Your Future Self
How to Make Tomorrow Better Today
Book Edition Details
Summary
"Your Future Self (2023) is an illuminating journey through the complex world of decision-making, blending psychology and economics to explain why we often disconnect from our future selves, opting for immediate gratification. Based on groundbreaking research, it offers practical advice for mentally connecting with and actively shaping your best possible future while balancing present enjoyment."
Introduction
Imagine stepping through a magical gate and coming face-to-face with yourself twenty years in the future. What would you ask this older, wiser version of yourself? What advice would they give you about the choices you're making today? While this scenario might sound like science fiction, researchers have discovered that we're already engaged in a form of time travel every day through our minds. When we daydream about tomorrow's presentation, worry about retirement, or reflect on past decisions, we're mentally traveling through time in ways that profoundly shape our present behavior. This remarkable ability to mentally journey between past, present, and future may be what sets humans apart from other species. Yet despite its importance, we often struggle with this psychological time travel, making decisions that our future selves will regret or failing to prepare adequately for the challenges ahead. The science reveals fascinating insights about how we perceive our future selves, why we sometimes treat them like strangers, and how strengthening our connection to these distant versions of ourselves can dramatically improve our financial well-being, health choices, and overall life satisfaction. Understanding the psychology of our relationship with our future selves offers powerful tools for making better decisions today while creating the tomorrow we truly want.
The Psychology of Future Self Connection
At the heart of our relationship with time lies a profound psychological puzzle: how connected do we feel to the person we will become? Research reveals that we don't experience a single, continuous self throughout our lives. Instead, we exist as a collection of separate but related selves, like links in a chain stretching across time. Your present self shares memories and experiences with your past self from ten years ago, and both are connected to the future self you'll become a decade from now. The strength of these connections, however, varies dramatically from person to person and has remarkable consequences for our behavior. When researchers measured how similar people felt to their future selves using simple visual scales, they discovered that those who felt more connected to their distant selves consistently made better long-term decisions. These individuals saved more money, exercised more frequently, made more ethical choices, and reported higher levels of life satisfaction over time. Brain imaging studies reveal why this connection matters so much. When we think about our future selves, the neural activity looks remarkably similar to when we think about complete strangers. The same brain regions that help us understand other people's perspectives activate when we contemplate our own futures. This suggests that our future selves aren't just abstract concepts but are psychologically experienced as other people, albeit special ones we might care about more or less depending on how connected we feel to them. The implications are profound. If your future self feels like a stranger, why would you sacrifice present pleasures for their benefit? Why save money for someone you don't know, or exercise for a body that doesn't feel like yours? But when we strengthen the bonds between present and future selves, we become more willing to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains, treating our future selves with the same care we'd show a beloved family member or close friend.
Why We Make Poor Long-Term Decisions
Understanding why we struggle with long-term thinking requires examining three common mistakes we make when mentally traveling through time. The first error is getting anchored to the present moment, like missing a flight because we're too comfortable in the airport bar. Our present emotions feel incredibly vivid and important, acting like a magnifying glass that makes current concerns loom larger than future consequences. When we're hungry, angry, or stressed, these immediate feelings dominate our decision-making, causing us to discount the needs and preferences of our future selves. The second mistake involves what researchers call "poor trip planning." We think about the future, but not deeply or realistically enough. Procrastination exemplifies this error perfectly. When we delay important tasks, we fail to recognize that our future selves will experience the same negative emotions we're trying to avoid today. We imagine that Future Us will somehow be more motivated, organized, or capable of handling the stress we're passing along. Similarly, we often say yes to future commitments when our calendars look empty, failing to anticipate the small daily obligations and unexpected demands that will make us regret those promises. The third error is "packing the wrong clothes," or projecting our current emotional state onto futures that will likely be quite different. When we're cold in winter, we pack sweaters for a Miami vacation. When we're deeply in love, we get tattoos of our partner's name. When we're young and energetic, we plan careers that might not suit our older, possibly more settled selves. This projection bias leads to decisions that seem perfectly reasonable in the moment but leave our future selves confused about what our past selves were thinking. These mistakes share a common thread: they all involve either ignoring our future selves entirely or misunderstanding who those future selves will be. By recognizing these patterns, we can begin to make more thoughtful choices that serve both our present needs and our long-term well-being.
Building Bridges to Tomorrow You
The good news is that we can strengthen our connection to our future selves through practical, scientifically-tested strategies. One of the most powerful approaches involves making our future selves more vivid and concrete. Researchers have found that when people interact with digitally aged images of themselves, they subsequently save more money, exercise more frequently, and make more ethical choices. These age-progressed photos work by transforming an abstract future self into a specific, identifiable person, much like how charity campaigns featuring individual children raise more donations than statistics about widespread poverty. Writing letters to and from your future self provides another effective bridge across time. When people compose detailed messages to themselves years in the future, describing their current lives and future hopes, they develop stronger emotional bonds with their distant selves. This connection translates into more patient financial decision-making and better health behaviors. The most effective approaches involve two-way conversations, where people write both to their future selves and imagine responses back from those wiser, more experienced versions of themselves. Commitment devices offer a different but equally valuable strategy for staying on course toward our long-term goals. These tools work by making it harder for our impulsive present selves to derail the plans we've made for our futures. Simple psychological commitments, like publicly announcing our goals or recruiting accountability partners, can be surprisingly effective. Stronger approaches involve removing tempting options from our environment or setting up automatic consequences for falling off track. The key is choosing commitment devices that are powerful enough to be effective but not so restrictive that we abandon them entirely. Finally, we can make present-day sacrifices feel easier by "taking the good with the bad." Rather than viewing healthy behaviors, saving money, or other beneficial but difficult activities as pure sacrifice, we can pair them with enjoyable experiences. This might mean listening to engaging audiobooks only while exercising, or celebrating small wins along the way toward larger goals. Sometimes the wisest approach is to occasionally skip the sacrifice altogether, recognizing that a life lived entirely for the future might arrive at tomorrow devoid of the memories and relationships that make life worth living.
Summary
The most powerful insight from the science of future selves is that we can fundamentally change our lives by changing how we relate to the people we will become. Rather than treating our future selves as strangers whose problems aren't our concern, we can learn to see them as beloved family members deserving of our care and consideration. This shift in perspective transforms difficult decisions from present-day sacrifices into investments in people we genuinely care about. The research suggests that this isn't just feel-good psychology but a practical approach with measurable benefits for our financial security, health, relationships, and overall well-being. As we face an uncertain future filled with rapid change and new challenges, perhaps the most important skill we can develop is learning to be good ancestors to our own future selves. What kind of life do you want to leave for the person you're becoming, and what small step could you take today to show that future self some love?
By Hal Hershfield
