Future Thinking | Jim Davies | TEDxCarletonUniversity
Summary
TLDRIn this talk, the speaker explores the concept of future thinking and how humans often make errors when predicting future events. They discuss how people imagine the future with fewer details than the past and how this leads to biases, like overcommitting or underestimating challenges. The speaker also highlights how we overestimate future emotional responses, and how much of our happiness is genetically determined, not situational. The talk concludes by encouraging people to focus on what they can control and take better care of their future selves.
Takeaways
- 💭 Humans have the unique ability to imagine future events, a skill not found in other animals.
- ⏳ People perceive time differently. Some feel like they move through time, while others see time moving past them.
- 🔍 We tend to remember past events with more detail than we imagine future events, which often appear more generic and vague.
- ⛺ When we imagine future activities like camping, we often overlook the less pleasant details or challenges that may arise.
- 📅 We chronically underestimate how long tasks will take in the future, a phenomenon known as the 'planning bias'.
- 📈 Future-oriented individuals are more likely to take care of their future selves, such as by saving money and making healthier choices.
- 🔮 People often overestimate the emotional impact of future events, whether good or bad, and don't anticipate how quickly they'll adjust.
- 🌞 Factors like weather don't have a significant long-term impact on happiness, and much of our happiness is genetically predetermined.
- 🧘 Focusing on material or external factors like weight or promotions doesn't contribute as much to happiness as activities like exercise, meditation, and social interactions.
- 🙌 Your future self is still you, so it's important to plan and take care of yourself in a realistic and thoughtful way.
Q & A
What is the main topic of the speaker's presentation?
-The speaker's presentation is focused on future thinking, how humans think about the future, and the common mistakes we make when planning or predicting future events.
How do people generally imagine the future compared to the past?
-People tend to imagine the future in a more vague and generic way, while they recall the past with more specific details. Even when imagining a future event like a car accident, people include fewer details than when imagining a similar event that happened in the past.
What is the planning bias, and how does it affect people's time management?
-The planning bias refers to the tendency to underestimate how long tasks will take because people don't imagine all the potential obstacles. This leads to overcommitment and unrealistic expectations about time.
Why do people tend to overcommit when planning for the distant future?
-People overcommit to future tasks because the distant future often appears empty in their minds, leading them to think they will have more free time than they actually will. They fail to anticipate that they will be just as busy in the future as they are now.
How do people typically treat their future selves, and what are the consequences?
-People often treat their future selves as separate individuals, leading them to compromise their future well-being by overcommitting, overspending, or engaging in unhealthy behaviors, assuming their future selves will handle the consequences.
What is one way people can become more future-oriented and improve their decision-making?
-One way to become more future-oriented is to vividly imagine what your life will be like in 20 or 30 years, considering aspects like your appearance, finances, and job. This helps create a stronger connection with your future self and encourages better decisions in the present.
What is the 'focus effect' when predicting future emotions, and how does it impact decision-making?
-The 'focus effect' refers to how people tend to overestimate the emotional impact of future events by focusing on the most salient aspect, like weather when considering a move to California. This leads to inaccurate predictions of future happiness or sadness.
What does research suggest about the role of genetics in happiness?
-Research suggests that 60% of a person's happiness is determined by genetics and is largely out of their control. External factors like location or life changes have less impact on long-term happiness than people often believe.
How does the speaker illustrate the impact of time on emotional responses to events?
-The speaker explains that after major life events, such as winning the lottery or experiencing a serious accident, people experience emotional changes for about three months before returning to their baseline level of happiness.
What practical advice does the speaker give for managing expectations about future happiness?
-The speaker advises focusing less on material goals like losing weight or getting a raise and more on proven ways to improve well-being, such as exercising, meditating, and engaging in social interaction, which affect the 40% of happiness that people can control.
Outlines
🌟 Imagining the Future: California and the Power of Future Thinking
The speaker introduces the concept of future thinking by asking the audience to imagine moving to California. He highlights the uniqueness of human ability to imagine future scenarios and contrasts it with how we view the past. A brief experiment about moving a meeting demonstrates that people have different relationships with time. This leads to a broader discussion about how humans often make systematic errors when thinking about the future, a central theme that will be explored throughout the talk.
