How do you treat your future self?
Hal Hershfield on the psychology of our future self
“Being truly kind to our future self involves recognizing that we can be happy in the present and in the future. But to do that, we need to stop thinking in terms of our present self versus our future self. We need to instead look for ways that we can help our present and future selves at the same time.”
–Laurie Santos
Quick Summary
It’s a natural human tendency to make choices that benefit us in the present but create difficulties for our future selves—like spending money instead of saving it, or postponing a workout for another day. Podcast host Dr. Laurie Santos talks to psychologist and author Hal Hershfield about how to balance our immediate desires with our long-term happiness. She also shares her experience testing an AI time machine to get some happiness advice from her future self.
You can catch the complete episode (36 minutes) on Pushkin.
Key Takeaways
Psychological myopia vs. psychological hyperopia. How we plan for the future can be described in the same way an eye doctor can diagnose us as nearsighted (myopic) or farsighted (hyperopic). Psychological myopia involves being shortsighted about future consequences—for instance, eating lots of junk food without considering our health. Psychological hyperopia describes the opposite: focusing on the future at the expense of present-day joy. According to psychologist Hal Hershfield, these two phenomena make it difficult to make decisions that require tradeoffs between the present and future.
We view our future selves as separate people from ourselves. In a study by the psychologist Emily Pronin, one group of students was told to imagine hosting a party the next day while another group was told to imagine throwing a party decades from now. Asked to describe what the event would be like, both groups generally wrote about the same things—seeing their friends, enjoying drinks, and so on. However, people who imagined the party in the distant future were more likely to describe the scene using the third-person perspective, visualizing their future self as another person. This tendency to view our future self as a separate person suggests a psychological disconnect from the person we plan or expect to be—making it hard for us to plan or imagine life for our future selves.
A few examples of how we struggle with long-term planning: We avoid doing things now because we feel anxious about it, like delaying work on a big project with a looming deadline. Alternatively, we overcommit by signing our future selves up for more things than we’d actually like to take on. This is the “Yes-Damn” effect, our tendency to regret earlier choices. The name of the effect comes from the fact that people often find themselves saying “yes” to things they later regret.
Psychological hyperopia makes us miss out on enjoying the present. People who are hyperopic are motivated to do things now to put their future selves in a good position, sometimes at the expense of their own enjoyment. They behave in an overly future-oriented way, like pushing themselves to be productive rather than taking a break.
A related idea is something researchers call the “procrastination of positive experiences,” where we put things off until the time is just “right”—except it never comes. For example, that could be saving a special treat for a nice occasion, only to find it’s gone bad later on. The tendency to hoard PTO days in the U.S. also illustrates this phenomenon. According to one survey, 62% of workers let a third of their PTO days go to waste in 2023.
“You can also see this sort of thing with friendships,” Hal says. “We may think that a friendship or relationship will always be there, and it may take some work right now to invest in it, but we don't have the time. … But later, the strong bond is no longer so strong because we didn't spend time on it and instead did this other stuff that we thought was better for our future.”
How do you become kinder to your future self? Simulate a future version of yourself. Laurie tests this out in a few ways: first, by using a Snapchat aging filter, and then by experimenting with the MIT Media Lab’s Future You chatbot. The idea is that engaging directly with an simulated older version of yourself, even through a visual image, creates more thoughtfulness and intentionality.
Hal tested this in a study where college students were told to write a letter to their future selves, explaining which topics were currently important to them and how they saw life. Half the participants wrote to themselves in 20 years’ time, while the other half wrote to themselves just three months from now. It wasn’t the content of the letters that piqued Hal’s interest but rather, how students’ behavior changed after writing them. Looking at exercise time specifically, he observed that students who wrote to themselves 20 years from now exercised nearly 1.5 times longer than the other participants. Engaging meaningfully with our future selves, even through something as simple as writing a letter, encourages us to treat them much better.
MIT Media Lab’s Future You chatbot, which uses ChatGPT, imagines an older, wiser version of yourself, created by answering personal questions about your present self and your expectations for your future. For example, “Who are the most important people in your life or people you think you will frequently interact with in the future?” and “Describe a significant low point in your life.” Paired with OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, the chatbot uses this information to produce synthetic memories. However, Future You’s creators caution against thinking of the chatbot as a prophecy and instead encourage using it as a tool for reflection.
Thoughts
My husband Josh and I once came up with this idea of “betting on your future self.” We used this to describe being extremely confident in Future You and their ability to handle things that Present You can’t or doesn’t want to do.
Flying out for a weekend trip soon? You could start packing a few days in advance—or you could let Future You handle it in the last few hours before you head to the airport. Whatever the task, the idea is you’re counting on your future self to take care of it.
This is the opposite of something else we call “being kind to your future self.” That involves things like taking care of any chores and necessary grunt work now so that Future You can breathe a sigh of relief when it’s go time. Oftentimes, being kind to your future self means making life less stressful, less frenetic.
Listening to this episode of The Happiness Lab, it dawned on me that Josh and I had come up with our own ways of framing psychological myopia and hyperopia. Hal and Laurie never discuss whether people gravitate toward just one or the other, but I imagine we all experience them both in different ways.
That said, Josh and I generally live on opposite ends of the spectrum here. I lean on the side of being psychologically hyperopic, trying to squeeze in a productive moment whenever possible. That can look and feel like a very regimented lifestyle, something I’m not always proud of. Meanwhile, Josh is comfortable sleeping in and letting his to-do list accumulate.
Over time, however, I’d like to think our habits are rubbing off on each other.
While it’s hard to imagine ever being able to really anticipate my future self’s needs, perhaps there is a happy balance between being kind to your future self and betting on them. One that means setting yourself up for success, but also letting yourself enjoy the here and now.
Reflecting on the last year—after getting laid off and going full-time freelance—I feel proudest of myself for being better able to deal with ambiguity. Accidentally overcommitting is admittedly still a challenge. But on the whole, I’m feeling more comfortable these days betting that my future self’s got it—whatever “it” is—under control.
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–Joyce