Time Traveller

Hyperbolic discounting is our tendency to choose smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed ones. We devalue what is not instant.

You plan to save money next month but spend today. You promise to start the book tomorrow but scroll tonight. You know your future self will want what you are giving up but you choose against them anyway.

In 1975, psychologist George Ainslie tested how pigeons and people made choices between smaller-sooner and larger-later rewards. When both options were in the future, they waited for the larger reward, but when one became immediate, they switched to the smaller one.

His findings challenged economic theory, which assumed we value the future at a constant rate. Ainslie showed it is not constant but hyperbolic. We react strongly to short delays and hardly notice distant ones. Tomorrow feels far away. Next year and next year plus one day feel about the same.

Economist David Laibson formalised this in 1997 with the beta-delta model. The model uses two parameters: beta captures present bias (our preference for now), delta captures patience for all future periods. The split revealed we are not one consistent person across time. We are a present self with different values than our future selves.

Brain scans show that the areas linked to emotion light up when rewards are close, while regions involved in reasoning activate when they are not. Two systems compete within us. When something is near, emotion wins. When both choices are distant, reason has time to speak.

People with steeper hyperbolic discounting save less for retirement, carry more credit card debt, and are more likely to struggle with addiction.

This concept explains why we procrastinate, overspend, and break promises to ourselves. The limbic system screams for immediate reward. The prefrontal cortex whispers about future consequence. Screaming wins.

Philosophers knew this long before science did. Aristotle called it akrasia, knowing the right choice yet choosing the lesser pleasure.

Credit card purchases. Late night streaming. Books bought with optimism. Each reveals the same pattern. We imagine our future but rarely feel it. We promise we will change. We do not. The failure erodes trust between present and future self. We lose faith in the person we are becoming.

It is temporal distortion built into human cognition. While we can imagine tomorrow, we simply cannot make tomorrow feel as real as now.

Your present self will always negotiate with your future self. One of them has a massive advantage.

Most advice suggests skipping the negotiation. Reducing friction. Deleted social media apps. Automatic transfers on payday. Alarm clocks across the room. I subscribe to some of these methods, but they all fail spectacularly when it comes to cake.

Because the real struggle of the time traveller is not one of discipline but identity. We betray our future because that person does not feel real to us yet. Present self wins because future us is a stranger. But what if they were not?

Research shows that when people see digitally aged photos of themselves or vividly imagine future experiences, they make different choices. Neuroscientist Tali Sharot found the brain treats imagined futures like recalled memories. Tomorrow can feel as concrete as yesterday.

If your future self stood beside you, and every bite of that cake left a visible mark on them, you would close the refrigerator door.

So find small ways to connect with your future self. A photo of who you hope to become. A memento that makes ten years from now feel real. Picture them standing in the room with you, watching you choose.

Your future self is not an abstraction. This is a life you are actively building. Every choice you make, they inherit. They do not exist yet. But inevitably, they will.

The time traveller can only travel forward. Despite the apparent lack of control, they hold all the power.

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