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Speaker 1: Pushkin a Happiness Lab Listeners, what you're about to hear

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Speaker 1: will probably sound a little bit different than our usual episodes.

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Speaker 1: That's because I recorded this show not alone in my

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Speaker 1: tiny podcast closet at home, but in a huge auditorium

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Speaker 1: packed with people.

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Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Hello, This is so cool everyone.

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Speaker 1: That's right, You're about to hear our first ever Happiness

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Speaker 1: Lab live. The event was held early in April at

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Speaker 1: the Arts in the Armory Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts, just

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Speaker 1: outside of Boston. I'm a Massachusetts girl.

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Speaker 2: Myself grew up in New Bedford, just down the way

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Speaker 2: New Bedford. Folks in the house.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. The listeners who came to the event got to

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Speaker 1: experience a top secret sneak preview of one of our

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Speaker 1: upcoming seasons. Ann had a chance to take part in

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Speaker 1: a live Q and A after the show. But what

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Speaker 1: You're about to Hear was the main event of the night.

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Speaker 1: I did a live interview all about a happiness topic

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Speaker 1: that I struggle with a lot myself, the question of

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Speaker 1: how we can be nicer to our future selves. The

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Speaker 1: happiness we experience in the next few days, weeks, and

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Speaker 1: months often relies on the decisions that we make today.

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Speaker 1: But if you're like me, you may struggle with treating

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Speaker 1: your future self as nicely as you should. Maybe you

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Speaker 1: sign your future self up for way too many projects

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Speaker 1: or commitments, or maybe current you doesn't get the rest

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Speaker 1: or breaks or exercise you need for future you to

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Speaker 1: feel good. In this special live episode, we explore why

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Speaker 1: our brains sometimes allow us to treat our future selves

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Speaker 1: like crap, and what we can do in the present

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Speaker 1: to make our future a happier place. And we get

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Speaker 1: to explore all these questions with a scholar that I

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Speaker 1: regard as one of the most special of our special guests.

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Speaker 1: Excited to introduce my Happiness Lab Live guest Jason Mitchell.

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Speaker 1: Jason is a professor's psychology at Harvard University. He did

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Speaker 1: his undergraduate and master's degrees at Yale University. After the

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Speaker 1: time at Yale, he came to Cambridge in the late

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Speaker 1: nineties to do his PhD in psychology at Harvard, where

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Speaker 1: he had the honor of being in the same incoming.

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Speaker 2: Graduate class as yours.

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Speaker 1: Truly, after finishing his PhD, Jason stuck around to become

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Speaker 1: a professor here, where he had the important distinction of

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Speaker 1: teaching not only intro to psych psych one, but also

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Speaker 1: their new course on well Being the Science of Happiness,

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Speaker 1: which covers a lot of the same topics that I

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Speaker 1: do in my psychology in the Good Life Class. Jason

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Speaker 1: is an amazing scholar and teacher. He's also my former

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Speaker 1: roommate on two different continents. He is one of the smartest,

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Speaker 1: funniest people I know, and he is one of my

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Speaker 1: oldest and dearest friends. And I'm so excited that I

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Speaker 1: get to introduce him to you on our first Happiness

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Speaker 1: Lab Live event ever. So please put your hands together

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Speaker 1: and give a warm Happiness Lab Live welcome to Jason Mitchell.

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Speaker 3: Favor. This is a great audience.

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Speaker 2: I know they're right.

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Speaker 1: I hope you feel warmly welcomed. So, Jason, my having

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Speaker 1: as Lab listeners, are used to hearing from happiness scholars

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Speaker 1: who are also my friends. I bring a lot of

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Speaker 1: them on the podcast. But you have the distinction of

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Speaker 1: knowing me longer than any of my former Happiness Lab guests,

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Speaker 1: and like honestly most people in my life, my husband's

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Speaker 1: out there, and you actually have known me longer than

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Speaker 1: I have known my husband, And so why don't you

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Speaker 1: start by telling our friendship origin story, And with the

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Speaker 1: magic of podcasting, if you say anything embarrassed that I

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Speaker 1: don't agree with, you'll hear it.

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Speaker 2: But then what edit? But yeah, what's our origin story?

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Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: Our origin story in my mind has two parts, both

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Speaker 4: of which begin with questionable decisions of twenty.

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Speaker 3: One year old Laurie twenty year old Jason.

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Speaker 1: We're going to be editing a lot of I can

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Speaker 1: tell her again.

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Speaker 4: So in the first part we had, we were both

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Speaker 4: undergraduates at different institutions, and we were visiting the University

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Speaker 4: of California, Berkeley for interview weekend. We were both applying

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Speaker 4: for graduate school there, and on the last day of

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Speaker 4: this visit, the agenda was mainly supposed to be fun,

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Speaker 4: and it centered around some volleyball tournament.

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Speaker 1: I think it was faculty student faculty.

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Speaker 4: Versus student volleyball. And as you know, I'm not the

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Speaker 4: least athletic person, but it turns out I can't play

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Speaker 4: any sport that involves a round ball, and so you

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Speaker 4: and I decided we would, instead of doing this, play

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Speaker 4: hooky and explore the Bay Area. I think it was

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Speaker 4: the first time either of us had been in California,

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Speaker 4: and we were twenty one we were both so excited

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Speaker 4: about all this freedom and this opportunity to do something

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Speaker 4: on our own. So he's on the whole day, just

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Speaker 4: kind of wandering around.

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Speaker 1: What Jess is not convying is we didn't tell anyone

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Speaker 1: we decided to do this. We just left and only

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Speaker 1: later did we find out that the faculty and students were.

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Speaker 2: Like where did those two people go?

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Speaker 4: Like, yeah, they're actually quite worried about it. So then

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Speaker 4: fast forward a couple months later, we had both decided

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Speaker 4: to come to Harvard. And again I'm not sure what

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Speaker 4: I was thinking, obviously not thinking, but I woke up

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Speaker 4: one morning in July real I had no plan for housing,

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Speaker 4: like where was I going to live when I moved

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Speaker 4: in six weeks? And I didn't know a single person

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Speaker 4: in Cambridge except for you. So I remember writing a

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Speaker 4: panicked email saying, do you know anybody who's looking for

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Speaker 4: a roommate?

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Speaker 3: And as it.

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Speaker 4: Happened, you guys, you and Lucy and Kate were one

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Speaker 4: person short for an apartment in Cambridge, and so I

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Speaker 4: became the fourth person and we put out.

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Speaker 2: Student's story and.

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Speaker 1: That was a very tame version. We won't have to

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Speaker 1: add any of that out of the podcast, And so

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Speaker 1: our origin story started when you decided to come to

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Speaker 1: Harvard for graduate school. And one of the reasons you

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Speaker 1: did that was that at the time, Harvard was this

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Speaker 1: burgeoning department that was studying something that was really cool

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Speaker 1: in the late nineties, this field called cognitive neuroscience, which

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Speaker 1: sounds like a mouthful. What is cognitive neuroscience and why

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Speaker 1: were you so excited about it?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it is a mouthful, So cognitive neuroscience. So let's

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Speaker 4: think about the different two different parts of that term.

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Speaker 4: Psychologists use the word cognition or cognitive process to refer

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Speaker 4: to kind of the recipe that the mind is using

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Speaker 4: to create our understanding of the world around us and

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Speaker 4: our thoughts and feelings.

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Speaker 3: So if you think about what a.

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Speaker 4: Recipe is, if you were baking, for example, you would

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Speaker 4: take pretty simple ingredients, say eggs, flour, water, sugar, and

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Speaker 4: then combine them in some way to create cakes and

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Speaker 4: cookies and croissants. Cognitive psychologists are interested in the same.

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Speaker 3: Sorts of issues.

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Speaker 4: How do we take very rudimentary thoughts or rudimentary perceptions

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Speaker 4: and turn those into the complex behaviors that humans engage in. So,

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Speaker 4: if you think right now, your ears receiving a bunch

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Speaker 4: of very rudimentary signals, just some air coming in, and

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Speaker 4: somehow your brain is taking that signal and turning it

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Speaker 4: into an understanding of the words that I'm saying and

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Speaker 4: the meaning behind my words. So what's emerged from this

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Speaker 4: way of thinking is to think about the mind as

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Speaker 4: a kind of complex machine.

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Speaker 3: But think about it.

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Speaker 4: If you were just to encounter some machine and you

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Speaker 4: didn't know how it worked. You know, if I got

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Speaker 4: some mit folks or some here in the audience I

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Speaker 4: see and said, you know, I've got this new machine.

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Speaker 4: I don't know how it works. Can you help me

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Speaker 4: onderstand it? They'd probably spend some time poking and prodding

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Speaker 4: and seeing what kinds of behavior and engaged in. But

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Speaker 4: eventually they'd want to open it up. They'd really want

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Speaker 4: to see how it was built, where the wires went.

