180. Unlocking Your Future Self: Communication, Happiness & Wellbeing

Why creating happiness in the future starts today. The new year gives us an opportunity to reflect on who we are and who we want to be. As we set resolutions and prepare for evolutions, this special four-part series on communication, happiness, and well-being explores practical ways to enhance our lives through better communication, deeper connections, and more meaningful choices. In pursuing happiness and well-being, we often focus on the present moment. But according to Hal Hershfield https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/hal-herschfield/, one of the best ways to help ourselves today is to have a conversation with ourselves in the future. "When I say future self, I really mean any version of us that exists at some later point in time," explains Hershfield, a UCLA professor and author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today http://fastersmarter.io/yourfutureself. By thinking of our future selves as different people — ones we should care about — we can make better choices in the present. "If we can tap into the feelings of our future selves, then we can do more that benefits them, which may make our lives easier now and later." In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart https://www.fastersmarter.io/, Hershfield and host Matt Abrahams explore how communication between our present and future selves can help us set goals, make decisions, and overcome pitfalls like procrastination, enabling us to take meaningful action now so we can thrive today and tomorrow. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/ThinkFast http://betterhelp.com/ThinkFast and get ten percent off your first month. Episode Reference Links: Hal Hershfield https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/hal-hershfield/ Hal’s Book: Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today http://fastersmarter.io/yourfutureself Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium https://www.fastersmarter.io/premium/Email Questions & Feedback >>> [email protected] Transcripts >>>Think Fast Talk Smart Website https://www.fastersmarter.io/180-unlocking-your-future-self-communication-happiness-wellbeing/Newsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>>FasterSmarter.io http://fastersmarter.io/Think Fast Talk Smart >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-fast-talk-smart/,Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkfasttalksmart/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6caGRBUYZCmgDGM2RK6mxKB9jG_ccmm3Matt Abrahams >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams/ Chapters: (00:00) - Introduction (02:12) - What Is a Future Self? (03:37) - Mistakes in Time Travel Thinking (04:45) - Overcoming Procrastination (07:16) - Connecting to Our Future Selves (10:35) - Disappointment and Adjusting Goals (12:14) - Goal Setting and Motivation (15:02) - Public Accountability for Motivation (16:04) - The Final Three Questions (20:35) - Conclusion ******** Become a Faster Smarter Supporter by joining TFTS Premium https://www.fastersmarter.io/p/premium/. Take advantage of our Sponsor offer from BetterHelp https://www.betterhelp.com/thinkfast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  I love the exercise of writing a letter, or an email, or to your future self, and then writing one back. Because we know that vividness is the type of thing that really provokes emotions. And emotions are the things that drive behavior. And so if we can just turn the dial up on a vivid perception of your future self, that can really help connect who you are now with who you will eventually become.

• 0:28Matt Abrahams?

  Hi, Matt here. The new year gives all of us an opportunity to reflect and focus on who we are, who we want to be, and our well-being. To help you chart your course and write your story, I'm excited to invite you to our four-part mini-series on communication, happiness, and well-being, sponsored by BetterHelp. Every January brings us 365 blank pages waiting to be filled. This year, maybe you're ready for a plot twist. Or maybe there's a part of your story you've been wanting to revise or explore further. Think of therapy as your editorial partner, helping you craft new chapters and create the meaningful story you deserve to live.

• 1:11Matt Abrahams?

  Therapists from BetterHelp can help you write your story. I believe everyone should leverage the support of therapists and coaches. Visit betterhelp.com/thinkfast to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com slash thinkfast.

• 1:33Matt Abrahams?

  One of the best ways to help ourselves in the present is to have a conversation with our future self. I'm Matt Ibrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

• 1:51Matt Abrahams?

  Today I look forward to speaking with Hal Hirschfield. Hal is a professor of marketing, behavioral decision making, and psychology at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. He is the author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. Hal, thanks for joining me.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  Hey, thanks so much, Matt. I'm excited to chat with you.

• 2:09Matt Abrahams?

  I'm super excited as well. Shall we get started?

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 2:12Matt Abrahams?

