882: Setting your Future Self up for Success with Dr. Hal Hershfield

Pete Mockaitis
Hal, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Hal Hershfield
Hey, thanks so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into some of the wisdom in your book, Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. But, first, I wanted to hear from you, could you share one of the best and one of the worst decisions that you’ve personally made on behalf of your future self?

Hal Hershfield
That’s a good one, ooh. Okay, the easy answer there is marrying my wife. That’s got to be the obvious one.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, she’s listening. It’s the obvious one, yeah.

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, so I don’t know. Should I come up with another answer?

Pete Mockaitis
I’ll count it.

Hal Hershfield
Worst decision, oh, man, it’s like there’s so many to choose from there. Okay, worst decision is more of a sort of perpetual thing and not one specific decision. But I tend to be really bad at taking care of small tasks. I procrastinate on them and it is regularly bad for my various future selves.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a category of task that gets procrastinated all the time?

Hal Hershfield
Oh, yeah, anything with regards to administrative, filling out receipts, or like submitting a claim for insurance, or putting in my car registration. There are sorts of things that requires some amount of work, I don’t know why. I know why. I know why. I don’t like doing them. I always find them, sort of I’m worried that I’m not going to fill it in right, and then I just keep pushing it off.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. And then sometimes, I don’t know what this says about me, I’m frustrated that the system isn’t easy. In a world of apps, and iteration, and cost and improvement, and our technology and processes, and web forms, and apps and stuff, it’s like, “Wait, seriously, I got to mail you a check? I’m going to print something out or…really?”

Hal Hershfield
Game over. As soon as it says, “Print this out,” it’s like game over because the chances that the printer at my office or the printer at home will work is considerably low.

Pete Mockaitis
Or, do you have the paper? Do you have the ink? And what I love is that Amazon is super customer focused. I now notice when I try to print a return label, it said one of the options was, “We’ll print it for you and mail it to you in four business days for 50 cents.” I don’t remember, the price was pretty good. It’s like they know. They know that printing a label is too much for me.

Hal Hershfield
It’s such a sad comment but it’s so true. And I love it, remove the friction. Make it easier.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so I’d love to hear, while putting together and researching the book Your Future Self, any really surprising or extra-fascinating and counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made in the research?

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, I actually think one of the more counterintuitive parts that I came across in researching the book was the idea that we can experience what’s known as hyperopia. And what that means is, well, in my research, I focus on what’s called myopia, when we’re too sort of tunnel-focused, we have tunnel vision on the present. Hyperopia is when we reverse that. We focus so much on the future that we miss the present. And the irony there is that, in doing that, we end up making things worse for ourselves in the future as well. And that was a bit of work that really surprised me. I hadn’t really thought about that possibility before.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us an example?

Hal Hershfield
Have you ever had a gift certificate for a restaurant and you’re just waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Hal Hershfield
And you’re doing it because you’re thinking, “I really want to maximize this, and I want this to be good for…so that future version of me that gets to go there,” and you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and it closes. That is hyperopic. But there’s obviously more serious versions of that. There are versions of that, in fact, with our professional lives where we tell ourselves that we’re taking care of tasks, we’re doing things because that’s good for the future. And we somehow end up prioritizing the urgent over the important.

It’s like a version of this because we’re telling ourselves that we’re doing something, we’re doing something good for the long run, but, in reality, we maybe sort of shortchanging ourselves and actually making things less good for ourselves in the long term because we’re not focused on the big, important things that will actually move the ball down the field for ourselves. And that’s true both professionally and personally.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, it sounds like maybe we’ve already touched on it, but, zooming out a bit, how would you put forward the main big idea or core thesis of the book Your Future Self?

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, sure. So, I think the core thesis of the book is that there are different versions of ourselves that exist over time, and, in some ways, we think about our future selves as if they are other people. And that’s okay so long as we focus on the relationship that we have with that other person. And so, the book is really aimed at understanding the relationships that we have with our future selves, and then figuring out how to improve them so that we can do things that benefit us both in the future and now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we talk about relationships. Are there some categories or archetypes? Does anybody hate their future self, like, “My relationship with my future self is my future self is my nemesis”? Or, what’s the palette or menu of choices for how that relationship can be?

Hal Hershfield
Right. That’s a fantastic question. Empirically, I’ve never asked people, “Do you hate them?” That said…

Pete Mockaitis
That’d be sad.