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Speaker 4: And that's true for cognitive neuroscience. The neuroscience part is

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Speaker 4: our desire to see, well, how is the actual hardware?

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Speaker 4: Giving rise to this recipe.

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Speaker 1: And at the time in the nineties that you started,

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Speaker 1: you know, this was a really exciting time for actually

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Speaker 1: doing that, for actually looking at the hardware in a

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Speaker 1: way that it probably hadn't been ever before in human.

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Speaker 4: History, right, Yeah, So before the nineties, there was really

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Speaker 4: only three ways that you could understand how the brain worked.

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Speaker 4: One was to look at what other animals' brains did

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Speaker 4: by doing research on mice or monkeys, which, you know,

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Speaker 4: you kind of hope that our brains work the same way,

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Speaker 4: and people were a little queasy of doing that kind

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Speaker 4: of work. You could look at individuals who were undergoing

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Speaker 4: surgery for other reasons. For example, they might have brain

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Speaker 4: tumors or epilepsy, and while their skulls were open, you

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Speaker 4: could actually poke and prod their brains and see what

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Speaker 4: kind of behavior that elicited. And the third way was

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Speaker 4: to wait for individuals who had naturally occurring damage, people

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Speaker 4: who might have, say a stroke that selectively damage one

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Speaker 4: part of the brain. Starting in the late eighties, mainly

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Speaker 4: for medical purposes, researchers began to develop techniques that would

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Speaker 4: allow us to actually look at the living, healthy brain

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Speaker 4: as it was doing anything we asked individuals to do.

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Speaker 4: And this was really a revolution within psychology.

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Speaker 1: And so tell me a little bit about what that

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Speaker 1: felt like being like a nerdy, you know, post college

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Speaker 1: student twenty one year old who gets to like, actually

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Speaker 1: study what brains are doing in real time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: In many of our experiments, we ask subjects to perform

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Speaker 4: some basic kinds of tasks and we're able to see

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Speaker 4: not in real time, but pretty close sort of how

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Speaker 4: their brain is actually giving rise to language, to thoughts,

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Speaker 4: to our ability to understand other people. And to me,

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Speaker 4: it feels like one of the most intimate things you

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Speaker 4: can do, actually see inside at people's thoughts.

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Speaker 1: And so, when you had this intimate tool to look

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Speaker 1: at how people were thinking and how their cognition was working,

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Speaker 1: you decided to study a particular topic, and it turns

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Speaker 1: out a topic that brains are pretty good at. You

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Speaker 1: decided to study how brains make sense of other minds.

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Speaker 1: Why were you so excited about how brains make sense

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Speaker 1: of other minds?

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I recall at the time that every one of my

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Speaker 4: advisors said this was a crazy idea. They said, you

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Speaker 4: can't possibly hope to look and find specific brain regions

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Speaker 4: that are involved in something so complicated as social interaction.

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Speaker 4: What you'll find is just some mess of thousands of

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Speaker 4: brain regions all participating in this ability. But instead we

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Speaker 4: found something quite different. So, starting around the turn of

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Speaker 4: the century, we found that very specific brain regions seem

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Speaker 4: to be important for human social abilities. When I'm, for example,

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Speaker 4: interacting with you right now and making sense of your

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Speaker 4: questions or trying to come up with words that you

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Speaker 4: will understand, I'm involved in a very elaborate, complex understanding

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Speaker 4: of what your mind is doing and how I'm able

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Speaker 4: to affect your mind through my words or through my actions.

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Speaker 4: And this turns out to be a fascinating aspect of

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Speaker 4: the kinds of things humans can accomplish and.

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Speaker 1: One of the most important things for human happiness, right

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Speaker 1: because all the things you're talking about, whether you're connecting

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Speaker 1: with language or making sense of my behavior, like this

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Speaker 1: is really part and parcel of what we do, and

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Speaker 1: we're socially connecting, which, as you know, is really super

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Speaker 1: important for happiness. But it turns out that the brain

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Speaker 1: doesn't just do this, It kind of does this like

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Speaker 1: on default too. This was something that neuroscientists also discovered.

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Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, So it turns out that the story of

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Speaker 4: the brain regions that are involved in social thought actually

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Speaker 4: comes from multiple directions. So there were a group of

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Speaker 4: individuals like us who were looking at what does the

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Speaker 4: brain do when it's talking to another person or thinking

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Speaker 4: about another person's mind. And we found this set of

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Speaker 4: brain regions. I won't go into all the details, but

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Speaker 4: one of them is called the medial prefrontal cortex, and

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Speaker 4: it's sort of in line with your nose, just behind

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Speaker 4: your forehead. Another group of researchers who really weren't fundamentally

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Speaker 4: interested in psychology at all, were just interesting in the

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Speaker 4: question about whether all brain regions were sort of equally hungry,

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Speaker 4: that is, did they use the same amount of oxygen

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Speaker 4: and glucose as they were doing their thing, or were

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Speaker 4: some sort of more efficient than others. And what they

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Speaker 4: found was that it turns out that, yeah, brain regions

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Speaker 4: really vary in sort of how active they are how

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Speaker 4: much they require feeding. If you rank order the brain

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Speaker 4: regions from the most hungry, the ones that are kind

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Speaker 4: of always on, to the ones that are at least

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Speaker 4: likely to be on, you find at the very top

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Speaker 4: of the list the same regions that are involved in

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Speaker 4: social interaction. So one interpretation of this is that humans

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Speaker 4: by default have brains that are interested in other people

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Speaker 4: that we sort of lock on. We're sort of primed

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Speaker 4: to think about and interact with.

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Speaker 1: Others, but your work specifically, it started to show that

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Speaker 1: our brains don't think about all people the same way

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Speaker 1: that we use different brain mechanisms to think about different

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Speaker 1: kinds of people. So tell me a little bit about

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Speaker 1: this work.

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Speaker 3: That's right.

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Speaker 4: So one of the questions that people within social psychology

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Speaker 4: you're interested in is how humans make sense of the

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Speaker 4: behavior of other people. So, for example, imagine that right now,

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Speaker 4: Laurie jumped up ran off stage. So of course I

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Speaker 4: would look at that and think to myself, well, there

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Speaker 4: goes Laurie. But I wouldn't stop there, right. I would

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Speaker 4: absolutely and you would too. You would absolutely want to

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Speaker 4: try to understand why she had just engaged in this behavior, right,

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Speaker 4: So I can come up with some ideas. Maybe you're

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Speaker 4: angry about something, or maybe a spider just fell from

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Speaker 4: the raptors. Maybe you really have to go to the bathroom.

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Speaker 4: So that act of trying to understand why you are

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Speaker 4: doing something requires me to make reference or understand something

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Speaker 4: about your mental states. What are you thinking right now,

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Speaker 4: what are you feeling right now? What are your goals

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Speaker 4: and intentions as you're engaging in this behavior. So researchers

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Speaker 4: in the field refer to this often as theory of mind,

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Speaker 4: that what humans do when they make sense of each

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Speaker 4: other's behavior is try to make sense of what their

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Speaker 4: thoughts and feelings are. So one of the questions that

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Speaker 4: immediately comes to mind is how do I make sense

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Speaker 4: of someone else's thoughts and feelings. I've never seen one

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Speaker 4: of your feelings directly. I can't peer into your head

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Speaker 4: right now, but I'm not completely flummixed by what's going

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Speaker 4: on inside your mind. And there's something very perverse about

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Speaker 4: the way humans are doing this, because, in a sense,

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Speaker 4: I've taken a relatively simple behavior, you getting up and leaving,

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Speaker 4: and I'm trying to make sense of that in terms

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Speaker 4: of things that are clearly way more complex and that

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Speaker 4: I have no immediate access to.

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Speaker 3: But here's the trick.

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Speaker 4: I've never seen one of your feelings kind of experienced

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Speaker 4: those directly, but I have experienced feelings directly in my

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Speaker 4: own head about myself, my own thoughts and feelings and

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Speaker 4: other mental states.

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Speaker 3: So one of the tricks.

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Speaker 4: That the brain can use in making sense of other

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Speaker 4: people is to start with their own predictions about how

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Speaker 4: they would respond in such a situation. What would it

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Speaker 4: take for me to get up and walk off the stage.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 4: Maybe I wouldn't do it if I just had to

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Speaker 4: go to the bathroom, right, that would be embarrassing. But

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Speaker 4: I might if, for example, a snake fell from the rafters.

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Speaker 4: And so maybe I begin to narrow in on what

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Speaker 4: you're thinking when you're doing that by using myself as

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Speaker 4: a kind of starting point. But here's the caveat here.

