Involve Your Future Self

Every choice you make will have real effects and opportunity costs for yourself in the near and far future. Some of those effects may be trivial—will I be happier with the macchiato or the flat white? Some may be dramatic—will I live to see tomorrow if I drive myself home after this party? But it will be your future self who lives—or dies—with those effects.

What you need for this exercise:

  • Pen and paper

The number of people who will be affected by your choices varies, but there is one person who is always on that list: Future You.

Oddly, we are not particularly nice to our future selves. There are many possible explanations for this, and they’re still being investigated and sorted out. One factor is our tendency to choose immediate gratification over delayed gratification. We make our decisions based on what will make us most happy now and leave our future selves to sort out how to be happy in the future. Have the extra glass of wine—who cares if Future You has a hangover? Skip the stretching—Future You can deal with the soreness and potential injury. Take home 2 percent more pay now and have 70 percent less saved for retirement later—that’s Future You’s problem.

Another factor is related to compassion. We are less compassionate toward people we don’t know or identify with than with people close to us. For instance, we think of caring for the elderly as a good idea in theory, but most of us don’t do much to help the elderly in practice. But let’s say we get to know one particular elderly grandmother at an assisted living center. We learn about how she traveled the country as a dancer in her twenties, and she shares her lemon bar recipe with us—the one her husband always asked for on his birthday—and tells us surprisingly raunchy jokes that make us laugh. Now if we’re asked to help, out comes the checkbook and the calendar for volunteering.

Interestingly, we tend to treat our future selves the way we would treat somebody we don’t know or have never even been introduced to. We think helping our future selves is nice in concept, but we’re not attached to the idea enough to actually make many sacrifices in the present. With this next simple, two-step exercise, you can combat this tendency and make long-term goals that will be good for Future You in addition to present you.

STEP #1: ENVISION YOURSELF IN THE FUTURE

Picture yourself in the future. How old you picture yourself will depend on the decision you’re trying to make. If you’re trying to decide which TV to buy, you might want to picture yourself just a few months or a year in the future. If you’re trying to decide whether to go vegan, you might want to picture yourself five or ten years in the future. If you’re trying to decide on a career, it might make more sense to picture yourself twenty years into the future. For most decisions, it’s helpful to picture yourself at several different points in the future, which is also what you should do if you don’t have a specific decision in mind.

For now, envision yourself at sixty-five. Create a detailed picture in your mind. Better yet, create an actual picture, using digital aging software, an app, or filters. People who interact with a digitally aged version of themselves, in a photo or, even more powerfully, in a virtual reality setting, even for five minutes, subsequently save more for retirement. If you’re digitally challenged, no worries—even being asked to sit quietly and visualize ourselves as an older person changes our eating and exercise decisions in the short term.

Taking the time to picture an older version of yourself helps you see Future You as a real person you can care about, not just a stranger. You might even consider printing out a digitally aged version of yourself and keeping it at your desk, on your fridge, or anywhere else you’ll regularly see it so that Future You becomes a close companion.

  • There are several iPhone and Android apps that will digitally age your face. Some are better than others, of course.

    I recommend Aging Booth (for iPhone and Android) for doing better than most while also being free. You can’t do much else with it, but it will give you a realistically much older picture of yourself.

    For a weaker version of the same effect, if you already have Snapchat you can try the “Old” lens from snapchat. They dial back the effect a lot compared to other (detailed) digital aging software. This is probably because it makes people feel good to think they won’t look a whole lot different in the future (even though that’s probably false), and people use the app more when they’re happy than when it makes them question their own choices in the present.

STEP #2: ASK “FUTURE YOU” QUESTIONS

Now, holding on to your mental image or looking at the digitally aged photo, ask Future You questions that will help you make your decision in the present. You can ask anything you think is useful, but here are good questions to start with:

  • What is important to you? (Common considerations include: Financial security? Health? Your home? The stuff you own? Family and friends?)

  • What are you happy you did or didn’t do?

  • What are you proudest of?

  • What do you regret?

Write down any insights you gain. Then, related to whatever decision you’re considering, pick one of the options. Imagine the choice as if it was in the past and ask Future You, “Are you happy you made that decision?” Cycle through each potential option and ask the same question again.

Don’t delude yourself into thinking you now know how you’ll feel decades into the future. We all change far too much over time to really predict that. The point of this exercise isn’t to become a fortune-teller; it’s to get you thinking more effectively about the decisions that will serve you best in the long-term, rather than just in the present moment.