  Excellent. Your most recent work focuses on our future selves. I'd love for you to describe what you mean by future selves and how thinking about our future selves can help us in the present.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Sure, yeah. So when I say future self, I really mean any version of us that exists at some later point in time. Could be tomorrow. But for the most part, we're really talking about a self that's tied to some goal later on, right? So if I want to be healthy in five years so that I can continue to play roughly with my kids or whatever, like, that's a future self in five years. But there's multiple selves along the way. Like, I have this weekend self and next month self and so on. Your question about how that relates to well-being now, if we can tap into the feelings of our future selves, then we can do more that benefits them, which may make our lives easier now and later.

• 3:04Matt Abrahams?

  So it's really the next step or the next several steps, and then we can think about that and make changes today that'll help us in the future?

• 3:12Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. I do like to consider how the changes we make now, especially in the self-control realm, they don't have to be just sacrifices now, right? There can be benefits to doing the, quote-unquote, harder thing right now. It's not just that it's like, all pain now and then gain later, right? I think that's a really poor framing. That's not gonna get anybody to do the things that they say that they want to do.

• 3:37Matt Abrahams?

  Right. One of the ways you frame this whole discussion is time travel. And I love that idea. You mentioned now, one of the mistakes we make in time travel is we feel like everything now is pain for the future gain. Are there other mistakes that we make in this future forecasting time travel that you're talking about?

• 3:54Speaker 00

  One mistake is that we almost fail to even consider the future. There are many times when we may actually sort of ignore it to some degree. There are other times where we tell ourselves that we're considering it, but we don't do it on a very deep level. Procrastination is a great example of... Thinking about the future, but doing it at a very surface level. I tell myself like, I will do my taxes. Next week keeps coming and I haven't yet done them. And eventually I'm going to have to do them. And then there's another version of this mistake where we do think about the future, but we don't consider that our future interests may change. And we overly project our present day feelings onto a future self in a way that's unfair.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  The analogy is like getting a gift for a friend or partner that represents something we'd want.

• 4:42Matt Abrahams?

  Right.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Not something they'd want because we're not really thinking about them.

• 4:45Matt Abrahams?

  I procrastinate at times. Many people listening are procrastinators. What's your advice on how to manage that? And the other thing of not really considering the changes that happen to us.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:54Matt Abrahams?

  In the future.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  One of the first things to recognize, I would say, is that I think it's okay to actually think of our future selves as if they're different people from who we are now.

• 5:03Matt Abrahams?

  Hmm.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  And that representation opens up the door to all sorts of possibilities. If my future self is a different person, then if I fail to do something right now that I've been saying I want to do, if I procrastinate, what I'm actually doing is pushing that pain off to a future version of myself. In my book, I talked to this guy, Tim Pickle. I call him like Professor Procrastination. Not that he procrastinates a lot, but he's the one who studies this. And he had this great thing he said to me, which is that if I don't want to do the thing now, there's no way that future me is going to want to do it. And in some ways you compound the pain by putting things off because procrastination by definition is not doing something and recognizing that you're harming yourself by not doing it. When I put off doing my taxes, I know that I'm making life worse because it's getting

• 5:50Speaker 00

  harder and harder to do. And I'm making life more difficult for my future self. So it's like, if I just do the thing now and then I can save my future self some pain and I can save myself some pain right now. Obviously it's like a lot easier said than done. But I do think that part of the solutions here are the recognition that the future self is another person and it's hopefully someone who we should care about. Would I inflict pain on a loved one? That future me is sort of like that loved one.

• 6:17Matt Abrahams?

  I like that idea of seeing ourselves as not ourselves, but somebody else. I use this technique and recommend it to people when they have to watch recordings of themselves.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:26Matt Abrahams?

  And then give feedback. It's much easier to imagine that somebody else and what feedback would you give that person versus yourself? We would treat that person with kindness in a way that we might not ourselves.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 6:34Matt Abrahams?

  I have found in my life that procrastination actually has a built in incentive. It gives you an excuse. So when I put off preparing for a communication or a presentation I have, and then it doesn't go as well as I like. Oh, the reason it didn't go well is I didn't prepare and I have to get over that.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  That concept of self handicapping is so interesting. Wow, I know I should be practicing, I should be doing whatever. And it's like, huh, it didn't go as well as I thought. Well, you know, I didn't give myself the best shot, so it's not on me.

• 7:00Matt Abrahams?

  Right.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  And then I can attribute whatever quote unquote failure to the situation and not to myself. And somehow that's an easier pill to swallow.