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Speaker 4: In order to do that, I have to think that

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Speaker 4: you and I are governed by similar kinds of rules,

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Speaker 4: that you and I are going to respond in similar

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Speaker 4: ways given the same kinds of situations. So, in a sense,

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Speaker 4: to use myself as a proxy for you requires kind

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Speaker 4: of assumption that we're a similar kind of person. It

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Speaker 4: turns out that the brain respects that difference. When we've

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Speaker 4: looked at how the brain responds to thinking about similar others,

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Speaker 4: we actually find it very hard to differentiate that act

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Speaker 4: from simply asking a subject to think about themselves. In contrast,

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Speaker 4: if the person's dissimilar from me, maybe they have very

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Speaker 4: different political values or come from a very different cultural background,

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Speaker 4: the brain will engage in very different kinds of processing

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Speaker 4: and trying to make sense of what is going on

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Speaker 4: inside that person's head.

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Speaker 1: So it's literally using different brain tissue to think about

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Speaker 1: someone who's kind of different than you, a stranger than

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Speaker 1: you would to think about yourself.

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Speaker 3: That's right.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, So the two things that I think are interesting

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Speaker 4: is that it's hard to tell the difference between thinking

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Speaker 4: about oneself thinking about similar others, and that we then

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Speaker 4: cordon off we've used different kinds of recipes when we

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Speaker 4: think about people who are not like us.

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Speaker 1: And this, it turns out I has some interesting consequences

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Speaker 1: for how we think about strangers and kind of the

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Speaker 1: mistakes we make. And one of those mistakes psychologists referred

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Speaker 1: to as the fundamental attributioner. What's the fundamental attributioner? How

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Speaker 1: does it work?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: The fundamental attributioner is a idea that social psychologists have

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Speaker 4: been exploring since the seventies, and really it goes something

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Speaker 4: like this. If you, as an audience are listening to

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Speaker 4: us or watching us, it's very easy to think about

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Speaker 4: us as in this moment and what you can actually

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Speaker 4: see about us right now. So it's very easy to

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Speaker 4: think about us as professionals as we're aerodyite we you know,

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Speaker 4: to the extent that we are.

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Speaker 2: That's the first time but.

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Speaker 4: Think about what you never see. You never see us

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Speaker 4: at a party, for example, or you don't see me

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Speaker 4: playing with my kids and being silly with them. So

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Speaker 4: it's hard for you to see all the ways in

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Speaker 4: which I might be different in very different contexts. Right

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Speaker 4: All that looms large to you is this thin slice

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Speaker 4: of my behavior right now. And it turns out humans

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Speaker 4: have a very hard time using or understanding how situations,

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Speaker 4: how the environments we find ourselves in the contexts we

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Speaker 4: in habit, how those things constrain and produce our behavior.

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Speaker 4: We call this the fundamental attribution error because one of

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Speaker 4: the things that I might want to do is I'm

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Speaker 4: looking at people's behavior or trying to make sense of them,

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Speaker 4: is to figure out is this person doing this because

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Speaker 4: that's who she really is deep down inside, She's just

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Speaker 4: a really curious, smart person. Or is she doing this

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Speaker 4: because the situation calls for this behavior right now? Now, Remember,

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Speaker 4: just a minute ago, I said that humans have brains

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Speaker 4: that are sort of by default looking to think about

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Speaker 4: other people's mental states. So one of the consequences of

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Speaker 4: having a brain like that is humans tend to latch

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Speaker 4: on to mental states. As the explanation for why people

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Speaker 4: do what they do. They're doing this because they're a jerk,

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Speaker 4: or they're doing this because they just are a very

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Speaker 4: funny person. And what we find difficult to understand, what

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Speaker 4: remains relatively invisible to us, is all the ways in

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Speaker 4: which situations might produce certain kinds of behaviors as we're

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Speaker 4: moving through the world.

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Speaker 1: But this means that we sometimes wind up short changing

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Speaker 1: people because we can recognize those situations when it comes

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Speaker 1: to ourselves.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: I'll use an example that sometimes comes up on the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I have a borderline road ragie tendency. But I don't

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Speaker 1: think of that as a tendency in myself. I'm not

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Speaker 1: like a masshole or anything. I just happen to sometimes

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Speaker 1: be in situations where I really need to merge and

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Speaker 1: I'm in a hurry. As a fact occurred this morning

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Speaker 1: when I was driving to Assembly Square. I was trying

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Speaker 1: to merge in and I was in a hurry. Yet

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Speaker 1: a podcast to get to I'm not a bad person.

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Speaker 1: I was just in a situation, but there was somebody

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Speaker 1: else merging in at the same time I was, and

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Speaker 1: that person was a masshole, like they were in the

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Speaker 1: same situation I was, but you see the fundamental attribution

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Speaker 1: Eerra at work. Right. It's allowing me to kind of

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Speaker 1: short change the people around me because I don't think

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Speaker 1: of what could be affecting them beyond what's going on

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Speaker 1: in their mental states and their personality. I just assume

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Speaker 1: they're a jerk or their X, Y and Z. Right.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think in many cases the context or

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Speaker 4: the environment can serve as a kind of mitigating factor,

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Speaker 4: and because those mitigating factors are invisible, we instead attribute

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Speaker 4: people's behavior to their mental states or who they are

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Speaker 4: deep down inside, and that can often have negative consequences

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Speaker 4: for exactly the reasons that you're suggesting.

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Speaker 1: And so it's obvious that these consequences apply to our

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Speaker 1: social connection, right, because we might not be connecting with

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Speaker 1: people in the way that we should. But what's unexpected

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Speaker 1: is that it also causes problems for how we connect

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Speaker 1: with ourself because this tendency of the brain to misunderstand

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Speaker 1: and mispredict.

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Speaker 2: Others also applies to ourselves.

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Speaker 1: In some situations. When we get back from the break,

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Speaker 1: we'll learn how our brains turn our future selves into strangers.

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Speaker 1: Jason will explain why that causes big problems for our

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Speaker 1: happiness also hear some strategies we can use to understand

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Speaker 1: our future.

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Speaker 2: Selves a little bit better.

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Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back, Jason. So we're

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Speaker 1: talking about how we sometimes screw over our future selves,

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Speaker 1: and I wanted you to start with the story of

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Speaker 1: procrastination that you sometimes share with your students.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: So it turns out I'm in the middle of procrastinating

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Speaker 4: on multiple things. I'll just mention too. One of them

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Speaker 4: is I'm procrastinating on my taxes. So I'm not alone.

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Speaker 4: It is the beginning of April. Taxes are due in

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Speaker 4: just a couple of weeks, and yet the IRS tells

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Speaker 4: us that about a third of Americans don't submit their

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Speaker 4: taxes until the very last day.

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Speaker 3: So here I am.

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Speaker 4: I've had since January to do this, but I keep

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Speaker 4: putting it off. And someone just before the show said, well,

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Speaker 4: that's kind of ridiculous. If you hate doing it so much,

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Speaker 4: why didn't you just hire someone to do it for you?

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Speaker 4: And I thought, oh, yeah, that's ridiculous. There are people

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Speaker 4: who are professionals who get paid to do this, and

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Speaker 4: I could have asked someone else to do it for me.

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Speaker 4: So maybe that was a kind of procrastination that.

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Speaker 3: I didn't need to engage in. But I'm also procrastinating.

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Speaker 4: I have been for about a year now on starting

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Speaker 4: to get in better shape because of the kids, I

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Speaker 4: would need to get up pretty early in the morning,

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Speaker 4: and pretty much at the beginning of every month, I

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Speaker 4: tell myself, this is what I'm going to do, and

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Speaker 4: then somehow the month comes and goes and I haven't

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Speaker 4: done it, and part of me thinks that, well, the

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Speaker 4: problem is that, unlike taxes, there isn't someone else I

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Speaker 4: can hand this off to, right like I can't just

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Speaker 4: ask someone else to exercise for me and reap the benefits.

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Speaker 4: Except I realized recently that there is there is someone

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Speaker 4: else I can ask to do this, and it's future Jason.

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Speaker 4: Because I definitely don't want to get up tomorrow morning

441
00:21:04,996 --> 00:21:07,996
Speaker 4: to exercise, but I can ask Monday Jason to be

442
00:21:08,036 --> 00:21:10,556
Speaker 4: that person to do that. And in a sense, this

443
00:21:10,676 --> 00:21:13,436
Speaker 4: is what we mean when we talk about procrastination, this

444
00:21:13,556 --> 00:21:16,396
Speaker 4: way in which we offload the things that we're not

445
00:21:16,476 --> 00:21:20,236
Speaker 4: crazy about doing now to our future selves, thinking that

446
00:21:20,316 --> 00:21:23,436
Speaker 4: they will want to do it more, prefer to do it,

447
00:21:23,556 --> 00:21:26,196
Speaker 4: or at least be less miserable in accomplishing those things

448
00:21:26,276 --> 00:21:28,876
Speaker 4: even though we ourselves know that we don't want to

449
00:21:28,876 --> 00:21:29,956
Speaker 4: do them right right now.

