Temporal focus and the path to well-being: The mediating role of time management

We constantly experience a sense of time poverty, which might be lowering our well-being. Temporal focus, derived from time perspective, and time management are associated with well-being. But how temporal focus relates to well-being is not clearly understood. The trait–behavior model suggests that temporal orientations influence well-being through behaviors. We surveyed university students ( N = 410) by combining two equivalent samples from 2022 ( N = 207) and 2025 ( N = 203) to examine the relationship between temporal focus (trait), time management (behavior), and well-being. Time management fully mediated the relationship between future focus and well-being, and partly mediated the relationship between present focus and well-being, emphasizing the crucial role of these foci in this process. Past focus was not significantly associated with well-being or time management. In light of Zimbardo's work on time perspective—including past-positive and past-negative—we conducted an exploratory analysis using Sample 2. Time perspective explained additional variance in well-being beyond temporal focus and time management, highlighting its continued relevance in well-being research. Overall, time management appears to be a key mechanism linking present and future focus to well-being, while more research could integrate time perspective to better understand how past orientations relate to well-being.