Hal Hershfield
It would be really sad if somebody said that. In my research and the research that others have done, we sort of treat the relationship with a future self the same way that you would treat our relationships with spouses, partners, close friends, which is to say that there’s varying degrees of distance. I can have a friend who I know, maybe they’re in my group of friends that I see but I’m not really that close to them. They exist but I don’t really connect to them.

All the way down to I can have that best friend, the person who I spend…want to spend all my time with, or my spouse, or my kids, or my aging parents. I would say that the spectrum of relationships goes from a stranger who’s sort of you see them, you know they exist but you don’t really connect to them, and don’t really know them, all the way to a person with whom you feel a great degree of emotional connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, this is all intriguing from a thought experiment kind of a world. But could you lay it on us in terms of what’s at stake, what are the implications of getting this relationship right versus not so right?

Hal Hershfield
Sure. We’ve looked at a variety of different things, so one thing we know the people who are more connected to their future selves, they’ve accumulated more assets over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Financially.

Hal Hershfield
Financially-speaking, exactly. We know that people feel more connected, they report greater subjective health. We found that they’re less likely to endorse unethical business practices. In other words, this is another sort of tradeoff. If I feel a lack of connection to my future selves, doing something that might financially benefit me right now but I could suffer some consequences later, well, maybe that’s okay. I’m not really thinking about later.

Other researchers have found that people that are connected to their future selves, they do better in school, higher grades, and even experience greater amounts of life satisfaction and meaning in life. I should say there’s always other factors and variables that play across these different studies. We’ve tried hard, and others have tried hard, too, to sort of isolate, and say, “Well, even in the face of things like age or education, do these relationships bear out?” And, sure enough, they seem to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so when you talk about this connection, what does that maybe look, sound, feel like in terms of our internal dialogues when we have a good rich connection to our future selves versus the non-desired alternative?

Hal Hershfield
It’s a really fascinating question that you raised because it’s not, I should say, we don’t ask people, “What does that conversation look like?” Most likely, they’re so much more idiosyncratic behavior and answers that could be given. I don’t really know what the answer would be but here’s my suspicion. I suspect that a conversation with a future self who I care deeply about is going to look more like the way that I think about and treat the people in my life who I really want to care for and take responsibility for.

The same way that you might feel about your spouse if you’re really connected to them, or the same way that you might feel about your kid, or, even I could think about the workplace, a co-worker that you really appreciate, or even an employee that they’re sort of under you but you still take an interest in their wellbeing. That’s the type of connection or relationship that we might see when we see a high degree of overlap between current and future selves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And now I’m thinking about how, recently, this isn’t an earth shattering story, but I felt the implications. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, my desk is not the tidiest, and so I’ve accumulated LaCroix cans and more, and papers and all over the place. And so, it was a Friday, I took some time, like, “I’m really going to clean this up really well,” and so I did.

And then, Monday, I came in and I was surprised. I had forgotten my office desk had been cleaned by me in the past, and I said, “Oh, how delightful.” It’s like I was surprised. And the word relationship really does ring true here, I was like, “Well, thank you, past me. I really appreciate you cleaning up that desk because it’s just actually a joy to come into the office and behold this clean desk. I’m in a good mood and I appreciate me for having made that happen.”

Hal Hershfield
It’s a little gift from past you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Hal Hershfield
Yeah. I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it was cool.

Hal Hershfield
I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
And yet, most of the time, though, I don’t have that relationship in terms of, like good or bad, I don’t know. Like, you step on the scale, you look at the mirror, and go, “Ugh, past self, you really should’ve been watching the calories a little more, or hitting the gym a little more, or watch the diet when you get a check-in with the doctor.” It doesn’t even occur to me to think about past self in that relationship kind of a way.

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, you know, it’s funny. I can relate to that. There are so many of those times where we’re sort of not thinking about all the different actions that we have and how they add up. The annual physical is a great example of that, when you say, “Oh, your cholesterol is a little high.” It’s like, I cannot recall the number of times that I ate in a way that probably wasn’t good for my cholesterol, but, in those moments, I’m not thinking about how each one of those kinds of sums up to the sort of worst whole.

But then, on the flipside, the gift from past self, it’s like I had this experience pang. I think I must’ve paid for a rental car going to a friend’s wedding, completely had forgotten, I go up to pay for it, and they’re like, “You already paid for it.” I’m like, “Well, who paid for it? Like, that guy, the past me? Like, what a sucker, but I’m glad he did it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Or, just sort of like accounts that accrue. I’m thinking about back when I was consulting, there was a benefit where you could use pre-tax dollars to fund your mass transit cards. Invariably, these things just accrued to large sums because I completely forgot, like they’re sort of taken out of a paycheck.