450
00:21:30,556 --> 00:21:33,116
Speaker 1: And so as my friend, you know, I fall prey

451
00:21:33,236 --> 00:21:36,116
Speaker 1: to this all the time, but despite the fact that

452
00:21:36,156 --> 00:21:40,076
Speaker 1: I have experience with it personally, from a psychological perspective,

453
00:21:40,156 --> 00:21:43,236
Speaker 1: it should be really weird that we want to offload

454
00:21:43,236 --> 00:21:45,876
Speaker 1: this crappy stuff onto our future selves, that we kind

455
00:21:45,876 --> 00:21:48,356
Speaker 1: of think of our future selves as this other person.

456
00:21:48,116 --> 00:21:49,396
Speaker 2: That we can offload stuff onto.

457
00:21:49,796 --> 00:21:51,556
Speaker 1: But your work has really shown that when we look

458
00:21:51,596 --> 00:21:53,676
Speaker 1: in the brain, we get some hints about why we

459
00:21:53,756 --> 00:21:54,756
Speaker 1: do that so easily.

460
00:21:55,276 --> 00:21:58,076
Speaker 4: Remember before we talked about how the brain seems to

461
00:21:58,156 --> 00:22:02,876
Speaker 4: differentiate between thinking about similar others and dissimilar others. So

462
00:22:03,036 --> 00:22:05,396
Speaker 4: one question you can ask is, how do we think

463
00:22:05,396 --> 00:22:08,196
Speaker 4: about our future self? How do I think about Jason

464
00:22:08,476 --> 00:22:11,636
Speaker 4: in a month from now. It turns out that very

465
00:22:11,676 --> 00:22:15,036
Speaker 4: often we think about our future self not as us,

466
00:22:15,076 --> 00:22:17,956
Speaker 4: not in the same breath or the same way that

467
00:22:17,996 --> 00:22:20,956
Speaker 4: we think about our current self, because we don't use

468
00:22:20,956 --> 00:22:23,316
Speaker 4: the same brain regions in many cases to think about

469
00:22:23,356 --> 00:22:26,916
Speaker 4: what the likes, dislikes, goals of our future self are

470
00:22:26,916 --> 00:22:27,276
Speaker 4: going to be.

471
00:22:27,876 --> 00:22:31,476
Speaker 1: And that's kind of terrible because it means we're really

472
00:22:31,636 --> 00:22:35,716
Speaker 1: treating our future self like a complete stranger, and that

473
00:22:36,156 --> 00:22:37,796
Speaker 1: kind of is where a lot of the miseries of

474
00:22:37,836 --> 00:22:39,196
Speaker 1: life come up, right.

475
00:22:39,516 --> 00:22:43,036
Speaker 4: That's right, So we seem to have this very strange

476
00:22:43,596 --> 00:22:46,276
Speaker 4: theory about who our future self is going to be.

477
00:22:46,516 --> 00:22:48,676
Speaker 4: We tend to think that our future self is going

478
00:22:48,756 --> 00:22:50,676
Speaker 4: to be the kind of guy who doesn't.

479
00:22:50,476 --> 00:22:51,836
Speaker 3: Mind getting up early.

480
00:22:53,436 --> 00:22:55,876
Speaker 4: Going for a run on a twenty five degree dark

481
00:22:55,956 --> 00:22:58,436
Speaker 4: morning in Boston. On the one hand, we think of

482
00:22:58,476 --> 00:23:01,556
Speaker 4: our future self as this sort of aspirational self, this

483
00:23:01,596 --> 00:23:03,676
Speaker 4: person who's going to have fixed all of the problems

484
00:23:03,676 --> 00:23:06,076
Speaker 4: that currently plague us. On the other hand, we also

485
00:23:06,116 --> 00:23:08,956
Speaker 4: think about our future self as somebody who's not particularly

486
00:23:09,276 --> 00:23:11,356
Speaker 4: turbed by all that much. We tend to think that

487
00:23:11,356 --> 00:23:13,796
Speaker 4: our future selves not going to mind that trip to

488
00:23:13,836 --> 00:23:16,716
Speaker 4: the dentist as much as we ourselves would mind that.

489
00:23:16,636 --> 00:23:17,436
Speaker 3: Trip to the dentist.

490
00:23:17,676 --> 00:23:19,756
Speaker 4: He's also not going to enjoy things nearly as much

491
00:23:19,796 --> 00:23:21,876
Speaker 4: as we would enjoy things. If I'm given a choice

492
00:23:21,916 --> 00:23:27,196
Speaker 4: between having some delicious cake right now or an even

493
00:23:27,276 --> 00:23:30,596
Speaker 4: better one this time next week, screw that future guy.

494
00:23:30,596 --> 00:23:32,756
Speaker 4: He's not going to enjoy that dessert nearly as much

495
00:23:32,756 --> 00:23:34,596
Speaker 4: as I'm going to enjoy it right now. And so

496
00:23:34,916 --> 00:23:37,436
Speaker 4: we tend to make these decisions that favor our current

497
00:23:37,516 --> 00:23:40,276
Speaker 4: self in part because we just simply have the wrong

498
00:23:40,356 --> 00:23:42,196
Speaker 4: theories about who we're going to be in the future.

499
00:23:42,396 --> 00:23:44,636
Speaker 1: So one of the consequences of seeing our future selves

500
00:23:44,636 --> 00:23:47,116
Speaker 1: as strangers is that even though we like to think

501
00:23:47,116 --> 00:23:49,556
Speaker 1: of ourselves as nice people, we sometimes kind of treat

502
00:23:49,556 --> 00:23:52,796
Speaker 1: strangers like crap, and that sort of means we end

503
00:23:52,836 --> 00:23:53,516
Speaker 1: up treating.

504
00:23:53,236 --> 00:23:54,876
Speaker 2: Our future selves like crap too.

505
00:23:55,196 --> 00:23:57,596
Speaker 1: I know this was something that researcher Emily Pronan and

506
00:23:57,596 --> 00:23:59,316
Speaker 1: her colleagues had looked at. Do you want to explain

507
00:23:59,356 --> 00:23:59,796
Speaker 1: this study?

508
00:24:00,036 --> 00:24:03,636
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is one of my favorite and most diabolical

509
00:24:03,676 --> 00:24:06,636
Speaker 4: studies in the field. So Emily is a professor at Princeton.

510
00:24:06,676 --> 00:24:08,876
Speaker 4: She and I were actually in the same class in college.

511
00:24:08,956 --> 00:24:12,956
Speaker 4: And what Emily did was present her subjects with a

512
00:24:13,156 --> 00:24:17,556
Speaker 4: very unpalatable set of choices. She mixed together this concoction

513
00:24:17,916 --> 00:24:20,436
Speaker 4: of I think it was soy, sauce and ketchup and

514
00:24:20,516 --> 00:24:24,076
Speaker 4: water and then asked her subjects, how much of this would.

515
00:24:23,876 --> 00:24:25,036
Speaker 3: You be willing to drink for me?

516
00:24:25,236 --> 00:24:29,436
Speaker 4: For science and subjects, take a look at this, smell

517
00:24:29,476 --> 00:24:33,956
Speaker 4: it your good sports. They say about three tablespoons or so, right,

518
00:24:33,996 --> 00:24:36,116
Speaker 4: so not all that much. Then she asked another question.

519
00:24:36,196 --> 00:24:38,756
Speaker 4: She said, well, look, we really do need this for science.

520
00:24:38,796 --> 00:24:40,396
Speaker 4: So suppose for the next subject, if you had to

521
00:24:40,396 --> 00:24:42,276
Speaker 4: decide how much that person was going to drink of it,

522
00:24:42,636 --> 00:24:44,716
Speaker 4: and they, without missing a bead, say yeah, that person's fine,

523
00:24:44,756 --> 00:24:49,236
Speaker 4: but let's give him half a cup. So people are

524
00:24:49,276 --> 00:24:52,516
Speaker 4: not being very nice to this other stranger. But here's

525
00:24:52,596 --> 00:24:56,196
Speaker 4: the most amazing part. She also asked some subjects, suppose

526
00:24:56,276 --> 00:24:57,596
Speaker 4: you were to come back to the lab in a

527
00:24:57,636 --> 00:25:00,276
Speaker 4: month and I asked you to commit now to drinking

528
00:25:00,476 --> 00:25:02,796
Speaker 4: some amount of this how much do you think you'd

529
00:25:02,796 --> 00:25:05,316
Speaker 4: be willing to drink? And what they say is half

530
00:25:05,356 --> 00:25:08,076
Speaker 4: a cup. My future self will be perfectly fine with

531
00:25:08,156 --> 00:25:10,836
Speaker 4: doing that, just like that stranger would, as if you

532
00:25:10,876 --> 00:25:13,676
Speaker 4: think to yourself, yeah, I'm not going to be bothered

533
00:25:13,676 --> 00:25:13,916
Speaker 4: by that.

