Thoughts about the present and future are frequent, whereas thoughts about the past rare; about the present are common during social interaction, felt pleasant, but lacked to meaningfulness; about the past are relatively unpleasant & involuntary

Roy Baumeister et al. 2018. “Everyday Thoughts in Time: Experience Sampling Studies of Mental Time Travel.” PsyArXiv. October 2. doi:10.31234/osf.io/3cwre

Abstract: Time is an important yet mysterious aspects of human conscious experience. We investigated time in everyday thoughts. Two community samples, contacted at random points for three (Study 1; 6,686 reports) and 14 days (Study 2; 2,361 reports), reported on their most recent thought. Both studies found that thoughts about the present and future were frequent, whereas thoughts about the past were rare. Thoughts about the present were common during social interaction, felt pleasant, but lacked to meaningfulness. Thoughts about the future included desires to satisfy goals and usually involved planning. Thoughts about the past were relatively unpleasant and involuntary. Subjective experiences of past and future thoughts often were similar and differed from present focus, consistent with views that memory and prospection use similar mental structures. Taken together, the present work provides unique insights into the conscious experience of time highlights the pragmatic utility of future thought.