Get to Know Your Future Self

By Shlomo Maital

     Is the future not what it used to be?  This blog is about why this is.

     In the early ‘70s, my wife Dr. Sharone Maital, an educational psychologist, and I, an economist, wrote articles and books on the interface between psychology and economics.  One of our focus topics was “inability to defer gratification”, a technical term for how we degrade and discount the future, and overemphasize current ‘now’ gratification. 

       In a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts,  Shankar Vedante’s Hidden Brain,  this is the topic, based on a new book by UCLA psychologist Hal Hirschfield  Your future self:  How to make tomorrow better today.   

        There are interesting insights that I believe we all can employ.  Here is the essence of Hirshfield’s idea:

     “…it’s easier to choose what feels gratifying now than to choose what’s more beneficial in the years to come. Hal believes this is because we feel disconnected to our future selves. Hal shows us the mental mistakes we commit when thinking about the future —   he shares with us how to visualize who we want to become so we can make choices that are better for us now.

      A key finding of Hirshfield is this:  Based on functional MRI, mapping brain activity, when we think about our future choices, involving present sacrifice, the area of the brain most active is one involving how we view OTHER PEOPLE.  In other words, when we make present-future choices, the person involved in the future is not US, but some other person (whom we don’t know that well).  And if we don’t know the future person we are to become, very well,   our choices will strongly bias towards ourselves, in the present, the self we know so well. 

    What can be done?  Break present sacrifice down into small pieces ($5 a day saving rather than $150 a month, for example.  Visualize.  Picture ourselves in the future.  Think about 11,000 days from now, not 30 years. (A day is a smaller unit easier to comprehend).

      As an economist, I find it interesting that America and China have obverse problems. America, the consumer society, is built solely on getting people to spend, and enjoy the ‘now’.  Result:  Horrible infrastructure, aging airports, crowded roads, terrible public transportation.  China is build largely around investment and saving, and the Chinese people save huge amounts. Result:  Terrific infrastructure, but, when you run out of fast trains and airports and roads, and buildings to build – and you need people to consume – how to get them to do it.  America needs to save. China needs to spend.  Together, a perfect match. But alas – they are now in a Cold War….and the system in which China saved and bought US bonds so America could go into debt, is degrading.

I guess we should try to get to know our future self a little better. If we do, we are less likely to cheat it, and set aside good stuff for our future wellbeing.