And when people go off to business school, they’d say, “Hey, well, I’m going to Harvard. I’m not going to be in Chicago anymore. I’ve got a card with $300 of mass transit value, and I’m going to sell it at a discount.” So many of those emails, actually, in my time there. And so, yeah, you just autopilot, forget, and sometimes that works in your favor.

Hal Hershfield
Yup, 100%. Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d love to hear do you have any cool success stories or inspiring case studies associated with folks who were able to upgrade their relationship to their future self and then see cool things emerge as a result?

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, actually, one of my favorite success stories, it was really funny. This was, oh, gosh, pretty deep in COVID, and I got this random email, and it’s from a high school kid, Enmal was his name. And he basically reaches out and says, “I’ve got to tell you, I went pretty dark during COVID.” I think he was like a high school junior, and when it started, he was having all of his classes at home and he’s not seeing his friends. And he says, “My diet basically consisted of ice cream and Chick-fil-A and Fruit Loops.” I forget which cereal it was but nothing super healthy. No offense to any of those companies, of course.

Pete Mockaitis
The Fruit Loops marketing brand manager is listening and enraged at you, Hal.

Hal Hershfield
Let me walk that back. Generic fast-food restaurants. And he ends up gaining 30 pounds, and he said, “I came across some of your research, and I decided to try to put it into practice.” And he said, “I went online and I printed out like an ideal-looking picture of myself, skinnier.” He used some sort of, I don’t know which technology he used to make himself look a little skinnier and healthier. He said, “I printed that, I put it in the bathroom, and I put it on the fridge.”

And he said, “Looking at that, basically, like wherever I was in the house, kept reminding me of the version of me I wanted to get back to and the version of me I wanted to become.” And it wasn’t that he just cut back on those foods. He also started exercising, etc. And he said in the span of several months, he ended up losing that weight. I forget the exact amount of time. He’s a high school kid so I think he’s probably able to gain and lose weight a little bit easier than the rest of us.

But I was really inspired by him because he was trying to consider a version of his future self who he wanted to become, and I think that sort of forced him, or prompted him, or kept him, held his hand along the way to do the things that he needed to do to get there.

Pete Mockaitis
That is excellent. Well, my key takeaway from that is to find a website that lets me visualize buffed Pete and take a look at that image, see what that does for me. And so, that’s cool in that it made it very real, concrete, visualizable, like, “Oh, okay,” as opposed to amorphous, like, “Oh, the future me is something off in space or in my imagination as opposed to something I could potentially behold with eyes visually.” That’s cool.

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, and I think that’s right because, to some degree, if I say, “Think of a future Pete,” there’s probably a lot of different images that could arise there. And you might be able to create sort of an average of them, sort of an amalgamation of them, but this specific image is vivid, and that can be a pretty strong motivator for behavior, “Now, I’ve got like an actual version of me, I’m thinking about looking at.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so could you lay it on us, are there some other actionable approaches we can take to do a better job at making prudent decisions and actions in the present that benefit our future selves?

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, absolutely. So, I’ll mention a couple. The marketing professor in me, of course, is saying, “You have to buy the book to find out all of them,” but I’ll mention a couple. So, there’s a category of strategies that involve trying to bring the future self closer to the present. One of those things, of course, is vividly visualizing the future self.

That doesn’t have to be just through apps. There are these apps that do age progression pretty well. But we can also try to get people to write a letter to their future self, and then write one back from that future self. It’s a really cool activity because it forces you to not only think about the future, but then to sort of go into the future and look back to now, which is, ultimately, putting yourself in the shoes of your future self, seeing the world through their eyes. That’s a vividness-enhancing exercise.

There are other strategies, though, that don’t involve necessarily trying to bring the future self closer but rather involve making the present, or rather making present-day sacrifices easier. So, what I mean by that is that every time I talk about these sorts of optimal behaviors, sometimes it’s hard to do them because it feels like all that you’re doing is sacrificing. It’s like, you right now that’s got to experience the pain for future use gain, which is it’s not a great situation to be.

