Future Thinking | Jim Davies | TEDxCarletonUniversity

TEDx Talks

7 May 201513:41

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

00:00

🌟 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.

05:01

🎂 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.

10:02

⛺ 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

Future thinking refers to the human ability to imagine and predict potential outcomes or scenarios that may happen in the future. In the video, this concept is central as the speaker discusses how people visualize their futures, often inaccurately. An example is when the speaker asks the audience to imagine moving to California and how their expectations of future happiness are often based on simplified and idealized images.

💡Planning Bias

Planning bias is the cognitive tendency to underestimate the time and resources required to complete a task. The speaker mentions this in the context of how people don't account for unforeseen complications when imagining future tasks, like printing a document, leading to overcommitting themselves. This bias is an example of how our future thinking can lead to practical challenges.

💡Imagination

Imagination is the mental ability to create scenarios or visualize things that are not present or have not occurred. The speaker contrasts how people imagine the future versus how they recall the past, noting that future scenarios are often generic and lack detail, unlike memories, which tend to be rich with specifics. This distinction is key in explaining why people fail to plan for the future realistically.

💡Future Self

Future self refers to the version of oneself that exists at a later time. The speaker discusses how people often think of their future selves as different from their current selves, leading them to make decisions that burden their future self, such as overcommitting or overspending. This detachment from the future self contributes to poor decision-making regarding long-term well-being.

💡Emotional Forecasting

Emotional forecasting is the act of predicting how one will feel in the future based on certain events or circumstances. The video explains how people tend to overestimate the emotional impact of both positive and negative future events, leading to inaccurate expectations of happiness or sadness. The example of imagining happiness from moving to California illustrates this concept.

💡Genetic Happiness

Genetic happiness refers to the idea that a significant portion (60%) of a person's happiness is predetermined by genetics and not influenced by external circumstances. The speaker highlights this to challenge the assumption that life changes, like moving to a different place, will significantly alter one's happiness, reinforcing the theme that our expectations for future emotions are often flawed.

💡Vivid Imagining

Vivid imagining is the practice of mentally picturing future events or oneself in a highly detailed and realistic manner. The speaker suggests that this technique can help people develop a stronger connection with their future selves, leading to better decisions, such as saving money or exercising more. By vividly imagining themselves 20 or 30 years from now, people may be more motivated to take care of their future selves.

💡Hoff's Law

Hoff's Law is a humorous principle from computer programming that states any task, particularly programming projects, will take three times longer than expected, even when factoring in Hoff's Law. This concept is used to explain how people underestimate the time needed for future tasks, demonstrating how we are often overly optimistic about the future.

💡Variety Seeking

Variety seeking is the tendency to choose diverse options when faced with decisions about future experiences. The speaker gives an example of someone choosing a variety of meals at their favorite restaurant rather than sticking to their favorite dish, even though they would likely enjoy their favorite more if they spaced the meals out. This highlights how people misjudge their future desires and satisfaction.

💡Social Interaction

Social interaction refers to the engagement between individuals, which is cited as one of the most effective ways to increase happiness. The speaker mentions this in the context of focusing on things that can truly affect happiness, contrasting it with superficial changes like losing weight or getting a promotion, which have less impact than people expect on their future well-being.

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.