Section 3. Outlining. What your sense of time tells about you, part 1.
Imagine you are a high school principal. A teacher bursts breathless into your office. There's a fist fight in the lunchroom, she gasps. The responsibility is yours to stop the fight. How do you meet it?

1. Perhaps you as a youngster, took part in fights and your present-day ties with students are warm and strong. You can stop the fight because your prestige is high among them.

2. You have a plan prepared. Other schools have been disrupted so you have already planned a way to stop any fight.

3. You are totally confident of your abilities in a crisis. You are ready to stride into the lunchroom and take charge without a single qualm. Stopping the fight will be easy.

4. You fervently wish that you could delegate the job since you know that you're not a talented peacemaker. You wish you could return to the job of planing for the school's needs ten years hence.

One of these four reactions would be the first you'd feel, but only one, not two or three of them, says three psychologists. There psychologists, Dr Harriet Mann, Dr Humphrey Osmond and Miriam Siegler, have come up with a scheme for sorting people regardless of their education, age or situation.

The concept is based on the premise that all people have a basic way of seeing time. Each of us is predisposed to seeing all events from one time ventage point.