Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: When we're thinking about our future selves, we know that that is us. Like we know that we will become an older version of ourselves. But from an emotional level, it may almost feel like a different person or a stranger. It may almost feel like there is a disconnect between who we are now and who we will be at some point down the line. Sometimes we may act in ways that might knowingly harm our future selves, but we can downplay the harm because we don't feel like it's really gonna impact us. It's going to impact some future emotional stranger of sorts.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hey there, billionaire. Yep, I'm talking to you. If you expect to live another 31 years, you're already a billionaire. Not in money, but in the real measure of wealth, time. That's because 31 years is roughly a billion seconds. But most of us waste time in ways we'd never waste money. The currency of time billionaires is micro moments, the 90 second to 15 minute gaps hidden between the structured parts of your day.
This podcast is about reclaiming them with quick research backed ideas to help you feel more creative, productive, and alive. Welcome to Time Billionaires. Let's make your next micro moment count.
Thanks for joining today's episode of the Time Billionaires Podcast. Our guest today is one of my favorite professors ever. He. He teaches at UCLA's Anderson School of Management and researches how we think about and often disconnect from our future selves, especially in the small, everyday decisions that quietly shape our lives and work. His work blends psychology and behavioral economics to help us make better choices in the micro moments we usually overlook. He's the author of youf Future Self and host of the podcast the Behavioral Divide. His research has been featured in the New York Times and the Harvard Business Review.
Thanks for being here, Hal.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Thank you, Rebecca. It's great to be here.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: It's great to have you. Yeah. Like I said, one of my favorite professors ever. I feel like every time we talk, I learn something interesting and new and it really sticks with me. So I know that people are really going to resonate with your research and your insight.
And I'm not flattering this.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: I appreciate that.
Yeah, you don't even get a grade anymore, so this has to be genuine.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Absolutely.
So you talk about how people often think about our future selves more like strangers than as the same person, which I thought was really surprising. How does that disconnect shape our everyday choices? Not just the big ones, but the tiny ones too.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean, so, I mean, the gist There is that, you know, when we're thinking about our future selves, I think on some level we know that that is us. Like, we know that we will become an older version of ourselves.
But from an emotional level, it may almost feel like a different person or a stranger. It may almost feel like there is a disconnect between who we are now and who we will be at some point down the line, whether it's next year, in five years and 10 years, honestly, even if it's tomorrow morning. Right. And it's like, that's a slightly different phenomenon. But if you've ever had the experience of going out late and, you know, or staying up too late and you're like, I just like one more drink or one more, you know, like, hour to hang out with my friend. And then you think, well, you know, it's. Is this really that big of a deal the next day? You're almost like, why did I do that? Right. So there's this.
These disconnects that happen over time. The reason that's important, and I like the way you put it, it's like not just on the big decisions, but on the micro ones, is that sometimes we may act in ways that might knowingly harm our future selves, but we can downplay the harm because we don't feel like it's really going to impact us. It's going to impact some future emotional stranger of sorts.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Even when it's a little bit. I think this is powerful in transitions, which your book also talks about, that we really are in a series of transitions in the present of life, always. And I think that the smaller those are, the five minutes between meetings, it's easy to feel like we're not actually wasting any valuable time. We may know that scrolling makes us feel kind of depleted, but it's a dopamine hit. And then it feels sort of good. And so it is really jumping from this series of this present transition that there's power in, but we keep giving away because it doesn't feel like there's an opportunity caused.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: I think that's absolutely spot on. And that the example that you just brought up the transitions is so perfect because you're absolutely right. It feels like it's not that big of a deal. But it's like anything else that when you sort of break the whole down to small pieces, that small piece doesn't feel like it's that impactful. But in aggregate, every time I have one of those transitions, if I'm on my, you know, on Instagram or I'm on LinkedIn or, you know, whatever. That's not really necessarily something productive. In aggregate. Those add up to mean that I'm taking care of maybe some urgent things. Like, even if I'm not on Instagram or LinkedIn, but I'm writing an email, I can now say to myself, I've done the urgent, but maybe not the important. And to be fair, it's hard to do the important. It's hard to do the deep thinking in the five minutes between meetings. And so that's why we're like, all right, well, I'll just write a quick email. And now I can tell myself I've done something.
But I think sometimes having that bigger picture and that, you know, tapping into the, you know, the emotions that I'll feel at some point down the road, that could be the type of thing that like, sort of kicks me into gear to maybe use that time more productively.
