Lessons learned: Time feels different based on how you frame it
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Imagine you are about to give a presentation about goals your team hopes to achieve by 2030. You want people to leave feeling confident that those goals are within reach. But could the way you describe the timeline influence how people feel about it? You could say, “We’ll achieve our goals by 2030,” using a calendar year. Or you could say, “We’ll achieve our goals in the next four years,” emphasizing the length of time. Both statements describe the same timeline, but which one makes the goals feel closer?
A recent paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research explored how framing time as a calendar year versus a length of time affects how people perceive time and evaluate products. To do this, the researchers conducted a series of seven experiments and an analysis of 50,916 whiskey auctions.
What they learned: Time intervals described as lengths feel longer than equivalent intervals described as years. The researchers suggest this happens because our brains do not treat all numbers the same way. Large numbers, such as years like 2016 or 2030, tend to feel closer together in our minds than smaller numbers like “10 years” or “4 years.” As a result, “10 years” feels like a longer stretch of time than “since 2016,” even though they describe the same period. When people feel that more time has passed, they place more importance on age-related information. This means length framing increases how much people value products that become more valuable with age, like whiskey, but decreases how much they value products where age is a disadvantage, like used goods.
Why it matters: Simple wording choices can shape how people perceive time and influence their decisions. Whether you are talking about future goals, past experiences, or the age of a product or organization, choosing between year framing and length framing can change how people interpret value and experience.
➡️ Idea worth stealing: Match your time framing to your communication goal. If you want people to focus on longevity or experience, use length framing (“serving communities for 25 years”). If you want something to feel more recent or closer in time, use year framing (“we’ll achieve our goal by 2030”).
What to watch: How communicators frame timelines in areas such as public health goals and fundraising campaigns.