534
00:25:15,116 --> 00:25:18,836
Speaker 1: And this problematic theory of this kind of ideal future

535
00:25:18,836 --> 00:25:21,796
Speaker 1: self who's like super rational like it comes with other

536
00:25:21,836 --> 00:25:24,236
Speaker 1: biases as well, And one of these is one that

537
00:25:24,276 --> 00:25:27,476
Speaker 1: your Harvard colleague Dan Gilbert talks about as a future

538
00:25:27,516 --> 00:25:30,116
Speaker 1: and hedonia. What is future and hedonia?

539
00:25:30,276 --> 00:25:32,636
Speaker 4: Yeah, we think about our future self as being a

540
00:25:32,756 --> 00:25:36,556
Speaker 4: kind of spock like character who's not going to have

541
00:25:36,956 --> 00:25:40,476
Speaker 4: high highs or low lows. My spock like future self

542
00:25:40,516 --> 00:25:43,476
Speaker 4: will just very stoically drink the half cup of tomato

543
00:25:43,636 --> 00:25:46,676
Speaker 4: soy water mix and be perfectly okay with it. So

544
00:25:47,156 --> 00:25:50,836
Speaker 4: in Dan's work, subjects are asked, hey, if you were

545
00:25:50,876 --> 00:25:53,756
Speaker 4: to find twenty dollars right now, how good would that

546
00:25:53,796 --> 00:25:56,436
Speaker 4: feel to you? Scale from one to nine, and subjects

547
00:25:56,436 --> 00:25:59,036
Speaker 4: not surprisingly say, hey, that sounds pretty good. Maybe it's

548
00:25:59,036 --> 00:26:02,396
Speaker 4: a seven out of nine to find twenty bucks. Then

549
00:26:02,436 --> 00:26:05,476
Speaker 4: he asks other subjects, how would it feel to your

550
00:26:06,316 --> 00:26:09,236
Speaker 4: future self if your future self found twenty dollars in

551
00:26:09,276 --> 00:26:11,556
Speaker 4: three months time? Imagine that you find twenty dollars, How

552
00:26:11,556 --> 00:26:13,516
Speaker 4: exciting is that going to be to you? And what

553
00:26:13,596 --> 00:26:16,756
Speaker 4: subjects say is it'll be about a five five and

554
00:26:16,796 --> 00:26:19,036
Speaker 4: a half. What a strange thing, right as if your

555
00:26:19,076 --> 00:26:23,516
Speaker 4: future self is incapable and willing to experience the same

556
00:26:23,596 --> 00:26:27,596
Speaker 4: highs that you know that you yourself right now would experience.

557
00:26:28,036 --> 00:26:29,996
Speaker 1: So that's one way that we get our future selves wrong.

558
00:26:30,036 --> 00:26:32,916
Speaker 1: We assume that they're this like spock like, truly ideal

559
00:26:33,196 --> 00:26:35,436
Speaker 1: moral actor. But there's a second way that we get

560
00:26:35,436 --> 00:26:37,516
Speaker 1: our future self wrong, which gets back to this idea

561
00:26:37,516 --> 00:26:40,116
Speaker 1: of the fundamental attribution error that we talked about earlier,

562
00:26:40,476 --> 00:26:43,356
Speaker 1: which is that we don't understand the extent to which

563
00:26:43,356 --> 00:26:45,876
Speaker 1: our future selves are really affected by the situation. We

564
00:26:45,916 --> 00:26:47,876
Speaker 1: also don't give them the benefit of the doubt, and

565
00:26:47,916 --> 00:26:50,556
Speaker 1: the same way we kind of don't do that for strangers.

566
00:26:51,116 --> 00:26:51,276
Speaker 3: Right.

567
00:26:51,356 --> 00:26:53,716
Speaker 4: So, one of the things that I think is most

568
00:26:53,756 --> 00:26:57,196
Speaker 4: difficult about making decisions for your future self is that

569
00:26:57,476 --> 00:27:00,876
Speaker 4: it's very hard to imagine in our mind's eye what

570
00:27:01,116 --> 00:27:04,116
Speaker 4: all of the situational constraints on our future self might

571
00:27:04,156 --> 00:27:04,556
Speaker 4: look like.

572
00:27:05,356 --> 00:27:05,996
Speaker 3: We're bad at that.

573
00:27:06,116 --> 00:27:08,116
Speaker 4: When we think about other people, we don't see the

574
00:27:08,116 --> 00:27:10,676
Speaker 4: fact that your merging because you made a mistake. We

575
00:27:10,876 --> 00:27:13,196
Speaker 4: just think that you're the kind of person who barges

576
00:27:13,236 --> 00:27:15,356
Speaker 4: in in traffic, And I think we do something like

577
00:27:15,396 --> 00:27:17,276
Speaker 4: that when we think about our future self. We don't

578
00:27:17,316 --> 00:27:19,556
Speaker 4: think about all the ways in which we're going to

579
00:27:19,596 --> 00:27:22,836
Speaker 4: be busy this time next month, or all the ways

580
00:27:22,916 --> 00:27:25,516
Speaker 4: in which we'll be tired at the end of the day.

581
00:27:25,916 --> 00:27:29,196
Speaker 4: And so we can very easily commit ourselves to things

582
00:27:29,196 --> 00:27:33,236
Speaker 4: that we might even enjoy without taking into account the

583
00:27:33,436 --> 00:27:36,996
Speaker 4: various ways that situations will conspire against us.

584
00:27:36,876 --> 00:27:39,156
Speaker 1: And this could have some funny consequences that folks like

585
00:27:39,156 --> 00:27:41,956
Speaker 1: economists study, right, even in the purchases that we make

586
00:27:41,996 --> 00:27:43,556
Speaker 1: over time, that's right.

587
00:27:43,636 --> 00:27:48,676
Speaker 4: So one of my favorite studies is looking at individuals

588
00:27:48,676 --> 00:27:51,876
Speaker 4: who are at a grocery store just about to do

589
00:27:52,436 --> 00:27:53,996
Speaker 4: their shopping for the week.

590
00:27:54,196 --> 00:27:57,596
Speaker 3: And at the end of when individuals are in line.

591
00:27:58,236 --> 00:28:01,876
Speaker 4: About to buy their groceries, the experimenters come over and

592
00:28:01,916 --> 00:28:04,916
Speaker 4: they basically just more or less way how much the

593
00:28:04,956 --> 00:28:08,116
Speaker 4: person is buying, and they ask the person another question,

594
00:28:08,276 --> 00:28:09,756
Speaker 4: when was the last time how to meal?

595
00:28:10,356 --> 00:28:12,276
Speaker 3: And it turns out that individuals who've.

596
00:28:12,116 --> 00:28:15,356
Speaker 4: Gone to the supermarket hungry buy more food for the

597
00:28:15,396 --> 00:28:19,836
Speaker 4: whole week than individuals who've gone having recently eaten. As

598
00:28:19,836 --> 00:28:23,076
Speaker 4: if we have trouble putting aside our own current state

599
00:28:23,316 --> 00:28:26,036
Speaker 4: of hunger in this instance, in order to make proper

600
00:28:26,076 --> 00:28:29,276
Speaker 4: decisions for our future self. This is also reminiscent of

601
00:28:29,556 --> 00:28:34,156
Speaker 4: studies that economists have done looking at seasonal variation in

602
00:28:34,196 --> 00:28:36,396
Speaker 4: the kinds of houses people buy and the kinds of

603
00:28:36,436 --> 00:28:39,236
Speaker 4: cars they buy. So, what kind of cars do you

604
00:28:39,236 --> 00:28:43,596
Speaker 4: think people buy in the summer? They buy convertibles. There's

605
00:28:43,636 --> 00:28:47,276
Speaker 4: a much higher rate of people buying convertibles in the summer,

606
00:28:48,076 --> 00:28:50,596
Speaker 4: even in places like New England where there are approximately

607
00:28:50,636 --> 00:28:52,636
Speaker 4: ten days a year when it makes sense to use

608
00:28:52,636 --> 00:28:57,676
Speaker 4: a convertible. Likewise, if a house has a pool, it's

609
00:28:57,836 --> 00:28:59,876
Speaker 4: much more likely to sell and to sell at a

610
00:28:59,916 --> 00:29:02,836
Speaker 4: higher price if it's marketed in the summer. In both cases,

611
00:29:02,876 --> 00:29:05,476
Speaker 4: people are imagining all the amazing things that they're going

612
00:29:05,556 --> 00:29:07,636
Speaker 4: to do with that pool and all the amazing pool

613
00:29:07,876 --> 00:29:10,636
Speaker 4: rides they're going to take in that convertible without thinking

614
00:29:10,716 --> 00:29:13,036
Speaker 4: about the long periods of time when they're not.