Or, or if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna write an email or I'm gonna go on LinkedIn, then at least be intent, intentional about that and know that is how I'm spending it. But then as a result, I'm gonna block off other time to do the real things and the deep work. But I don't think we necessarily do that. I think sometimes we just kind of like bounce from one thing to another, um, which, you know, adds up in a negative way over time.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Or it can, it does. It's the worst form of procrastination for me. I find the more uncertain I am of where my energy should go or what's a good use of time, or the less control over I feel of the big things, the more I'm like, oh, I need this quick feeling of accomplishment so I can feel like I did something today. But to your point, then we just look back and it's like, well, did I actually need to be on LinkedIn or pinging emails back that were just quick 100%.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: And I, and I, you know, here's a speculation that I don't have any evidence to back up. But my, you know, my suspicion is that when, when like, our micro and macro lives get even more uncertain and uncontrollable. And what I mean by micro macro is like, my day to day has less and less control and my ma macro, I mean, you know, the macroeconomic context, sociopolitical context and so on, as those things become more uncertain, I think we have that much more of a desire to exhibit and exert some control over our, of our environments. One way to do so is say, oh, I can take control of this. I get to do what I want to do right now. I by the way, Rebecca, I heard this term that I love that's called revenge procrastination.
Have you ever heard that?
[00:07:26] Speaker B: No, I haven't.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: And see, it was one of my friends was talking about how she was one of five and she was saying that like her mom, this is back in the, you know, the 90s or so she said her mom, you know, was a stay at home mom of five.
And she said at night, you know, when she should have been going to sleep, that was her time to do like a crossword puzzle and have a beer. That was like, that was like her routine. And she was like, I know I should go to sleep earlier, but it's like, dammit, I demand I deserve this time. And it's like, maybe this is a bad thing, but it's like, it's like her way of getting back at like the way life has set things up or whatever. So I love that idea that it's like I'm going to do this as a way of like taking back some of my time. Even though it kind of screws you over to like stay up another hour, hour and a half or whatnot, right?
[00:08:17] Speaker B: The me time in the present, you talked about that the emotions we feel right now feel bigger and more powerful than in the future, in the past. And so the me right now is really craving some stimulation or activity for me. But I also thought it was interesting and I felt like when I was reading this, I couldn't relate to most of your research subjects. You talked about how when research participants were asked to define the present, nobody had a hard time doing it. The answers were wildly different, but everyone was pretty quick to give an answer of what the present is. And you said it's because we spend most of our lives in the present and then we fail to recognize how our present selves add up to the future selves. And I feel like I spent at least for 34 years, most of my life in the future. Like all of the right now was practice for the future.
And I could just discount whatever this was because in the future. But I also think that is the precrastination is the term that someone used to describe me of doing things that don't need to be done for months or years because it's a sense of control over the things of, yeah, I don't necessarily need to pick where my kids go to school for years, but I want to. And all of this just compounds then to time spent in what feels like obligatory pseudo productivity, but it isn't actually getting us closer to our goals. And that's sort of the premise, like the through line of the podcast, is that all of these present moments aren't just like something to endure on the way to the future, but these present tiny micro moments are where our lives are accumulating.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: I think that is such an interesting observation there. And I love the fact that you're saying, like, okay, yeah, you're probably more guilty of the precrastination than the procrastination. You're probably more guilty of spending life, your mental life, at least in the future rather than the present.
And here's what I don't know. I don't know what are population level stats, what percentage of people are like you, so to speak.
Here's my suspicion, though, is that there's a lot of people that are in tech or are founders or are otherwise like, you know, highly functioning, successful from a professional standpoint, adults who have a similar sort of psychology and interaction with time as you do. And frankly, I think I've been guilty of that too.
And there's something ironic about, you know, whether you call it precrastination, where you're doing these things that don't need to be done. Now.
Another term that researchers use is called hyper appia, where you're like, so focused on the future that you miss the present, regardless of the case. You know, what's, what's interesting about this is that the motivation is you can tell yourself, I'm, I'm taking control of my time. I'm doing something that's valuable for the future.
And at the same time, I'm not saying this happens all the time, but you may end up missing out. Right? And I think, you know, I know this is more a professional podcast, but like, when you think about personal lives and, you know, parenting, it's really easy to miss out on those moments that are happening now because you're like, you can tell yourself, I'm doing the right thing by, by whatever the behavior is, and it still actually may harm your future self by robbing that future self of whether it's memories or experiences or emotional connections that happen in the past or didn't happen in the past that then lead up to some relationship that you do or don't have with somebody because you are so focused on the future rather than the present. Right? And so I think it's like, there's something that's so important and interesting here because it's really easy to say, oh, your future self just do things to benefit them. And one of the things that you can do to benefit your future self is to be focused on the present. At some times.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: You're so right. Yeah. All of that rings true, not least of all, because the precrastinating tasks, they're not always preparation. Sometimes it's like, oh, well, I need to get prepared to do this for when it happens.
