On Sunday, most clocks in Canada and the U.S. went back an hour. For one morning, a lot of us got a little time back.
What did you do with yours? Sleep in? Scroll? Plan the week?
There's a common worry about mindfulness hiding in that question.
If you train yourself to live in the present moment, do you stop caring about the future?
Do you save less, plan less, and reach for the easy thing now? A new set of studies put that worry to a test.
Living in the present moment is one of the most quoted ideas in mindfulness. This issue looks at what four new studies found about it and the future, what a Buddhist verse and a Stoic letter actually say, and a short practice for doing both. We label each claim so you can see how solid it is:
- SUPPORTED: backed by a systematic review, meta-analysis or major guideline
- EMERGING: promising but early, small, or mixed
- TRADITIONAL: what a tradition teaches, or the history of a practice
- PHILOSOPHICAL: interpretation, not a testable fact
- SPECULATIVE: a reasonable idea not yet shown
What is present bias, and why worry about mindfulness?
Many choices are a trade between now and later. Fifty dollars today, or seventy next month. Dessert now, or feeling good tomorrow. Scrolling tonight, or a rested morning.
Most of us lean a little toward now. Researchers call this present bias: giving a smaller reward today more weight than a bigger one later.
Mindfulness asks you to rest your attention on what is happening now, like the breath or the feet on the floor. (Issue 01 looked at what slow breathing does in the body.) When the mind drifts into tomorrow, you gently come back.
So here is the worry. Thinking about the future seems to help people wait for bigger rewards. If mindfulness trains you to step out of those thoughts, could it make you more impatient? It's a fair question. But until recently, it was mostly a guess. SPECULATIVE
The ancient lens: the present, with work in it
Two old texts that praise the present do not tell people to forget tomorrow. They pair it with work.
A Buddhist verse called "An Auspicious Day" (Majjhima Nikaya 131), in Thanissaro Bhikkhu's translation, begins: "You shouldn't chase after the past or place expectations on the future." A few lines later it adds: "Ardently doing what should be done today." TRADITIONAL
In the explanation that follows, "placing expectations on the future" means getting carried away with delight in what body, feelings or thoughts you might have one day. TRADITIONAL So the warning seems to be about being swept off by hopes, not about making plans. PHILOSOPHICAL
The Stoic Seneca made a similar point in the first of his letters to his friend Lucilius. In Richard Mott Gummere's translation: "hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by." TRADITIONAL
Read together, both treat the present as the place where you look after the future, not a place to hide from it. That reading is ours, not a claim about history. PHILOSOPHICAL
The modern evidence: does mindfulness make you impatient?
Four studies, one question. A paper published on October 15, 2026 in Scientific Reports asked whether mindfulness makes people more present biased. The team, from universities and a mindfulness institute in Spain, ran three lab studies and one field study. EMERGING
In the lab. In total, 852 people, mostly students around 21 years old, listened to a 15 minute audio. One group did a guided breath meditation. Another was told to let the mind wander. A third did nothing first. Then everyone made money choices: a smaller amount sooner or a larger amount later. One study used everyday scenarios, like how to split a monthly pay cheque or whether to borrow for a car or save for two years. Another used real money, paid out to 1 in 25 people. EMERGING
The result: no difference. Meditating first did not make people choose the quick money more often. In the first study, about 71 to 73 percent of choices were for the larger, later amount in every group. The only small signal, in the real money study, pointed slightly toward more patience after meditating, and it did not repeat in the other studies. EMERGING
After eight weeks. In the field study, 57 people took a standard eight week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course, with daily home practice. Before the course, 64 percent of their choices were for the later reward. After, 67 percent. That change was small and not significant. Twelve people became more patient, ten less, and 35 didn't change. This study had no comparison group and about a third of people dropped out, so it's a check, not proof. EMERGING
A study that leaned the other way. A 2025 paper in the International Journal of Research in Marketing ran six studies and found that mindfulness made people more willing to wait for a larger reward. The authors think it slows the felt passage of time, so the future feels roomier. That explanation is still being tested. EMERGING
Why the worry made sense. It's well established in the lab that vividly imagining your own future nudges people toward bigger, later rewards. A 2022 meta-analysis of 48 articles found a medium sized effect, stronger when the imagined events were positive, vivid and linked to the choice. SUPPORTED And one 2013 study found that people whose minds wandered more during an easy task were willing to wait longer for money. EMERGING (Issue 02 looked at the other side of mind wandering: how it can pull mood down.)