615
00:29:12,996 --> 00:29:14,876
Speaker 3: Going to be able to use those features.

616
00:29:15,196 --> 00:29:16,916
Speaker 1: And one of the worst ways that we kind of

617
00:29:16,916 --> 00:29:19,396
Speaker 1: screw over our future self and this kind of mistake

618
00:29:19,516 --> 00:29:21,756
Speaker 1: about paying attention to the situations that are going to

619
00:29:21,836 --> 00:29:24,796
Speaker 1: present themselves inevitably, is when we think about the amount

620
00:29:24,836 --> 00:29:27,796
Speaker 1: of time that our future selves have. This is something

621
00:29:27,836 --> 00:29:31,156
Speaker 1: that researcher gal Zuberman talks about as future time slack.

622
00:29:31,236 --> 00:29:32,516
Speaker 1: What's future time slack?

623
00:29:32,756 --> 00:29:33,196
Speaker 3: That's right.

624
00:29:33,276 --> 00:29:35,116
Speaker 4: So in the same way that we tend to think

625
00:29:35,156 --> 00:29:38,276
Speaker 4: about our future selves as having it all together, being

626
00:29:38,276 --> 00:29:40,316
Speaker 4: the kind of person who's going to want to exercise,

627
00:29:40,556 --> 00:29:42,596
Speaker 4: we also tend to think that our future self is

628
00:29:42,636 --> 00:29:44,716
Speaker 4: going to have a lot more free time than they

629
00:29:44,796 --> 00:29:45,436
Speaker 4: actually do.

630
00:29:46,356 --> 00:29:48,476
Speaker 3: Now. One reason for this makes sense.

631
00:29:48,556 --> 00:29:51,356
Speaker 4: If you look at your calendar for April of next year,

632
00:29:51,836 --> 00:29:53,356
Speaker 4: chances are it looks pretty empty.

633
00:29:54,636 --> 00:29:56,316
Speaker 3: So if somebody asks you, for.

634
00:29:56,196 --> 00:29:58,716
Speaker 4: Example, to be on their podcast live and a show

635
00:29:58,716 --> 00:30:01,156
Speaker 4: in Summerville, do you think, sure, of course I'm going

636
00:30:01,196 --> 00:30:02,596
Speaker 4: to of course I'm going to have a great time

637
00:30:02,676 --> 00:30:04,076
Speaker 4: doing that. I'm going to have plenty of time this

638
00:30:04,156 --> 00:30:07,236
Speaker 4: week to enjoy that. Now, of course, what actually happens

639
00:30:07,316 --> 00:30:10,676
Speaker 4: is that as April of next year rolls around, your

640
00:30:10,676 --> 00:30:13,596
Speaker 4: calendar gets more and more full, as it always does,

641
00:30:13,636 --> 00:30:16,636
Speaker 4: and so when that actual event comes up, you're just

642
00:30:16,676 --> 00:30:18,556
Speaker 4: as busy at that time than you would be if

643
00:30:18,596 --> 00:30:19,596
Speaker 4: it was happening right now.

644
00:30:19,956 --> 00:30:22,356
Speaker 1: And so we get our future selves wrong because we

645
00:30:22,396 --> 00:30:24,396
Speaker 1: think of them as this ideal actor. We get our

646
00:30:24,436 --> 00:30:27,236
Speaker 1: future selves wrong because we're not taking into account the situation.

647
00:30:27,396 --> 00:30:29,436
Speaker 1: We're not taking into account how much time they're really

648
00:30:29,436 --> 00:30:32,156
Speaker 1: going to have. And all of this raises an important question,

649
00:30:32,276 --> 00:30:34,796
Speaker 1: which is how do we overcome these biases so we

650
00:30:34,836 --> 00:30:37,476
Speaker 1: can stop screwing over our future selves all the time?

651
00:30:37,916 --> 00:30:40,356
Speaker 1: Are there strategies we can use to meet our future

652
00:30:40,356 --> 00:30:42,796
Speaker 1: selves where they are when we get back from the break,

653
00:30:42,876 --> 00:30:45,356
Speaker 1: Jason will share a few key strategies that we can

654
00:30:45,476 --> 00:30:48,676
Speaker 1: use to better fight all these biases and simulate our

655
00:30:48,716 --> 00:30:51,476
Speaker 1: future selves a little bit better so that future us

656
00:30:51,556 --> 00:30:52,196
Speaker 1: can become.

657
00:30:51,996 --> 00:30:53,756
Speaker 2: A friend rather than a stranger.

658
00:30:54,276 --> 00:31:07,956
Speaker 5: The Happiness Lab We'll be right.

659
00:31:09,476 --> 00:31:11,636
Speaker 1: So, Jason, I want you to help us fix all

660
00:31:11,716 --> 00:31:13,596
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I want you to start with strategies

661
00:31:13,596 --> 00:31:16,076
Speaker 1: that I know you use personally to overcome some of

662
00:31:16,116 --> 00:31:19,636
Speaker 1: these biases, and one of them involves trying to get

663
00:31:19,676 --> 00:31:22,196
Speaker 1: as close to your future self as possible by kind

664
00:31:22,196 --> 00:31:24,956
Speaker 1: of bringing your present self there. One of my favorite

665
00:31:24,956 --> 00:31:28,196
Speaker 1: strategies you use for this involves kind of simulating this

666
00:31:28,316 --> 00:31:30,916
Speaker 1: question of do you want to do something tomorrow? Talk

667
00:31:30,956 --> 00:31:32,276
Speaker 1: to me about how this strategy works.

668
00:31:32,676 --> 00:31:35,036
Speaker 4: So, as we've been talking, it's very hard for me

669
00:31:35,156 --> 00:31:39,276
Speaker 4: to actually simulate or imagine what my future self is

670
00:31:39,276 --> 00:31:42,076
Speaker 4: going to be. Like humans seem, for whatever reason, to

671
00:31:42,316 --> 00:31:45,036
Speaker 4: fall short when they try to imagine all the things

672
00:31:45,076 --> 00:31:47,076
Speaker 4: that are going to impinge upon their future self or

673
00:31:47,116 --> 00:31:49,636
Speaker 4: what kinds of thoughts and feelings and desires their future

674
00:31:49,676 --> 00:31:51,636
Speaker 4: self is going to have. So one of the things

675
00:31:51,676 --> 00:31:53,516
Speaker 4: that I do in my life is to say, look,

676
00:31:53,556 --> 00:31:56,156
Speaker 4: I don't even need to worry about that particular question.

677
00:31:56,236 --> 00:31:58,956
Speaker 4: What I should do instead is simply answer the question

678
00:31:59,036 --> 00:32:02,356
Speaker 4: about whether I want to do something now. If somebody

679
00:32:02,396 --> 00:32:05,196
Speaker 4: asks me, hey, can you attend this wedding next week?

680
00:32:05,236 --> 00:32:07,676
Speaker 4: Do you want to take on this work project that's

681
00:32:07,716 --> 00:32:10,356
Speaker 4: due in a few weeks. Rather than thinking is this

682
00:32:10,436 --> 00:32:12,156
Speaker 4: going to be something that my future self is happy

683
00:32:12,196 --> 00:32:14,396
Speaker 4: to do? I say to myself, if I had to

684
00:32:14,436 --> 00:32:16,716
Speaker 4: do this right now, would it work for me? Would

685
00:32:16,716 --> 00:32:18,596
Speaker 4: it be something that I get enjoyment out of? And

686
00:32:18,716 --> 00:32:20,956
Speaker 4: very often the answer is no, I feel too busy

687
00:32:20,996 --> 00:32:22,996
Speaker 4: to do that thing. I know that it's going to

688
00:32:22,996 --> 00:32:25,236
Speaker 4: be stressful to try to finish out the semester and

689
00:32:25,356 --> 00:32:27,516
Speaker 4: also go to this wedding. The fact of the matter

690
00:32:27,556 --> 00:32:30,276
Speaker 4: is that if that's true for me now, it's very

691
00:32:30,356 --> 00:32:32,236
Speaker 4: likely to be true for me in a month or

692
00:32:32,276 --> 00:32:34,316
Speaker 4: this time next year. And so I can answer the

693
00:32:34,396 --> 00:32:37,396
Speaker 4: question on behalf of my future self by simply answering

694
00:32:37,436 --> 00:32:38,396
Speaker 4: it for myself now.

695
00:32:38,796 --> 00:32:41,076
Speaker 1: And I love the strategy because it really fights this

696
00:32:41,156 --> 00:32:43,476
Speaker 1: idea of future time slack that we had before. Because

697
00:32:43,476 --> 00:32:45,036
Speaker 1: sometimes if I ask myself, do I want to do

698
00:32:45,076 --> 00:32:48,276
Speaker 1: it now? Like it sounds fun, but I absolutely don't

699
00:32:48,316 --> 00:32:50,276
Speaker 1: have any time to do it right now, and that

700
00:32:50,316 --> 00:32:51,276
Speaker 1: can be the answer too.