And if you think about the relationship analogy that we talked about before, it’s like now you’re always the one sacrificing, future you is always the one benefitting. That’s not great. So, we’ve explored different ways that we can make present day sacrifices feel easier. One of my favorites is something that we call temporal reframing. I think there’s probably other terms for this, but the general idea is that I chunk something down into smaller and smaller parts.

I’ll give you an example of this. My collaborators and I, we worked with a fintech bank, a fintech company, this is an app designed to get people to save, and we asked people if they wanted to sign up for an automatic savings account, and some people got the message that they could sign up for $150 a month account, and other people got a message saying they could sign up for a $5 a day account. Now, it’s the same amount of money, of course, five bucks a day is 150 bucks a month. Four times as many people signed up when it was framed as $5 a day. I think it’s just an easier sacrifice to make.

Other researchers have found that that same sort of temporal reframing can get people to volunteer more, to do more volunteer hours. Rather than 200 hours total, how about four hours a week or whatever it is? We can sort of break it down in different parts.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah.

Hal Hershfield
Now, one of the other strategies that falls under this sort of bucket of making the present easier is, I don’t know what the right term is, I like to call it sort of like attack the side, not the core. Janet Schwartz, she’s a friend of mine, she’s a behavioral scientist, and she had this, I think, such a clever idea. She was going to Coney Island one summer with her friends, and it was right after New York started doing the calorie labeling on menus.

She goes there and she goes to get the hotdog and a side of fries. Like, what else are you going to do when you go to Coney Island, of course? And she sees that the fries are about 1100 calories, which is I think quite high.

Pete Mockaitis
And doesn’t even fill you up.

Hal Hershfield
That’s right. And no one goes there for the…I mean, you don’t go there for the fries. You go there for the hotdog. So, she and her friends said, “Wow, that’s a lot. How about we split the fries and we each got a hotdog?” And she starts thinking, “Wait, there’s something to this.” If you have a goal of, I don’t know, in this case, cutting down on your calories, you could do it in a painful way of cutting back on the thing that you love, or you could achieve the exact same thing by cutting back on something that’s much more peripheral.

It would be ridiculous if she got the fries and a third of a hotdog. And so, she actually worked with a restaurant where they put something like this in their plates, where the cashiers offered the restaurant patrons the option to get a half of the scoop of fried rice. They can get their full order of orange chicken or whatever it is that they’re getting but you want to take a half of the side. You pay the same amount, which is crazy.

And about a third of people say, “Yeah, I’ll do that,” which is so interesting because it suggests that that’s a strategy that people, I think, might warm to. So, again, that’s all about making the present day sacrifices easier. And then there’s a third sort of category of practical strategies, Pete, that I call staying on course.

This is where you, essentially, say, “Okay, you know what, there’s this version of me right now, there’s a version in the future who’s going to want to look back, and say, ‘Hey, I did the thing, I ate healthy, I was productive at work, I saved money,’” and then there’s the guy in the middle who is going to screw it up, the guy who, “I say I’m going to get up tomorrow and go for a run,” and that guy tomorrow morning who’s going to say, “I can’t do it. I got to sleep in.”

And so, this third category of strategies basically says recognizing that there’s all those tensions there, let’s figure out what we call commitment devices, strategies where we can put sort of guardrails on our behavior so that we don’t screw things up. So, one website called stickK.com, that’s with two Ks. Do you know this one?

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve been there but I don’t think listeners do, so lay it on us.

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, and it’s basically this website where I can put in my goal. Let’s say I want to work out three days a week, 30 minutes at a time, and then I’ll say, “Who’s going to follow up with me? It’s going to be you, Pete. And, oh, I’ll give you my credit card, and I’ll give it the name of an anti-charity.” Well, we don’t have to get political but an organization I don’t want to donate to. How does that sound?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, just for example, we might say guns. Some people might be pro-gun, some people might be anti-gun. And so, you can imagine your dollars flowing in the direction you don’t want it to go, just to make it clear for folks, yeah.

Hal Hershfield
There you go. That’s really good. Or, you could say Trump versus Biden, right? Some are on either side. Now, you’re going to call me at the end of the week, and you’re going to say, “Hal, did you do it? Did you work out three times?” And I’ll say, “Pete, this week was tough. I only worked out twice.” And you’ll say, “Okay, good to know.” You’re going to click no on my account, and instantly 200 bucks is going to go toward that charity, that organization, that I don’t want to donate to. That’s a pretty strong motivator.

