SAN JUAN, EDISON S.

LT-02

Insight Piece #6

In a negotiation, it is important that we understood the time orientation. It shows how we give
importance to each part or time frame in our lives. Exhibit 1 shows my personal time
orientation, how the past, present and future links and how big it is in my own life.

Exhibit 1
Time Orientation

PAST. Past-orientation focuses on the before. The importance of my past is signified with the
size of the circle. I don’t consider past to be that important compared to the present and the
future. However, we can see that past intersects the present more than present intersects the
future. This shows that even if my past has not much important, it greatly impacts my current
situation, the present.

PRESENT. The present has the biggest importance for me. Even if this is not a good practice,
but I tend to live day by day. The present is the focus of what I do. As I said, my present is
more affected by the past than the future. I tend to reflect more on the past than to plan
ahead for the future. The lessons I learned from the past changes me in the present.

FUTURE. I know future has importance to me as well, more important than the past but less
important than the present. I placed a nominal size of importance for the future since I believe
that the future will always become the present. However, even if it has importance, it doesn’t
affect my present. One of my favorite phrase is “Let’s cross the bridge when we get there.”
This shows that I tend to ignore the future. Focus on what we do currently and get the best out
of it.