• 7:09Matt Abrahams?

  In some ways, it's the type of time traveling you're talking about, but in reverse. I'm saying, well, only if I would have.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:15Matt Abrahams?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 7:16Matt Abrahams?

  When it comes to getting in touch with our future selves, do people vary in their abilities to do this? I studied with Phil Zimbardo, who was a guest on the show, and he studied time perspective and people are oriented differently. Some people focus more on the past, present or future. Is it temperament, experience? How can we get better in touch with ourselves?

• 7:35Speaker 00

  In my own work, we've found that people do differ in how connected, how emotionally invested they feel in their future selves. The way I think about it is it's sort of like any other trait that we have. Some of the input is almost innate, if you will. Some of the input, though, is our experiences, you know, who's modeling certain things for us? You know, what do we sort of absorb over time? I think those things all do help explain the varying relationships that exist with future selves.

• 8:03Matt Abrahams?

  Are there things we can do to get better in touch? I have two teenage kids and thinking about the future can be hard for them. And a lot of my advice is study hard now, it will help you in the future. Do this, it'll help you in the future. Are there things we can do to help ourselves and others get more in touch with that perspective?

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Let me first just put the teenager side of this, the side for a second, because I feel like teenagers are a special case when it comes to thinking about the future.

• 8:28Matt Abrahams?

  Right.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  One technique that I particularly love is a conversation that you can create between your self now and your future self. So I love the exercise of writing a letter or an email or to your future self and then writing one back. For adult learners, I often have people start by writing a letter to their past self. So I'll have them write a letter to themselves 10 years ago to almost grease the wheels because it's a weird thing to do this. And I fully recognize, you know, this is slightly uncomfortable.

• 8:57Matt Abrahams?

  Give me an example of what you might put in one of these letters.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  You could think about things like, what are some of the mistakes you've made? What are some of the things that you're proud of? That's, that's looking back, right? Moving forward, what do I want to accomplish? What are some of my goals? But not just that, what do I want my life to look like in 10 years? Because there's a danger in this exercise of being too anchored on the present, which is why I think it's really important to do the letter back. Part of what's really important here is to make it concrete. What do I want that future self's life to look like? And then in the letter back, really talk about, okay, how are you spending your day? Days, you know? Not a general, oh, I'm happy and things are good with my family. That's just too abstract. Like, what does a day in the life look like?

• 9:40Speaker 00

  The reason I think that's important is because we know that vividness is the type of thing that really provokes emotions and emotions are the things that drive behavior. And so if we can just turn the dial up on a vivid perception of your future self, that can really help connect, you know, who you are now with who you will eventually become.

• 10:01Matt Abrahams?

  I love this idea, communication with yourself. And I like the idea of writing to the future self and then imagine the future self writing back. And I can see how that helps separate me from my future self, but also can help me focus on what's important.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  I think you hit the nail on the head. To some extent, this boils down to a conversation of there's urgency and there's importance. We know this dichotomy, right? It's easy to get sucked into what's urgent. I didn't get to the important things today, but there was fires that I had to put out. But then those days add up over time and then we look back and suddenly say, it's been months and I haven't done anything.

• 10:35Matt Abrahams?

  I love that we're having a conversation about the communication we have with ourselves. I see a potential concern, though. What happens if I have this vision of my future self and I don't achieve it? That, to me, could be disappointing and maybe make it so that I don't want to continue to have those aspirations. Have you looked at having those goals that don't? Come to fruition for whatever reason.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  I have not examined that in like an empirical way.

• 11:02Matt Abrahams?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Let me give you an anecdote that I think is really interesting.

• 11:05Matt Abrahams?

  Sure.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  So Anne Napolitano, she just wrote this book Hello Beautiful, but I come into contact with her a couple of years ago around one of her books called Dear Edward. She had written an op ed in the New York Times. She talked about how, starting at the age of 14, she would write a letter to her future self in 10 years. She started this tradition of every 10 years she would write a letter, she would read the letter she had written and then write a new letter. And one of the interesting things that came out from this exercise is realizing just how rare it was to have things work out the way that she wanted them to. Obviously, this is just an anecdote of one, but she talked about how when she was 34,

• 11:48Speaker 00

  nothing about her life was the way that she wanted it to be when she was 24, and yet she was so much happier. And she said, oh, my God, my goals were so focused on externally. What's so nice about that example is it highlights how just because a goal doesn't work out the way you want it to work out, it doesn't mean that that's a failure necessarily. Like, I would almost think of that as growth.