And then myriad factors change and it has to be redone. So it isn't actually preparing. There's like a timeline where it's productive and where it's not. Of batching an RSVP to planning, you use time traveling as an example of how we can make decisions. In your book, and I think literal trip planning, you talked about as an example of a trip to Boston. If you didn't book things now, you could have missed out on opportunities to do it. That makes sense. If there's something that's defined a period of time in the next year where you want to book things, batching them as a one touch task is what I call it of like, yes, we got the wedding rsvp. We are going to request pto book the flights in a single two hour block. That's it. Because I don't want the options to expire. But it's not as productive outside of that of planning for kids, school, honestly, even like the next size up of diapers of my husband early on in our daughter's life was like, you gotta be present. Why aren't you with her? I'm like, well, because she's at the high end of the weight range for these diapers and what if she needs the next ones and we don't have them?
And none of that really honestly mattered. We could have gotten them pretty quickly when that happened, but I was just perpetually in this admin task planning. We're low on diaper cream, so I need to go buy more right now versus just the in the moment. We'll get there.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's really hard. It's really. I mean. And I also know that, you know, like there's the hidden burden, obviously that, that, you know, is more the. Well, the research suggests is more prevalent among women than men of like constantly thinking about the to do list, constantly thinking about what needs to be done next. And, and it's, it, it's interesting. Rebecca, what, what you're, you know, that example you just brought up, it's kind of funny, but it's also like it comes from a good place in a way, right? Like so many of.
Many of the judgment and decision making biases that I and my colleagues study effectively all start at a quote unquote rational place. Like if you didn't plan at all for your kid, like, things would go off the rails pretty quickly. If you were like, oh God, I didn't even think about food or diapers or diaper cream, like, that wouldn't be good either. So it is quite beneficial and quite rational to think about it. But then what happens is, and this is like many other biases in judgment decision making, we over apply them, you know, so, so in the same way that it's like it's, it's very beneficial for us to discount the value of future rewards. Like if I were to offer you 100 bucks now or 100 bucks in six months, it'd be dumb for you to say, I'll just wait for it. Or not dumb, but, you know, and maybe there's some circumstances where it makes sense to wait, but like a hundred now, a hundred later, it is a rational thing to do to say, I'll take the money now, I could invest it, I could use it over time.
When it becomes quote, unquote irrational is when you over apply that. And I say, what about a hundred bucks now or 200 bucks in six months?
It's the same sort of thing as I'm planning. That's great. But now I'm like over planning. I'm so busy thinking about the next size of diapers or whether we have six tubes of diaper cream or the pouches of food or whatever that you then, as a result of the over application, miss the moments that like, had you been fully present for, you might not have. And let me, I'm sorry, not to talk too long, but let me just say one other thing, which is. Yeah, and also sometimes you're not going to be present. And like there's also nothing worse than not being present and then being. Beating yourself up about it. So now you're like kind of present again, but you're also thinking back on how you just weren't present. And it's like, okay, yeah, like give ourselves a break here, you know, like especially in sort of the, the state of uncertainty that the world's in.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: So interesting you say that. I can't believe I hadn't made this through line until you're describing it. But you're right. What we're basically saying is there's a, a fear or a problem.
We're potentially over indexing and trying to avoid. So the fear of not being prepared I'm over indexing on versus the fear of not being present, living in the moment, being spontaneous. And if we have these natural anchors, knowing where our bents go makes it easier than to counter. If I feel like I'm being too recklessly in the moment, not planning ahead enough, if my default state is over planning over preparing, it's probably okay versus the if I'm more afraid of missing the moment, then maybe the little bit of planning Preparing is worthwhile.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: I 100 agree with you. You know, it's so interesting because we're, we're in this, I think we're at an interesting point from like a time historical time perspective in that first off there's this knowledge that we're supposed to be present. So you know, I, I don't think parents in the 80s and 90s necessarily like that wasn't part of the conversation. So there wasn't like the beating oneself up over not being present. And secondly, it's like there's that many more obviously there's that many more things that can pull us away from the present, some of which are reminding us to be in the present. Right. Which is an irony that doesn't escape me.
And I think as a result of all that, we end up in a situation where it's both message to us to be present and also easier not to be present.
And I mean, that's a tough combination.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Part two of this two part episode is coming to you next week.
Thanks for spending this micro moment with me. If you found it valuable, share it with a fellow time billionaire and give us a rating to help others discover the power of micro moments. For more ways to reclaim your time, check out timebillionaires.org and follow me. Rebecca Shattucks on LinkedIn. See you next time.