🎂 Recalling the Past vs. Imagining the Future: A Detail Disparity
The speaker contrasts how we vividly recall past events, like a birthday party, with how we imagine future events, which tend to be more generic and lacking in detail. This pattern holds true even in experiments where people imagine both past and future events, like a car accident, suggesting that our brain's tendency to omit future details can hinder accurate planning. This lack of detail in future thinking can lead to poor planning and unrealistic expectations.
⛺ The Planning Bias: Why We Underestimate Future Tasks
By guiding the audience through an imagination exercise about camping, the speaker highlights how we often fail to account for the complexities and difficulties of future tasks. This leads to what is known as the 'planning bias,' where people underestimate how long tasks will take. The speaker discusses how we gloss over potential problems, resulting in overcommitment. An example from computer programming, Hofstadter's Law, shows how even with awareness, people tend to underestimate time for future projects.
📅 The Empty Future: How We Misjudge Long-Term Commitments
The speaker explains how people tend to think their future schedule is more open than it actually will be, leading them to overcommit. This issue arises because we don't account for the fact that we will be just as busy in the future as we are now. The speaker touches on how we often treat our future selves as separate entities, passing on responsibilities we don’t want to deal with in the present. This mindset leads to decisions that negatively impact our future selves, such as overcommitting or procrastination.
👤 Your Future Self: How to Treat Them Better
The speaker discusses how being future-oriented correlates with better decision-making, such as saving money and making environmentally-friendly choices. By encouraging the audience to vividly imagine their future selves, the speaker suggests that this exercise can help bridge the disconnect between present and future selves. By seeing the connection between present actions and future consequences, people can make better decisions about health, finances, and long-term happiness.
🍽️ The Fallacy of Variety: Misjudging Long-Term Enjoyment
In a hypothetical scenario where someone wins multiple free meals at their favorite restaurant, the speaker demonstrates how people tend to insert unnecessary variety when choosing meals for the future. This is due to a misunderstanding of how infrequent events, such as eating a favorite dish every three months, do not require variety in the same way closely packed events do. This mistake reflects how people misjudge what will bring them long-term happiness.
📈 Emotional Forecasting: Overestimating Future Feelings
The speaker explains that humans often overestimate how bad negative events will feel or how good positive events will feel in the future. This tendency is linked to a focus on salient factors, like weather in the case of moving to California, while neglecting other important elements like relationships and health. The speaker shares that 60% of happiness is genetic, which challenges the common belief that external factors heavily influence happiness. The tendency to misjudge emotional outcomes affects decisions and creates a false sense of control over long-term happiness.
💡 The Happiness Thermostat: How External Events Affect Us Less Than We Think
The speaker delves into the idea that people have a 'happiness thermostat' that regulates their long-term happiness. Events like winning the lottery or suffering a life-altering injury may change happiness levels temporarily, but people tend to return to their baseline. This is because, over time, we adapt to new circumstances. He emphasizes that focusing on external achievements or changes, like weight loss or promotions, often leads to misplaced efforts when trying to increase happiness, while investing in relationships, exercise, and mindfulness has a more lasting effect.
🧘 Take Care of Your Future Self: The Science of Real Happiness
In conclusion, the speaker encourages the audience to shift their focus from material or superficial goals to practices that have proven benefits, such as social interaction, exercise, and meditation. He reminds the audience that their future selves will still be them, so taking care of their current selves directly benefits their future. Finally, he dismisses the idea that a move to sunny California, or similar life changes, will drastically improve happiness, emphasizing instead the importance of internal factors and personal responsibility.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Future Thinking
💡Planning Bias
💡Imagination
💡Future Self
💡Emotional Forecasting
💡Genetic Happiness
💡Vivid Imagining
💡Hoff's Law
💡Variety Seeking
💡Social Interaction
Highlights
The speaker introduces the concept of future thinking and how humans have the unique ability to imagine possible futures, a skill that differentiates us from animals.
People often differ in their perception of time: some see themselves moving through time, while others view time as something moving over them.
Humans tend to remember past events in more detail than they imagine future events, even when both are hypothetical.
An experiment showed that people add more details when imagining a past car accident compared to a future one, even though both are equally hypothetical.