• 12:12Matt Abrahams?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  Or an opportunity for growth.

• 12:14Matt Abrahams?

  Part of what it does is it highlights how the the metrics we're using for success or what we want change over time. I certainly see that in my parents as they age. What's important to them has changed dramatically. So let's tap into the other areas that you research in terms of decision making, goal setting and motivation. What are things that your research and the research in your field share with us that can help us achieve some of these things that we aspire to in our future selves? What are things we can do?

• 12:43Speaker 00

  A lot of times when we have these sort of goal setting exercises, there's a tension between me now and me later. The person who has to do the hard work is me now. And the person who benefits is me later. One solution then is to try to figure out any way we can to make the sacrifice of me now feel easier. Anything I can do to make the pill easier to swallow right now. I'm not going to go on a 30 minute run. I'm going to go on a five minute walk and see if I can turn that into another five minutes. There's a, you know, this great movie, The Holdovers, and there's a line in it where they're talking about writing a book. And this woman says to the guy, it's not that hard. You just have to write one word and then another word. And then just keep going.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  But I think it's important to recognize that exercises that we can put into place that do make the sacrifice easier will be beneficial to us. I also love Kitty Milkman has great work on temptation bundling. Can I pair the sort of painful thing with the the pleasurable thing? You know, there's there's newer work by my colleague at UCLA, Ali Lieberman, on what's called tangential immersion. The idea there is you have to be specific about the match between the painful thing and the pleasurable thing. So, you know, she uses the example of brushing your teeth. You're supposed to do it for two minutes. If I pair my brushing my teeth with like a really engaging movie, I'm going to stop brushing my teeth. If I pair it with something that's not that engaging, that's also not going to work.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  And so it's like trying to find the right level of engagement for the task. Another one that I really like is trying to think about commitment devices that I can put into practice. One of the things about commitment devices and what they are is they're putting guardrails on your future behavior. So you don't screw something up. So I'm working on this exact problem now with one of my PhD students, Megan Weber. One of the techniques we're using right now is to remind people that the obstacles they've faced in the past will be the same as the obstacles they'll face in the in the future. So we'll ask people, think about the things that made it difficult for you to study or to finish your presentation or whatever before. Check off the list. Now, which of these things do you think will be present in the future?

• 14:50Speaker 00

  And I think people have this aha moment where they say, oh, yeah.

• 14:54Matt Abrahams?

  Right, right. It's gonna be the same.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  The future isn't somehow going to be a magic time, you know? And then from there, they're more likely to want to adopt commitment devices.

• 15:02Matt Abrahams?

  So a lot of this is framing for me. When I I take the task of grading, grading can be challenging.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:09Matt Abrahams?

  And I make public commitments. I'll tell my family in 30 minutes I will complete this much. And if I don't, you know, keep me focused, these devices help.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  What's the consequence if you don't do it then?

• 15:17Matt Abrahams?

  I typically pair a positive consequence. So when Katie was on the show, I talked about how I love peanut M&Ms. And the only time I eat my M&Ms is after I finish a certain amount of grazing. So I have a positive consequence.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:29Matt Abrahams?

  Sometimes it's a negative consequence. If there's something I want to watch on TV, I don't do it until I finish. Do you have a particular consequence that works for you?

• 15:36Speaker 00

  You know, I recently had to give a talk and I had to send in my talk title. And I have just kept delaying on it because I was, it was part of the reason I was procrastinating is the negative feelings of like, I wasn't sure I knew what I wanted to talk about. And I wrote to the guy had been asking me for it. And I said, by Sunday night, I'll get this to you. And if I don't like, I'll be embarrassed that I've written to you and told you I would do this.

• 15:54Matt Abrahams?

  Right.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  And I still couldn't do it.

• 15:55Matt Abrahams?

  Absolutely. I have found that that works in the coaching that I do of others and then the parenting I do, encouraging others to make that public.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

• 16:04Matt Abrahams?

  This has been an awesome conversation. We end every one of these episodes with the same two questions and I come up with one unique for you. Are you, you willing to answer those questions?

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 16:14Matt Abrahams?

