Have you ever looked at a box of donuts (or any bakery item of your preference), pondered the physical, mental and spiritual implications of consuming them in the middle of a workday, and resisted the temptation? Yes? I applaud you. You are a god among mere morals. I have as well, on occasion. But more often than not, I have joined the significantly large portion of said mortals who have consumed the donut, hoping to make up for it through a longer workout, or a lighter meal towards the end of the day. I regret to announce that I would not have fared well on the Marshmallow Test.
As a seasoned procrastinator, I was overjoyed the day I discovered Pocket. For years, I had been meticulously noting books, films, articles (with dates, authors and titles) in a cathedral of unopened diaries. Pocket seemed like a godsend. Or rather, a very targeted human sent technological solution for my insatiable desire to archive everything that I hoped to get around to someday.This burgeoning TBR list, however, was more daunting than encouraging - which resulted in a resigned return to Netflix. As for the abandoned list, I began 'spring-cleaning' fervently, spending days just winding up material that I barely remembered afterwards, and deleting a lot else with a heavy heart. Cue music.
YOLO - Being present? Or present biased?
Present Bias refers to our tendency to overweigh short term, lower rewards over long term, higher rewards. Add to this the idea of hyperbolic discounting, wherein our present bias is amplified by the relative distance of the delay in receiving the rewards on our scale of time perception. This raises a serious concern for us, and a fascinating topic of research for several behavioural scientists to indulge in.
This inconsistency of preferences that we display has been looked into by several researchers. O'Donoghue & Rabin (1999) in their paper Doing it Now or Later actually look into two of the themes I have brought up - procrastination and overeating. They posit a model for present biased preferences which consider activities with immediate costs or immediate rewards. It expands on a degree of naivety and sophistication with respect to self control is used to describe participant behaviour. “Naive people procrastinate immediate-cost activities and preproperate—do too soon—immediate-reward activities. Sophistication mitigates procrastination, but exacerbates preproperation.” Further, their 2001 paper, the two researchers introduce a model of partial naiveté wherein a person knows that there will be self-control issues in the future but underestimate its magnitude. You can read about their findings here.
So are we doomed to simply make bad choices based on where the expected reward for these behaviours lie on a time scale? Not necessarily. Radu et al (2011) explore the significance of the hidden zero effect, as explained by Magen (2008), in altering temporal attention, and reducing impulsivity in decision making. In their paper, Suvorov and van de Ven (2009)attempt to build a model of self regulation for a realistic agent and discuss a comparison of distal goals (take longer to attain - low probability, higher value) and proximal goals (short term goals - high probability, lower value) - two ends of a spectrum. The sweet spot, of course, is to leverage proximal goals to achieve distal goals. And although there are various thoughts on opinions on how it could be done, I attempt my own.
Game plan for future us.
A practical guide for getting to that overlap between proximal and distal goals begins with these questions - How do I get better? How do I stop leaving everything for future Divyani to take care of? Or at least take steps now and create a better environment for her to thrive in an uncertain future?
Here are three behaviourally informed strategies I've decided to adopt to support future Divyani this year:
In an earlier post, I wrote about the inordinate emphasis of the cognitive over emotional in accounting for behaviour. One of the phenomena that I gravitated towards when I first encountered it was of the hot-cold empathy gap, expanded from the risk-as-feelings hypothesis (Lowenstein et al, 2001). Making decisions for our future selves in one state, without adequately accounting for an inconsistent choice in a different state can set us up for disappointment and discouragement. So I did not sign myself up for daily, 365 day goal of anything (thank god!). So what? No goals for this year then?
Of course not, I was born a planner. What has seriously improved my achievement of small and large goals over the last year, and is a preferred strategy for this year as well is the Compound Effect - the act of doing a little bit everyday, as much as possible, that builds into a habit. So I know I'm not going to get off the couch and be a marathon runner in a matter of days or begin reading a 700 page book a week, but building endurance - even an extra minute or an extra page a day - adds up.
Sounds easy enough. But what about those inconsistent days when the choice to do what needs to be done, seem hard? I do it anyway. The way that I have been using this automation is that even on the days that I don't feel capable of running, or reading - I get dressed for a quick stroll, or set aside the time to sit with a book. Ensuring that the act is a part of my life ensures that tomorrow, if not today, I'll still be enacting the behaviour, albeit in an improved manner. So if today all I did was read a sentence, tomorrow I'll read a page. For me, this has been an endeavour to automate decision making, thus saving the energy saving machine we call our brain, some serious daily fuel.
Will you give your future you a helping hand?
