About The Present
Time, at the scale of life.
The Present began with a simple realization: how can we 'live in the moment' when the moment changes every second?
Modern life gives us constant reference for the day. Clocks, calendars, alerts, deadlines. But the larger arc those moments belong to is usually left out.
The Present restores that larger arc.
It does not replace ordinary timekeeping. It adds back a scale of time that modern life rarely shows: the year as a continuous whole.
Why it exists
Ordinary clocks are built for coordination. They help us arrive, measure, schedule, respond.
The Present serves a different purpose.
It was designed for people who want time to feel less fragmented. Less like a stream of separate moments. More like something continuous, unfolding, and lived.
Seen at the scale of the year, the present changes.
It feels less fleeting.
Less compressed.
More grounded within something larger.
What changes
People who live with The Present describe a subtle but persistent shift. Less hurry. Clearer seasons. The feeling of having a friend in time. A wider horizon.
Not because time slows down. Because the present moment is finally seen against the year it belongs to.
In biology, daily rhythms are called circadian. Yearly rhythms are called circannual. We are attuned to both. Modern tools only make one of them visible.
The Present is designed to make the other one felt.
How it works
The Present is a silent, battery-powered wall clock with a single hand that completes one revolution every 365.24 days.
There are no apps, updates, notifications, or settings to manage.
It does not tell you what to do.
It does not ask for constant attention.
It hangs quietly in the room and lets the year remain visible as a whole.
Meet Scott Thrift, the person who makes each timepiece.
Ssong Yang and Scott Thrift with their daughter on her first birthday, Spring 2025.
About Scott Thrift
I'm Scott Thrift. I started The Present in 2012.
When I was six, I nearly drowned in a riptide off the coast of Florida. In the moment before I was rescued, something became very clear: I wasn't done yet.
I've spent the years since trying to understand what that meant. The Present is the closest I've come to an answer.
Before this, I spent over a decade as a filmmaker, co-founding the production company m ss ng p eces, documenting design processes on six continents, learning how the cut, the frame, and the rhythm of a scene can change what a moment means. Film taught me that time is not a fixed thing. It is shaped by the instrument that shows it.
In 2011, I built the first prototype of a clock with one hand that makes one full revolution per year. Over the next fourteen years, I made and shipped more than 10,000 of them to owners in 44 countries. I assemble every unit by hand in Burlington, Vermont, where I live with my wife Ssong and our daughter.
The thing that keeps me going is the letters. People write to tell me that something shifted. Not dramatically. Just enough. The year became real. The days stopped feeling interchangeable. They felt grounded in a new appreciation for time.
That's the why. I think life deserves a wider view.
Scott Thrift dancing on the bottom of the world in Antarctica, Winter 2012.
Scott Thrift with his daughter, Fall 2024.