  So I noticed, like me, you wear a biometric ring. And I'm fascinated by this as somebody who talks about our future self and our goals. What do you do in terms of knowing yourself today to help better in the future? I'm curious. It seems interesting to me that you do that.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  I, I think it's exactly what you said. I love the way that you can actually get a full picture of your data right now. And the reason I love that is because part of the value of tracking your behavior is that you see how the different points in time connect to each other. I ate late last night, like it's not just impacting me last night. It's impacting me over time. Look, this is an area outside of the ring. It's an area where I'm trying to improve. You know, so I'm trying to do this at home. We have two little kids and it's like, let's do a check in. How are things going? What could I be doing differently? I need to, I haven't done it yet. I need to do that professionally too.

• 17:05Matt Abrahams?

  Right, right.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Something I would love to do.

• 17:07Matt Abrahams?

  I appreciate your candor there. I am somebody who is a big fan of reflection. And in order to reflect, you need data. And things like biometric rings and other things, give data that can then help you inform the decisions you make. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why?

• 17:22Speaker 00

  So Wendy De La Rosa, she's a professor at Wharton. She has become, I think, one of the go-to experts in figuring out how to communicate information to get people to change their decisions for the better. Specifically, people who are on the lower income end of the spectrum. There's millions of people who don't apply for government benefits who are eligible for them. And you start wondering, why don't they apply? Or when do they drop off the application process? And she realized that the way that benefit applications ask people to report their income is often not congruent with the way that people earn income. So they say, how much money do you make per year? Well, many people are hourly employees. And if you get that question and you're worried that if I don't answer it right, I'll

• 18:07Speaker 00

  get kicked out, what you do is you drop off. So she started saying, okay, how do you make your money? Is it hourly or are you salaried? Now let me ask the question. And I think what's so nice about this from a communication standpoint is that she is doing the perspective taking of how would someone understand this information? How would it be received by them? Let me ask a question in a way that matches that. And then what you're finding is that people are more likely to go through the application, which to me is just a great example of the big picture of communication.

• 18:37Matt Abrahams?

  She's actually a GSB alum. Let me ask my final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Perspective taking, clarity, and simplicity.

• 18:50Matt Abrahams?

  We just talked about perspective taking, very clear. Talk to me about simplicity.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  I think it's so easy to make ideas overly complex. From a good intention perspective, right? We think, oh, my audience needs all the information out there. That's how they'll make the best decision. That's how they'll fully get the big picture. And the irony is that in doing so, we may lose a lot more folks than we would if we were to just keep things succinct.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  When I was in grad school, one of the older grad students was a guy named Danny Oppenheimer. Danny is now a professor at Carnegie Mellon. And he had done this great work on this really sort of ironic finding that more complicated language actually makes you sound less intelligent. But people, especially undergrads, think that if I make something sound lofty and big and use multi-syllabic words, I'm going to impress my audience. And the irony is that the exact opposite happens. And I think it's so true with any form of communication. By the way, I do a lot of work with financial advisors and I find that they want to try to give all the information possible to their clients and that just ends up turning the clients off, right? So it's trying to keep it simple.

• 20:02Matt Abrahams?

  Yeah, the notion of just focusing on the bottom line. And when we had Dan Pink on as a guest, he said, "Just talk like a human. You don't need to impress. You don't need to use big words. Just talk like a human." Hal, you've done a great job of talking like a human, keeping things simple and clear. I really appreciate having you on. The idea of having conversations with our future selves to better our current selves is one that I personally am going to reflect on and work on, and I encourage everybody listening.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Thank you for your time. Thanks, Matt.

• 20:35Matt Abrahams?

  Thank you for joining us for one of our Think Fast, Talk Smart, Communication, Happiness, and Well-Being mini-series episodes. To continue to learn more about this important topic, please tune in to our other three episodes in this series. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Ryan Campos, H. Ash, and me, Matt Ibramhams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With thanks to Podium Podcast Company and our sponsor, BetterHelp. We recorded this episode at the Spotify studios in Los Angeles, and we are grateful for the help of Haley Muse and Travis Morningstar. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

• 21:19Matt Abrahams?

  And check out FasterSmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, AMAs, Ask Matt Anything, and much more at FasterSmarter.io/premium.

• 21:38Matt Abrahams?

  Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast, Talk Smart.