People often fail to consider specific details when imagining future events, leading to overcommitting and misjudging how long tasks will take, known as the 'planning bias.'
Hofstadter's Law in computer programming states that tasks will always take longer than anticipated, even when factoring in Hofstadter's Law itself.
The speaker discusses how people often overcommit to future obligations because their future schedule appears empty, forgetting that it will inevitably fill up with tasks.
The future self is treated like a separate person, and people are more willing to burden their future selves with difficult tasks, which contributes to overspending and overeating.
Future-oriented people feel more connected to their future selves, which leads to better decisions regarding health, savings, and pro-environmental behavior.
A vivid visualization of one's future self can lead to more future-oriented behavior, like saving money and improving health habits.
People tend to misjudge how future events will make them feel, often overestimating both positive and negative emotional impacts.
When asked to predict how they'd feel after winning a prize to eat at their favorite restaurant, people often mistakenly introduce unnecessary variety, underestimating their enjoyment of consistency over time.
People tend to focus on specific factors, like weather, when imagining life changes (such as moving to California), while neglecting other important aspects like relationships and health.
Research shows that 60% of happiness is determined by genetics, and changes in external circumstances like moving or gaining wealth have little long-term effect on overall happiness.
The speaker highlights that traumatic events, such as accidents or imprisonment, often do not affect long-term happiness as much as people think, with some individuals even reporting personal growth after such experiences.
Transcripts
[Applause]
okay I want everybody in the room to
imagine that next year you move to
California okay I want everybody to
picture that in your heads oh we got
some Applause already okay now how would
you feel in California would it make you
happy do you think you might be happier
in
California now I want want you to hold
on to that thought because I'm going to
talk to you today about future thinking
how we think about the future and what
that means and how we sometimes screw it
up so hold on to that thought because
we're going to return to
it um what I just asked you to do is to
think about a possible future now one of
the amazing things about being a human
being is that we can do this at all okay
no other animals that we know of can
really think about and picture something
happening in the future we can also
think about things in the
past now I'm a professor and um I've got
a meeting next week on Wednesday I just
got an email that says that the
meeting's been pushed forward two
days now I want you to raise your hand
if you think the meeting is now on
Friday now raise your hand if you think
the meetings on
Monday okay so we see that people differ
about this right we and it turns out
that the answer that you give depends on
your relationship that you with time
that you have so the people who say that
the meeting pushed Wednesday meeting
push forward two days is on Friday they
tend to see themselves as moving through
time as though time were sort of a
static air or something that they're
moving through and people who say that
the meeting is on Monday see themselves
as more stationary with time flowing
over them okay
um so when we think about things in
time when we think about the past we
know we can make mistakes with that so
you might have U experienced something
with a friend and you differ on what
happened so we're all pretty familiar
with that well we don't think about a
lot is how we make mistakes about
thinking about the future but the
science of psychology has shown that we
actually are pretty systematic in the
ways that we screw up thinking about the
future so today I'm going to tell you
about what those screw-ups are so that
you when you think about your own future
world you can be uh better about
thinking about it now the first thing
I'm going to go over is that um when you
think about the past you put yourself
into the past you put in a lot more
details than when you think about the
future so this uh next picture here is
my birthday party and uh my last
birthday party and so I can remember um
there were 43 candles on the cake and
and uh you can't see it from the picture
but uh inscribed on it was light years
and light years try not to shed no tears
so I I can remember things about my
birthday party details about it and
likewise if I were to ask you about your
last birthday party you might remember
where it is or who was there you might
remember your fear that people would
think that you're the kind of person who
wouldn't wear a green suit you know all
these details of the birthday party now
if I imagine you to uh if I ask you to
imagine your birthday party 2 years from
now okay if you're like most people it
it ends up being pretty generic and
stereotypical when we think about things
in the future we remove details and we
tend to think about more generic and
stereotypical ways that lack those
details now you might think well of
course how would we know those details
they haven't happened yet right but it's
deeper than that because they've done an
experiment where they ask people to
imagine a car accident okay and some
people were asked to imagine a car
accident that had already happened and
other people were asked to imagine a car
accident that would happen
and even in this condition people put
