason we put the date out

[00:09:41] by two months here is because most of us would say, well, I wouldn’t have worked a single day

[00:09:47] had I known that this was my last week alive, right? Nobody’s going to waste time doing that.

[00:09:53] So what this allows you to do is look at your actions less through an invincible lens.

[00:10:00] We have to recognize that we kind of intuitively imagine that we will have time to get to things

[00:10:06] later. But at a fundamental level, this is at odds with reality. And if we apply the question

[00:10:14] forward into the future, we can ask ourselves,

[00:10:17] a productive question, if I knew that I only had two months left, how would I spend this week?

[00:10:26] What would I do with my time? Now, this can be a little bit of an anxiety-provoking question,

[00:10:33] and that’s kind of the point. I don’t want you to get to the point where you become debilitated by

[00:10:39] this. So instead, I encourage you to think about specific interactions you have with people.

[00:10:46] Don’t necessarily,

[00:10:47] think about the big decisions that you might make. Start with those basic interactions.

[00:10:53] So perhaps instead of saying, what would you do with this week? You can ask yourself,

[00:10:57] how might I treat people this week if I knew I only had two months left?

[00:11:03] Who might I call on my drive home from work? Or who might I spend a little bit of extra time with

[00:11:11] in my family? Contrary to what we might intuitively think about these questions,

[00:11:17] you might be able to ask yourself, how would I treat people this week if I only had two months left?

[00:11:17] People tend to be happier when they are aware of their mortality. So I want you to hear me very

[00:11:24] clearly about this particular exercise. The goal is not to focus on the process or the fact of your

[00:11:32] mortality, but instead to focus on the shortened timeline, to imagine that the time that you have

[00:11:40] is less than what you had expected. I encourage you to try this even in the very light,

[00:11:46] way that is most suitable for you, and try to take one actionable thing away from each of these

[00:11:55] questions. Whether that’s a simple shift to your calendar, or maybe you set a reminder on your

[00:12:01] phone to call someone, go and do something about these particular exercises that changes your life

[00:12:10] for the better. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea. Thank you

[00:12:14] again to today’s sponsor, Linode.

[00:12:16] Head over to linode.com slash developer tea to get $20 worth of credit as a new customer. Use the

[00:12:23] code developer tea 2019 at checkout. Today’s episode wouldn’t be possible without our excellent

[00:12:29] producer, Sarah Jackson. This episode and every other episode of Developer Tea can be found on

[00:12:34] spec.fm. But of course, the best way to keep up with Developer Tea is to subscribe in whatever

[00:12:40] podcasting app you’re currently using. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and until next time, enjoy your

[00:12:46] tea.

[00:12:46] Thank you for listening to Developer Tea. I’m your host, Jonathan Cottrell, and I’ll see you next time.

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