One of my Dad’s saying is when we do an act today that has integrity, or is aligned with our dream, we are doing our future selves a favour.
This could even be cleaning your room, your tools or going to the gym. Your future self will thank you for your work.
Why then do we so often do the opposite?
Hyperbolic discounting is the tendency for people to prefer an immediate payoff more than a later payoff. It’s going against the long-game.
This cognitive bias leads to inconsistent choices and swings. People make a choice – a purchase, a behavioural choice… Some choice that their future selfs would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning and available information.
In any form of training (physical or mental), we are faced with this. To show up in the first place, to stick to the session that was outlined, to work where we are at (and not somebody else), avoid simply following the crowd, are all acts of overcoming this bias.
Showing up, doing the work and overcoming the Resistance (as Steven Pressfield puts it) is to overcome hyperbolic discounting and we can repeatedly overcome this, we are in the long-game.