more detail into the imagined car
accident in the past than in the future
that's weird right they're both
completely imaginary they're not
happening or going to happen but just
the very suggestion that it's going to
be in the future makes it more vague to
people now once an uh event already
happens then we can put in those details
but since we don't imagine them when we
picture the future we don't plan for
them and that can be problem all right
next imagination exercise I want you to
imagine going camping everybody imagine
going camping okay I'm a scientist who
studies imagination but I cannot go into
the audience and tell you what you're
imagining but I will Hazard to guess at
some of the things that you are probably
very likely not to imagine so first
you're not imagining wondering where
that sleeping mat was and you lent it to
that girl and did she ever return it
you're not imagining sitting in front of
a half packed trunk and shouting up to
your girlfriend on the second floor
asking if she'd already packed the
lantern you're not picturing trying to
grill chicken in the
rain and nobody is probably imagining
all the dishes you have to do once you
get back now is it that when we imagine
something in the future we're not
picturing the bad things no that's not
quite it either if you think camping is
an overall positive experience when you
think about it doing it in the future
you tend to think about the good things
and you gloss everything with goodness
and we do the opposite with bad things
so something that you just think is bad
I'll thr maybe doing laundry you don't
like doing laundry when you think about
doing laundry in the future you don't
think about any of the good things in
fact some of you are probably thinking
what are the good things about doing
laundry but what about the nice the feel
of the sheets when you pull them out of
the dryer or the smell of your clothes
as you're putting them away you know
there are some neutral and positive
parts of doing laundry but we don't
think of those
things now the problem with this is that
if we don't imagine details we are very
bad at imagining how long it's going to
take us to do something this is called
the planning bias okay so let's say that
you got to print out a document I
emailed you a document you print it out
how much time you allow yourself to do
that like think that's easy just open it
hit print pull it out of the printer
that's always that easy right well
sometimes it is and sometimes it
isn't
um what you're not thinking about is um
how uh the printers on the fritz and uh
the toner's out and then there's another
piece of there's another toner package
in your but is that one empty were you
supposed to return that to recycling or
is that one actually full or oh it's in
Open Office and I can't open it in word
or I need to edit it but then I need to
change the permissions first because I
can't edit it the way it is so I need to
figure now I got to Google how to right
those things could happen but we never
think about it and so we end up
chronically overcommit ourselves okay
that's one way that we overcommit
ourselves that's the planning bias now
um in computer programming there's this
idea of Hoff's law and Hoff's law is
that any computer programming project
will take three times as long as you
think it
will even if you take into account
Hoff's
law now planning for the future is also
a problem because our schedules look
really clear in the future so think
about next week what you're doing next
week okay probably pretty busy right
what about a year from now there's
nothing calendar is totally free so if
somebody asks you would you do something
would you uh host the next tedex a year
for now you're like oh sure I'm not
doing anything we forget that we are
we're going to be just as busy with a
zillion things that are inevitably going
to come up then and then we're gonna be
why did I ever commit to this does this
happen to anybody this happens to me you
commit to something right so what's
going on here um we end up chronically
overcommitted and we're in a way
compromising our future self okay uh in
many ways we think of our future selves
as different people and we don't care
about them as much as we care about
ourselves and we're will willing to put
uh the onus on them right and this is
why we overspend and why we overeat and
we do things like this let the future
self worry about the weight gain that's
what way that's what goes through our
heads uh in one study people were asked
would you rather go see a a kind of a
dull lecture across the hall or really
interesting lecture across town you'd
have to go all the way across town
whatever now people gave different
answers if it was about tomorrow or if
it was about a year from now if it was
tomorrow they're like oh God I don't
have time to I don't have time to go
I'll watch the dull lecture across the
hall tomorrow but for the future self
they're like oh yeah let's go to the
interesting lecture right let the future
self do the commute right this is how we
we make these problems now some people
differ in this now some people are very
future oriented and others are more past
oriented and the more future oriented
people feel more of a kinship with their
future selves and they treat them better
okay they're more likely to um exercise
uh they save more money and uh even
future oriented people even make more
pro- environmental choices right because
they're they're sacrificing themselves a
little bit now for something good in the
future now how can you make yourself
more future oriented well there is one
concrete way to do that and that is to
very vividly picture what you're going