Now, I’m not saying I won’t mess up but it might make it a lot harder for me to stay in bed a little bit longer if I know doing so was going to cost me possibly hundreds of dollars and not towards some charity that I wanted to donate to but toward one I don’t want to donate to. And there’s other versions of this. There are all sorts of levels of commitment devices which I get into the book. But the key here is picking something that is a strong enough punishment to deter the behavior that we don’t want to do but not so strong that I don’t sign up for this to begin with.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And to that point about it not being too strong, it’s funny, I’ve chatted with folks about stickK.com, and they said, “You know, I think that’s a really effective motivator but the anti-charity is so evil to me. Like, I don’t even feel morally okay with setting that structure up in my life.” And so, my wife and I, we were joking, and we were saying, “Well, huh, as a thought experiment, what is something that would hurt to give money to and yet doesn’t feel morally problematic?”

And I think we found some, like, super ritzy country club. So, it’s like, “They don’t need our money. They don’t need it. Like, who knows what it’s going to go to, like polishing golf balls? I don’t even know what they would do with extra money. They don’t need it. But it wouldn’t be evil for them to get it.”

Hal Hershfield
It’s so good because it’s not morally reprehensible. That’s so good.

Pete Mockaitis
It just feels really bad for them to get it.

Hal Hershfield
There’s another version of this that doesn’t involve a financial punishment. It’s a product called the Pavlok.

Pete Mockaitis
We interviewed that guy, yeah.

Hal Hershfield
Oh, did you? That’s fantastic.

Pete Mockaitis
Maneesh Sethi, back in the day.

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
I tried one. It’s not comfortable.

Hal Hershfield
Oh, did you? Yeah, I had a student who told me he just has the hardest time getting out of bed. And putting this on, basically, the more you snooze, I forget what his setting was, but it’s like if he snoozed more than a couple times, he’d start getting shocked by this thing to get him out of bed.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like a rubber band around your wrist but more unpleasant. But, again, that same principle holds, it’s like, “If the shock is so unpleasant, and you have to push a button to administer it to yourself, then you may not do it.” So, I like the automaticity and I like the third-party bits, but, in a way, that’s part of the fun. It sounds like you have a lot of examples in the book.

It’s to think about, “Well, what works for you based on is it so repugnant you can’t even countenance doing it? Okay, well. then maybe something else. But is it so minor, you don’t even care? Like, okay, well, you got to crank it up.”

Hal Hershfield
Right, exactly. It’s funny, I have this thing now, in writing the book, I ended up talking with this guy, Dave Krippendorf, who founded this company. It was originally called Kitchen Safe, and basically a little box you put in the kitchen. There’s a little electronically timed lock on top of the box. He designed it for people to put away their snack food. You can time it anywhere from a minute to 10 days.

So, my kids’ Halloween candy, whatever it is, I pop it in there, I’ll set it for 12 hours so I don’t touch it tonight. Well, he found that so many people were using it for so many things other than snacks, that he renamed it the kSafe, from Kitchen Safe to kSafe. He sent me one, and Pete, I use it for my phone, I have to admit, it’s not like we have dinner with our kids every night.

But a couple nights a week or whenever the schedules work out, it’s such a bad distraction when I have it at the table, “Oh, I just need it to change the music,” or, “I just need it to…” whatever. It’s just there. And then before I know it, I am checking Twitter, or my email, or something that is like totally meaningless. I think this is probably relatable, I assume. Tell me this isn’t just me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Hal Hershfield
So, I throw my phone in there, I’ll set the timer for two hours. Let’s say we have dinner at 5:30, it’s put in there for 7:30 or whatever. I know that sounds like a very early dinner but our kids are little. And it’s amazing because it completely removes the temptation, like it’s not even when I get up, I’m like, “Oh, I see my phone. I should check it.” It’s like it’s just not there so I don’t even worry about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and it’s cool. That’s really cool. And maybe it’s a video game controller or any number of things: snacks, phones.

Hal Hershfield
Video game controllers is a great example. I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. So, the commitment device, so it takes a bit of you out of it, and that’s really handy. I wanted to get your take. I love it when you drop these numbers in terms of with the temporal reframing, with the five bucks a day versus 150 a month. We have a 4X lift in intake. And then a third of the people opted to go for half of the fried rice.

