“I’ll feel more like it tomorrow.” How often have you said that? Present self doesn’t feel like it, but certainly future self will. Why do we do this? Is it true?
The discrepancy between present and future selves is important in terms of understanding procrastination. Our delay today provides rewards to present self at the cost to future self. Of course, that’s ok if the gains today outweigh the costs tomorrow, but often they don’t. It’s not a matter of the relative utility per se, but an unwillingness on the part of present self to do what’s required now. It’s easier to simply put it off. Present self is very much like my six year old when he says, “I don’t feel like it” or “I don’t want to.”
Present self feels a little better by delaying action now. This is the mood repair that reinforces the avoidant coping strategy. The strangest part of this is that we really do believe we’ll feel more like it tomorrow. Why?
As Dan Gilbert (Harvard University) has explained, we rely on the present to predict the future, and when present self is feeling good, we predict future self will too. We conveniently forget that future self will actually have the burden of the delayed task with even more time pressure. That too is something we understand from psychological research. It’s the case of focusing on the singular event today, as opposed to past experiences in the same situation. If I keep my focus narrow enough on the present, it’s all good, right? Not really.
So why do we do this? I think research done by Hal Hershfield (NYU, Stern School of Business) explains this best. Hal and his colleagues have done a series of studies exploring the strange ways we think about present and future selves. Let me give you a brief sample of a few of these.
Students were asked how much time they were willing to tutor others. Their willingness varied in terms of whether it was present self or future self who would help. They offered up less time now but were willing to devote more time in the future. They were similarly generous with their other classmates’ time. Future self seems more like a stranger to us and certainly different from present self.
When Hal and his colleagues used brain-scan technology to explore the neural correlates of these choices, the fMRI scans revealed that different areas of our brains are active when we think about present versus future self. In fact, as in the tutoring study, future self seems more like a stranger in terms of brain activity.
Hal has done some interesting other studies too that show that we’re more likely to make better decisions about future self, like save for retirement, if we can imagine future self more clearly—like seeing a digitally aged picture of ourselves. So, we can bridge the gap between present and future selves with some sort of time travel, but it’s not easy, and most of us don’t do it habitually.
What all this means is that we have to recognize “I’ll feel more like it tomorrow” for what it is; It’s another example of how present self treats future self like a stranger. Of course, future self is present self, so this is a self-sabotaging behavior. In fact, we do know this, at least nonconsciously, as the most common emotion reported with procrastination is guilt.
I find this interesting because our emotions reveal that our brain activity of the pre-frontal cortex (the part that Hal studied in his brain scans) is only part of the story. Our emotions reveal that present self has a pretty good understanding of the relation between present and future selves. Present self just doesn’t seem to care enough. Play now, pay later. We see that in advertising every day. Those clever marketing types know exactly how to take advantage of this discrepancy.
So, what have you done for your future self lately? Maybe tomorrow?