to be like in 20 or 30 years okay what
are you going to be like what's your
what are you going to weigh what's your
face going to look like uh how much
money are you going to have in the bank
where are you going to be working right
all these and then try to see the
connection between that and the and the
soda pop you're drinking or the or the
you know the money you're spending that
kind of
thing now another way that we mess up
thinking about the future is that we
tend to um make mistakes about how we're
going to feel we have these predictions
about how we're going to feel that we
don't get them quite right so I want you
to think again think of restaurant you
love and your favorite dish there and
you're eating your favorite dish and the
magic comes over and says for whatever
reason hey you've won a prize you're
going to have 10 meals here free oh
great right okay but you got to pick
them all now I want you to choose what
you're going to eat for all those meals
right now now most people in the room
would be like well I don't want to have
my favorite dish every time right so
I'll pick a variety I'll have maybe the
dish a few times but I'll sprinkle it in
with some other things
wrong people will put in
variety whether they're going to have
those meals in the next 10 days or
whether they're going to have one meal
every 3 months it makes sense in the
next 10 days but not in every 3 months
because what happens is if you have it
every three months by the time the three
months is up you're going to be ready
for your favorite dish again right you
so you need variety only if the the
they're packed in with time okay and
people don't really understand this so
they make some bad choices because they
don't understand the relationship
between infrequency um and and uh
novelty and their own happiness
so that's one way that we um get
emotions wrong in the future we also
tend to overestimate the emotional
impact of future events and what this
means is that um we tend to think bad
things in the future are going to feel
way worse than they do and we also tend
to think future uh future good things
are going to feel way better than they
do we overestimate
that part of this is because of focus
now when I ask you uh how happy you'd be
if you moved to California most people
think yeah I'd be really happy if I
moved to California and I'll tell you
what's going on they think of the one
most Salient thing that's different
between where they are living now in
California and what is that the weather
the weather right so they picture
themselves oh I'm on Venice Beach and
it's sunny and I'm happy yes I would be
much happier in California right wrong
again
okay you neglect all of the other things
that make you happy or sad your friends
and uh your your health and your
relationship with your spouse and all
this in fact I'll let you in on a secret
60% of your happiness is
genetic you have no control over 60% of
your happiness has nothing to do with it
okay it turns out that weather actually
has very very little effect on your
happiness so you're very likely to be
just as happy or just as miserable as
you are right now if you were to move to
California it's just it's still you
after
all now I know some of you are thinking
that can't be right 60% give me a break
right but even the Skeptics in the
audience probably know somebody who's
got the greatest life in the world
nothing wrong and they're always
grumping and moaning miserable people
and you might also know some people
who've got terrible Lives full of
hardship and they're just always chipper
and happy okay it is just part of our
cultural belief that your happiness is
caused by what happens to you and it's
just not true it's just not true in fact
they've done studies of people who win
the lottery and people get hurt badly
and need to be in a wheelchair the rest
of their life and it doesn't affect
their long-term happiness three months
they get a boost or a downward slope for
3 months and then what happens they
return to the level of happiness that
they always were at it's as though each
of us has a thermostat for happiness
that we return to when we habituate to
whatever our new lifestyle is and people
don't people don't realize that in fact
some a significant portion of people who
have trauma go to prison have terrible
accidents they actually claim that It
ultimately made them happier people
reconstruct their happiness in their own
lives and it's a very alluring thought
it affects your thinking about the
future though because sometimes when
you're feeling down you might try to
figure out what's wrong why am I feeling
so down well maybe I need to lose 10
pounds maybe I need a a ra I need that
promotion or I need a raise or something
like that and you how many people know
somebody or maybe you you're five pounds
away from happiness all the time right
so you lose those five pounds people
tend to focus on these material things
that just don't work and there's a cost
there because they're not focusing on
the things that do work like exercise
and meditation and especially social
interaction are things those are things
you can do to actually affect the 40% of
things that you have any control over
right so in summary I want you to
remember things take longer in the
future than you think they're going to
things are not nearly as happy or as
awful as they're going to be as they're
going to feel in the future your future
self is still you so please take good
care of her and finally you're just as
ha you'd be just as happy in sunny
California As You Are where you live
right now thank you
[Applause]
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