Future You Has Some Questions

I was at the pool last week finishing up a workout. The lifeguard—a very young woman—was standing just above me. I noted that both of her thighs were covered in large, very ornate tattoos. They were striking. For a moment I imagined them on my own legs. Despite a lifetime of high-level athletics, the skin on my legs is loose. That’s a very different canvas for artwork. I wondered if she had considered what those tattoos would look like on less taut skin. Or, whether she’d even like those designs at 50 or 70.

The Many Faces of You

When we look backwards over our lives it is painfully obvious that we have been many different people. The person we are at 14 has very different ideas than the same person at 29. At 21 I could never have imagined the things that would matter to me today, 30 years later.

There is a spectrum of how people relate to their future selves. For some, they consider that future self to be both an extension of their current identity—and a complete stranger. In other words, they don’t consider him or her at all when they make decisions. In a way, I envy that perspective. It feels freeing.

But, that freedom may turn out to be costly. Unless one dies early, there is no avoiding an eventual reckoning with future you. And by failing to consider her or him, you may find yourself very annoyed or even devastated when, in thirty years, you are crippled with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cancer from smoking and sunbathing, facing amputation from diabetes or homeless from failing to plan.

A Duty to Yourself

I feel very duty-bound to Future Me. She is like an avatar who I serve through the choices I make today. As a result, at times I don’t feel empowered to make decisions for her. So, I have no tattoos. As much as I ever loved Lou Reed, Escher, Wittgenstein or Bach—I was never completely sure I would be equally as enthusiastic 20 years later. But that connection to future me seems to be integral to my personality. I never chose to have that sense of duty toward her.

As it turns out, there is research suggesting that for some people, the strength of their connection to their future selves figures largely into their own procrastination habits.

According to research psychologists?Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Psychyl ?, when people have a lack of emotional connection to their future selves they have more difficulty in both making long-term, project-based plans and in fulfilling their goals.

Amazingly, you can see that “connection” in fMRI brain scans. When subjects are asked to consider themselves at some specific point in the future, scans of their brains show variation in what “lights up” as active part of the brain. In people with strong connections to themselves in the future, when thinking about themselves today and when they think about themselves in the future, the same areas of their brains light up. In other words, they see their future selves as equally real to their present selves.

Of course, there is a different result for those who don’t feel that connection. When they think about their futures selves, their brain looks like it would if they were thinking about a celebrity or a fictional character. In other words, they view their future selves like strangers.

When people have that “stranger” relationship with their future selves they are more likely to be chronic procrastinators. It’s as though being disconnected from that future it lets us off the hook. And so, we are more likely to make choices that will not bode well for our future selves.

Said another way,?by not looking out for your future self, you easily saddle her with the effects of your bad decisions.

The correlate of this research is just as you expect. People who feel a strong connection and responsibility for their future selves are less apt to procrastinate and more likely to consider the future impact of choices today.

Procrastination

If you procrastinate, you may want to spend some energy getting to know Future You – and establishing an emotional connection to her or him. Maybe you can’t muster up a significant interest in that future person. But you have great reasons TODAY to become better at getting down to work. I have had enough client conversations with procrastinators over my years of coaching and consulting to know that procrastination causes consternation right now—in the present.

Meet (Near) Future You

Sometimes it’s easier to think about a nearer version of Future You. Because you become future you as soon as a minute from now. And from now.

So by next week, there will be a Future You already paying for your delinquency.

And in fact, that’s how you build that connection; by embracing the future you of tomorrow and next week.

Think about how your procrastination will change your own circumstances and experiences tomorrow, next week or next month. In other words, project yourself into a sort of mental movie whose plot follows the natural chain of events starting with what you do right now. If we could craft a synopsis of your mental movie it might go like this:

• I don’t pay the bill today.
• The bill sits on the pile of other unpaid bills
• Tomorrow, when I go to pay the bill, since I also have all of tomorrow’s things to do, I don’t get around to paying the bill.
• Next week when I sit down to pay the bill it is part of a larger pile of bills that have now collected since I haven’t gotten around to paying bills. So I don’t pay the bill next week, because I have pressing bills to pay from last month.
• Then in two weeks when I sit down to pay this bill, I notice I have missed the deadline and must now pay a late fee.
• So in two weeks, when I pay this bill, it is bigger by $25 and I have to find extra money to cover it.

All of this because I am watching Ted Lasso (a genuine temptation!) instead of just paying the bill.

You may find yourself thinking something like, Eureka! I should just pay the bill now!

Bridges to the Future

When you take the 15 seconds to imagine a scenario like this and mentally picture yourself in the future – whether it’s a future one hour from now, one week or ten years –you build a connection to that self. This actually changes the structure of your own cognition, and starts your neurons firing in different parts of your brain – the parts that see FUTURE YOU as a part of PRESENT YOU — the you that you know and protect from harm.

That transformation will begin to generate a greater sense of urgency to do the things you may be procrastinating today.

Tomorrow, we continue looking at the benefits of connecting with Future You—and maybe the Future World!

Building an organization is fiercely connected to the future. And creating a strategy should start there, in that future. Schedule a call to chat about applying Beyond Better’s Merlin(tm) Process and Strategic Planning to the mission of an extraordinary future for your organization!