701
00:32:51,876 --> 00:32:54,796
Speaker 4: That's right, and you're right that if that's true right now,

702
00:32:54,836 --> 00:32:57,196
Speaker 4: if you feel like you've not got the bandwidth to

703
00:32:57,956 --> 00:33:00,316
Speaker 4: do this thing that would otherwise be fun, chances are

704
00:33:00,436 --> 00:33:02,516
Speaker 4: that's also going to be true in a month or

705
00:33:02,596 --> 00:33:03,476
Speaker 4: this time next year.

706
00:33:03,916 --> 00:33:06,156
Speaker 2: So I don't like it though it doesn't feel like that,

707
00:33:06,276 --> 00:33:08,556
Speaker 2: well it does. So that's one strategy I love.

708
00:33:08,596 --> 00:33:11,436
Speaker 1: Another strategy we can use is sort of the power

709
00:33:11,436 --> 00:33:14,156
Speaker 1: of language to better connect with our future self. And

710
00:33:14,236 --> 00:33:15,756
Speaker 1: this just comes from the way that we can use

711
00:33:15,876 --> 00:33:19,156
Speaker 1: language to connect with any stranger, even our future self.

712
00:33:19,236 --> 00:33:22,236
Speaker 4: Right this first strategy is almost as you put it,

713
00:33:22,276 --> 00:33:26,156
Speaker 4: sort of bringing yourself to the future, and you can

714
00:33:26,196 --> 00:33:29,116
Speaker 4: also reverse the process by bringing the future to you.

715
00:33:29,516 --> 00:33:31,676
Speaker 4: One of the things that we know from research on

716
00:33:32,676 --> 00:33:36,036
Speaker 4: social interaction or social thought is that there's enormous power

717
00:33:36,316 --> 00:33:39,836
Speaker 4: in putting yourself into the shoes of another person. So

718
00:33:39,916 --> 00:33:43,076
Speaker 4: you mentioned before that we treat strangers or people who

719
00:33:43,076 --> 00:33:45,276
Speaker 4: are dissimilar from us in very different ways than we

720
00:33:45,356 --> 00:33:49,476
Speaker 4: treat ourselves and similar others. One way to fix that problem,

721
00:33:49,596 --> 00:33:52,796
Speaker 4: or to change that is to simply ask subjects to

722
00:33:52,916 --> 00:33:56,756
Speaker 4: spend five minutes writing a short little vignette from the

723
00:33:56,796 --> 00:33:59,996
Speaker 4: perspective of that other person using first person pronouns.

724
00:34:00,036 --> 00:34:00,636
Speaker 3: I did this.

725
00:34:00,756 --> 00:34:03,196
Speaker 4: It happened to me, And that very act of simply

726
00:34:03,236 --> 00:34:06,876
Speaker 4: seeing through the eyes of another person, using first person

727
00:34:06,956 --> 00:34:11,116
Speaker 4: pronouns to really inhabit that person's experience seems to be

728
00:34:11,156 --> 00:34:14,596
Speaker 4: sufficient to take somebody who's dissimilar and bring them into

729
00:34:14,636 --> 00:34:17,716
Speaker 4: the orbit of similarity. Now I think that that's also

730
00:34:17,796 --> 00:34:21,676
Speaker 4: possible when we treat another stranger our future self, rather

731
00:34:21,716 --> 00:34:24,716
Speaker 4: than thinking about that person as me in the future,

732
00:34:24,876 --> 00:34:28,436
Speaker 4: or a you or that guy, to really think about me.

733
00:34:28,676 --> 00:34:31,676
Speaker 4: This is happening to me. This is my choice. I'm

734
00:34:31,716 --> 00:34:34,916
Speaker 4: the person who's going to be experiencing these events, and

735
00:34:34,956 --> 00:34:37,596
Speaker 4: my sense is that that very act of simply changing

736
00:34:37,716 --> 00:34:40,796
Speaker 4: the pronouns that we use and describing our future selves

737
00:34:40,876 --> 00:34:43,196
Speaker 4: might be sufficient for ameliorating some.

738
00:34:43,116 --> 00:34:43,876
Speaker 3: Of these effects.

739
00:34:44,156 --> 00:34:46,156
Speaker 1: This is one that I'm definitely going to use, because

740
00:34:46,196 --> 00:34:48,876
Speaker 1: I really fall play to talking about my future self

741
00:34:48,996 --> 00:34:52,156
Speaker 1: in the third person. I'm like, well, that's June Laurie's problem,

742
00:34:52,196 --> 00:34:54,076
Speaker 1: Like June Laurie is going to have it together. But

743
00:34:54,076 --> 00:34:56,636
Speaker 1: now I'm going to say that's my problem. How am

744
00:34:56,676 --> 00:34:58,836
Speaker 1: I going to solve it instantly? Already just in my

745
00:34:58,876 --> 00:35:00,596
Speaker 1: brain right now, it's like, oh wait, it's my problem,

746
00:35:00,676 --> 00:35:03,036
Speaker 1: it's not some other strangers problem. I also think this

747
00:35:03,116 --> 00:35:05,356
Speaker 1: is cool because it reflects the way that we can

748
00:35:05,436 --> 00:35:07,836
Speaker 1: use language in the opposite way. So some of you

749
00:35:07,956 --> 00:35:10,916
Speaker 1: might have heard our epid with Ethan Cross about how

750
00:35:10,916 --> 00:35:14,156
Speaker 1: we can use language to kind of perspective take more right.

751
00:35:14,196 --> 00:35:16,436
Speaker 1: Often when we're kind of ruminating, we're like, oh, I've

752
00:35:16,436 --> 00:35:17,476
Speaker 1: got to do this, I've got to do this.

753
00:35:17,516 --> 00:35:18,196
Speaker 2: But you can use the.

754
00:35:18,116 --> 00:35:21,436
Speaker 1: Strategy of saying, Lari, how would you do this? Let's

755
00:35:21,436 --> 00:35:23,236
Speaker 1: think about it, Lauria, how would you solve your problems?

756
00:35:23,276 --> 00:35:26,276
Speaker 1: You go third person to try to get some perspective.

757
00:35:26,356 --> 00:35:28,076
Speaker 1: This is the same thing, but it's the opposite. It's

758
00:35:28,116 --> 00:35:31,316
Speaker 1: going first person to get some perspective on your future self.

759
00:35:31,316 --> 00:35:32,436
Speaker 2: So I absolutely love this.

760
00:35:32,956 --> 00:35:35,276
Speaker 1: But you've also argued that one of the things we

761
00:35:35,316 --> 00:35:38,316
Speaker 1: need to do to make sure we're making good decisions

762
00:35:38,396 --> 00:35:41,236
Speaker 1: even when we use these other techniques, is to know

763
00:35:41,316 --> 00:35:44,076
Speaker 1: what our current preferences are, to make sure we're kind

764
00:35:44,076 --> 00:35:46,756
Speaker 1: of aware of what we actually want right now, because

765
00:35:46,756 --> 00:35:48,076
Speaker 1: this is another way we go wrong.

766
00:35:48,116 --> 00:35:48,956
Speaker 2: We simulate it.

767
00:35:49,196 --> 00:35:50,996
Speaker 1: Oh, our future self would like X Y and Z,

768
00:35:51,356 --> 00:35:53,436
Speaker 1: because I like X, Y and Z, but we don't

769
00:35:53,516 --> 00:35:55,396
Speaker 1: right now even actually like X Y and Z.

770
00:35:57,876 --> 00:35:58,076
Speaker 3: Right.

771
00:35:58,156 --> 00:36:01,876
Speaker 4: I think human social life is very complicated, and maybe

772
00:36:01,876 --> 00:36:05,036
Speaker 4: you've had the same experience. But I often find myself

773
00:36:05,196 --> 00:36:10,116
Speaker 4: saying yes to things, not really because they're my own preferences,

774
00:36:10,196 --> 00:36:14,676
Speaker 4: but because I'm interested in avoiding other social consequences that

775
00:36:14,756 --> 00:36:17,876
Speaker 4: might come with saying no. So in a sense, this

776
00:36:18,036 --> 00:36:21,516
Speaker 4: is though a way also of being unfair to our

777
00:36:21,556 --> 00:36:24,596
Speaker 4: future self. There's some pain that's going to be associated

778
00:36:24,636 --> 00:36:27,036
Speaker 4: with this. Either I can say no to someone right now,

779
00:36:27,276 --> 00:36:29,556
Speaker 4: and that's going to feel awkward, and you know, I'm

780
00:36:29,556 --> 00:36:30,756
Speaker 4: going to feel a little guilty.

781
00:36:30,916 --> 00:36:32,116
Speaker 3: But if I don't.