To the fried rice point, I’ve just got to mention, once when I was looking at my calories pretty closely, I was at a Cheddar’s and so I made my order, and then just randomly they brought out this honey biscuit thing, and I said, “Oh, what’s this?” And they said, “Oh, yeah, it’s a honey biscuit. It has this and this and this, and it’s on the house. It’s just a thank you for being here.” I said, “Oh, wow.”

Hal Hershfield
On the house. On the house means the calories don’t count, right?

Pete Mockaitis
So, I said, “Oh, wow, that’s great. Thank you. Could you take it away?” He was like puzzled, I was like, “Yeah, I’m just concerned I might eat it.” And so, he did, and that was cool. And then BJ Fogg, he talks about tiny habits. He was on the show. And he, was it chips or Noah’s bread, he would just fill up on bread if he was at the table, and so he just rehearsed his line with a smile, “Oh, no bread for me. Thanks.” It’s like, “Don’t put this on the table. I will eat it.”

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, it’s so good. The bread one is so good. One of the things I talk about in the book is, about five years ago, I got diagnosed with celiac, and it’s been so interesting because I was also one of those people, especially in social situations where my social anxiety was dialed up just a little bit, I would find myself just eating all of the things that were out that I wasn’t even hungry for, but just eating. And it’s often the sliders, the bread, the whatever.

So, all of that stuff is now off the table for me. And it’s really interesting because it’s almost like there’s this giant kSafe walking around with me when it comes to carbs like that. And so, when I’m at a restaurant, I’m not even tempted by the basket of bread because it’s like I know I just can’t eat it. But it’s like psychologically, “What are the shifts that we can make to make that happen?”

And I love the BJ Fogg example of, like, “None for me, please.” It just makes it automatic. It’s a habit. That’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, so we talked about a number of commitment devices. And, ah, yes, I wanted to ask, when you dropped these numbers, 4X on the temporal reframing, a third people opting for half of the fried rice amount, any other sort of eye popping numbers in terms of, “Huh, this little intervention makes a world of difference”?

Hal Hershfield
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I get cautious with eye popping numbers in social science because they always say, “Was that real?” So, I’ll say, “Look, the temporal reframing, the 4x difference, I thought that was 30% versus 7%. That’s pretty big.” We have another study that’s coming out, or should be out any day now, where we worked with the Bank of Mexico, 50,000 customers, half of them get access to these aged images of themselves, and half don’t, and they’re all getting these messages that they should save.

And the folks who do, they’re 16% more likely to make a contribution to their account. So, when you say, “Was that eye popping?” I don’t know if that’s eye popping per se, but what I find exciting about this is that if I can get 16% more people to do anything when it comes to behavior, then that can really add up and compound over time.

You think about that for voting, or taking care of your teeth or your health, or, in this case, making a contribution to your retirement account. That really can add up and compound in ways that are really beneficial over time.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m also thinking about sort of general decision-making. When it’s not a matter of discipline, but rather just considering options, is there a way you recommend taking into account our future selves in the decision-making process?

Hal Hershfield
I think that is such a good question. It’s funny, because so much of my research has been focused on “How do we relate to our future selves? How do we connect to them?” and so on. But I don’t think the answer here is you should talk to them and think about them all the time. I think that, well, first off, we’re going to start ignoring them. Secondly, I just don’t think it’s sustainable.

So, I think that there’s probably some sort of balancing act here, and I wish I could say to you, “The research says this is the amount of time you should talk to your future self, and this is the amount of time that you shouldn’t.” We don’t know that. And, in all honesty, if I were to do that study, I’m sure there would be so many sorts of individual differences there. For some people, it makes sense to talk more, and some people less.

Here’s what I will say, though, my suspicion is that when it comes to big decisions and things that, once you decide, there’s some sort of automaticity that will carry out over time. So, like signing up for a savings account, signing up to work with a nutritionist or a career coach or whatnot. For those sorts of decisions, I think it may make a lot of sense to really try to step into the shoes of your future self, and think about how this action will impact that person.

For the everyday ones, things like my credit card, my eating habits, whether I get up and exercise or not, for those types of decisions, that’s where I think the world of habit formation becomes much more relevant, but I want to say that we should start, before we can even start going down the path of habit formation, it makes sense to have that conversation with our future selves and strengthen that bond with them so that, “Now, I can, essentially, get the ball rolling, and get the process started to do those things that will, ultimately, benefit me later, but also now.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And I’m curious, is there an overwhelming category of activities, or domains, or responsibility where people undercount their future self?