782
00:36:31,876 --> 00:36:36,196
Speaker 4: Say no, I can avoid that moment of awkwardness. But

783
00:36:36,236 --> 00:36:38,676
Speaker 4: I'm going to commit my future self to some event

784
00:36:38,756 --> 00:36:42,596
Speaker 4: that maybe he doesn't want to participate in a wedding

785
00:36:42,756 --> 00:36:44,596
Speaker 4: or a job, a piece of your.

786
00:36:44,636 --> 00:36:45,596
Speaker 2: Job, say podcast.

787
00:36:47,876 --> 00:36:50,036
Speaker 1: And so I think I love this suggestion too, because

788
00:36:50,156 --> 00:36:52,396
Speaker 1: it to do that well, I think you have to

789
00:36:52,436 --> 00:36:55,036
Speaker 1: harness two strategies that we talk about a lot on

790
00:36:55,076 --> 00:36:57,596
Speaker 1: the Happiness lab. So one of them is being a

791
00:36:57,596 --> 00:37:01,276
Speaker 1: little bit more mindful. We have to actually know and

792
00:37:01,396 --> 00:37:03,436
Speaker 1: notice what we like and what we don't like. So

793
00:37:03,436 --> 00:37:05,356
Speaker 1: if we're saying yes to something because we kind of

794
00:37:05,396 --> 00:37:08,036
Speaker 1: feel a little icky about saying no, or we feel

795
00:37:08,036 --> 00:37:10,396
Speaker 1: like it's awkward to say no, that's a moment of

796
00:37:10,436 --> 00:37:12,876
Speaker 1: mindfulness where we need to notice, Huh, I'm feeling a

797
00:37:12,916 --> 00:37:16,076
Speaker 1: little like kind of regret right now, I'm feeling a

798
00:37:16,076 --> 00:37:19,276
Speaker 1: little aversion. We need to acknowledge and notice that, which

799
00:37:19,316 --> 00:37:21,956
Speaker 1: I think is powerful. But another strategy that we talk

800
00:37:21,996 --> 00:37:24,036
Speaker 1: a lot about in the Happiness lab that's effective here

801
00:37:24,476 --> 00:37:26,396
Speaker 1: is that that means that our current selves, which are

802
00:37:26,396 --> 00:37:29,116
Speaker 1: hopefully making a good decision for our future selves, are

803
00:37:29,196 --> 00:37:32,076
Speaker 1: kind of taking on something that feels a little tough,

804
00:37:32,236 --> 00:37:35,236
Speaker 1: that like feels a little tricky or maybe too emotional.

805
00:37:35,796 --> 00:37:37,996
Speaker 1: And so what are some strategies that we can use

806
00:37:38,196 --> 00:37:41,716
Speaker 1: to help our present selves take on tough stuff, you know,

807
00:37:41,916 --> 00:37:44,316
Speaker 1: make the future easier by making the present a little

808
00:37:44,356 --> 00:37:44,876
Speaker 1: bit tougher.

809
00:37:45,076 --> 00:37:46,596
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. If there's

810
00:37:46,636 --> 00:37:51,356
Speaker 4: some evenly distributed unpleasantness, it's probably better to get it

811
00:37:51,396 --> 00:37:53,916
Speaker 4: out of the way now than to have to live

812
00:37:53,956 --> 00:37:56,476
Speaker 4: with that unpleasantness over some long period of time. Right,

813
00:37:56,676 --> 00:38:00,876
Speaker 4: you know, looking forward, what's the word dreading some event

814
00:38:00,916 --> 00:38:03,436
Speaker 4: that's coming up. But you're right that that requires us

815
00:38:03,596 --> 00:38:07,556
Speaker 4: to interrogate in the present how much we want or

816
00:38:07,596 --> 00:38:09,756
Speaker 4: don't want to be doing something and what that's going

817
00:38:09,836 --> 00:38:11,716
Speaker 4: to mean for our future well being.

818
00:38:12,076 --> 00:38:14,076
Speaker 1: And there's a key way to do that, which is

819
00:38:14,116 --> 00:38:17,436
Speaker 1: to find ways to allow those negative emotions. Right, I'm

820
00:38:17,436 --> 00:38:19,596
Speaker 1: sitting down to my taxes and I hate this and

821
00:38:19,636 --> 00:38:23,356
Speaker 1: I hate this, and I definitely hate it. But I

822
00:38:23,356 --> 00:38:25,756
Speaker 1: can allow that, right, I can sit with this on comfort.

823
00:38:25,876 --> 00:38:29,276
Speaker 1: You know, I'm procrastinating on something because I'm anxious about

824
00:38:29,276 --> 00:38:31,956
Speaker 1: it and I'm scared. I can sit with that fear. Right.

825
00:38:31,956 --> 00:38:34,036
Speaker 1: These are all techniques that we know we can engage in.

826
00:38:34,116 --> 00:38:36,236
Speaker 1: We just need to do them in the moment to

827
00:38:36,276 --> 00:38:40,836
Speaker 1: protect our future self. And So, Jason, knowing more how

828
00:38:40,876 --> 00:38:44,236
Speaker 1: the brain works and why we sometimes get into these

829
00:38:44,596 --> 00:38:47,476
Speaker 1: situations with our future selves, has that helped you to

830
00:38:48,076 --> 00:38:50,516
Speaker 1: do a little bit better and not screw your future

831
00:38:50,516 --> 00:38:52,076
Speaker 1: selves over as much?

832
00:38:52,276 --> 00:38:56,476
Speaker 4: You'd be surprised at how at how hard it is

833
00:38:56,516 --> 00:39:01,636
Speaker 4: to overcome these tendencies. I think, No, No, I wouldn't

834
00:39:02,636 --> 00:39:07,076
Speaker 4: I think, even knowing about them, even studying them, we

835
00:39:07,196 --> 00:39:09,596
Speaker 4: are built in a certain way that makes it very

836
00:39:09,596 --> 00:39:13,076
Speaker 4: hard for us to take our future selves seriously. And

837
00:39:13,476 --> 00:39:16,276
Speaker 4: I find that I constantly have to remind myself that

838
00:39:16,916 --> 00:39:19,436
Speaker 4: I am in a relationship with my future self, that

839
00:39:20,076 --> 00:39:23,516
Speaker 4: he has feelings too. I would like to think that

840
00:39:23,556 --> 00:39:27,356
Speaker 4: I'm a friend, and so I think it's one of

841
00:39:27,396 --> 00:39:30,316
Speaker 4: these aspects of life that we have to kind of

842
00:39:30,316 --> 00:39:33,196
Speaker 4: constantly refresh and remind ourselves to do better with.

843
00:39:33,476 --> 00:39:35,796
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for giving us all some strategies that

844
00:39:35,836 --> 00:39:37,836
Speaker 1: we can use to help our future selves out.

845
00:39:38,716 --> 00:39:41,316
Speaker 2: Please join me in Gan Gang, Jason Nicholl.

846
00:39:41,596 --> 00:39:47,916
Speaker 1: We're fantastic talk. The Happiness Lab is co written and

847
00:39:47,916 --> 00:39:52,476
Speaker 1: produced by Ryan Dilly and the amazing Courtney Guerano. Our

848
00:39:52,516 --> 00:39:55,516
Speaker 1: show is mixed by Evan and Viola, and our fantastic

849
00:39:55,596 --> 00:39:57,476
Speaker 1: music was provided by Zachary Silver.

850
00:39:58,076 --> 00:39:59,116
Speaker 2: Special thanks to.

851
00:39:59,076 --> 00:40:01,716
Speaker 1: The theme at our really great venue, the Arts and

852
00:40:01,756 --> 00:40:06,356
Speaker 1: the Armory, and to our lead on site sound engineer

853
00:40:06,556 --> 00:40:11,476
Speaker 1: Sarah Bruger and Big Big Thanks to our live studio audience.

854
00:40:15,676 --> 00:40:18,836
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab would also like to thank Carrie Brody, Greta Cone,

855
00:40:18,996 --> 00:40:22,956
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Carl Miguliore, Morgan Rattner, Jacob Weisberg, Ben Davis

856
00:40:23,036 --> 00:40:25,276
Speaker 1: and Doug Singer at w E and the rest of

857
00:40:25,276 --> 00:40:27,876
Speaker 1: the Pushkin drew. The Happiness Lab is brought to you

858
00:40:27,956 --> 00:40:31,116
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries and by me, doctor Laurie Sandrows.

859
00:40:35,676 --> 00:40:36,156
Speaker 2: Thank you all.

860
00:40:36,196 --> 00:40:37,796
Speaker 1: That is end of Happiness Lab Lives.

861
00:40:37,916 --> 00:40:38,956
Speaker 2: Thank you again for coming.

862
00:40:39,036 --> 00:40:39,476
Speaker 5: Whoo woo