Hal Hershfield
Wow, that’s great. So, not that I know of, I can’t say, “Oh, there’s this one thing.” It’s easy to point to the different domains that sort of we know pop up all the time. So, under-saving and overspending, overeating, not exercising enough, those are the ones that sort of come up. And, in fact, if you look at the goals that people put forth on stickK.com, a lot of them have to do with exercising and eating behaviors.

I think there’s another one that maybe doesn’t come up as explicitly but it’s still relevant is time expenditures, “So, how I divvy up my time for the things that feel good right now in the moment versus the things that will last and give me benefits and wellbeing and positivity and joy over time?” And, as an example, to get concrete, I don’t know if you have this, but I have the thing that come up a lot for me is know I should call one my buddies, a friend I haven’t seen in a while just to catch up for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or even set aside a night to go out and get drinks or dinner or whatever.

But in the moment, it almost feels better to just not do it. I can go do the thing I was doing, or be on Instagram, watch an episode of Succession, or whatever it is that I’m watching. And there’s like a little present moment bump from just kind of being lazy and ignoring that phone call or the plan-making. But the reality is, over and over and over again, those decisions will be bad for my relationships. Those expenditures of time will take away from the time that I get to spend with people that I might genuinely care about.

And here’s the real irony, if I sort of get over that initial little discomfort, and reach out and call my buddy, or set up a plan to have dinner with them, and that’s true, by the way, for our spouses and our other family members, too, those things are good for the long run but they’re also good for now, too. Like, I haven’t once felt one of those phone calls with an old friend, and said, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that.” Normally, a good use of time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. All right. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Hal Hershfield
Oh, no, I think you asked so many good questions. This is great.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Hal Hershfield
I’m not sure if it’s actually like a famous quote or not, but it’s something that one of my mentors told me, “You can’t get what you don’t ask for.” And I love that in the sort of negotiation context.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Hal Hershfield
Favorite experiment or bit of research is probably work on what’s known as the End-of-History Illusion. I talked about it in the book but it’s the basic idea that I can recognize that I’ve changed from the past to the present, but I somehow think that my rate of change, or my rate of progress, will slow from now unto the future, that I’ve somehow arrived at who I am. This is work by Jordi Quoidbach, and Dan Gilbert, and Tim Wilson. And I think it sheds some really interesting light on how we sometimes do a disservice to our future selves by not recognizing the ways in which we will change moving forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Hal Hershfield
I love the book A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. And it is all about different sort of friends but some of whom are connected, and some of whom aren’t, and the sort of these various little interconnections that exist both within a certain group in New York City, but then also over time. This is from, like, 10, 12 years ago. And it’s just sort of a fascinating examination of the web of connections that exist between the people we know now as well as from the past and to the future.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Hal Hershfield
Evernote. I don’t know if that’s the type of tool that you’re looking for.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Hal Hershfield
But being able to have sort of my notes everywhere, wherever I am, is super useful for me because there’s always things that are popping up, and then anytime I’ve told myself, “I’ll remember that thing later,” I pretty much never do. And so, being able to jot it down quickly and have it, assume everything else is super important for me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Hal Hershfield
My wife and I started to plan out the meals that we’re going to have, whatever it is, on Friday or Saturday, more or less for the rest of the week. And it has drastically decreased the tension involved around what should we have for dinner every night, and drastically increased my efficiency and productivity the rest of the week because I don’t have to spend that time thinking about, “What are we doing for dinner?” I just look at the little sheets, say, “Oh, that’s what we planned out.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Hal Hershfield
Yeah. So, one of the key nuggets that I think people sort of quote back to me often is it’s really more just the big idea that there can be this future self, this salient future self that can exist in the future. I’ve heard a lot of people say to me, “I haven’t thought about things that way, and it gives me sort of a person to consider, and then also an optimistic take on where I’m going through time.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, you can go to my website HalHershfield.com. Everything about my research and my book and whatnot is there. You can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter as well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Hal Hershfield
Yeah, I would say one final challenge for folks who are looking to be awesome at their jobs is to consider not the tradeoff between now and later, but to think about the harmony between now and later. So, think about the things that you are doing at work and at your jobs that will benefit you now, and may not benefit you in the future, but then also switch the focus. Think about the things that you can do right now that will provide benefits both now and later. And then consider how you’re spending your time in those different pursuits.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Hal, this has been a treat. I wish you and your future self much luck.

Hal Hershfield
Hey, thanks, Pete. I appreciate it.