The Evolving Leader

Connecting with our Future Selves with Hal Hershfield

• Hal Hershfield • Season 7 • Episode 6

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Have you ever wanted to travel through time and see what your life will be like in the future? While we want the best possible future for ourselves, we often fail to make decisions that would make that a reality. So why are so many of us so disconnected from our future selves?

This week on The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to psychologist Professor Hal Hershfield. Hal is Professor of Marketing, Behavioural Decision Making, and Psychology at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and is committed to the work of helping people make better long-term decisions. In his 2023 book ‘Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today’ Hal explains that in our minds, our future selves often look like strangers. Many of us view the future as incredibly distant, making us more likely to opt for immediate gratification that disregards the health and wellbeing of ourselves in the years to come. He says that people who are able to connect with their future selves, however, are better able to balance living for today and planning for tomorrow.

This is a fascinating listen.


Referenced during this episode:
Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today


Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)



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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Jean Gomes:

Researchers have found that we have a strange relationship with who we are becoming. We treat our future self as if they were a stranger. Perhaps it's because our future self is in many ways unknowable that we avoid thinking about them. But the cost of this avoidance is that we don't always look after our long term interests or of those that we care about who will rely on our future selves. Psychologists have found that the most powerful way to develop our relationship with who we are becoming is to enter a two way dialog. So rather than just thinking about what your future self wants, we should also be asking, what does our future self want from us? Now? In this show, we talk to the psychology researcher, Professor Hal Hershfield about what he's discovering about creating a relationship with our future selves that can help us to be happier, healthier and more successful, both now and in the future, tune In to an important conversation on the evolving leader you

Scott Allender:

Hi friends. Welcome to the evolving leader the show born out of the belief that we need deeper, more accountable and more human leadership to confront the world's biggest challenges. I'm Scott Allender and

Jean Gomes:

I'm Jean Gomes.

Scott Allender:

How are you feeling on this Friday? Mr. Gomes,

Jean Gomes:

Well, honestly, I am feeling very depleted. I have just got off a plane from the US. I was in the near the Blue Ridge Mountains, which was beautiful, but it was a flying visit. I was in and out, and I did a lot of travel via Madrid and all sorts of things thanks to last minute cancelations by an unnamed airline, which we won't talk about. But other than that, I'm feeling very good, so bit physically depleted, but I've been looking forward to this conversation for best part of a year. We've taken this that long to track down our guest, pin him down, and finally extract it some some time from him. So we're really grateful for that. So yeah, how are you feeling, Scott,

Scott Allender:

I'm feeling in awe of you and your ability to do these sort of like overnight international travel for a gig. What is your present self, which used to be your future self? What would what is it saying to your past self about your choice to do that trip?

Jean Gomes:

My future self is furious with my past self, and it's going to have a serious talking to him. But of course, they just, they don't talk. You know, that's the problem.

Scott Allender:

I feel that problem myself, and we're going to get into that. I'm feeling eager today because, like you said, we've been anxious to talk to this guest for a while. We both love his book. Today we are joined by Professor Hal Hershfield, who has gotten us both thinking differently about who we're becoming as leaders, having having read his book, as I just mentioned, how is a professor of marketing, behavioral decision making and psychology at UCLA Anderson School of Management, and holds the UCLA Anderson board of advisors. Term chair in management. His research, which sits at the intersection of psychology and economics, examines the ways we can improve our long term thinking and decision. He's been widely published in academic journals and popular media, and on top of his research, he consults with major financial and marketing clients. Hirschfield was named one of the 40 most outstanding business school professors under 40 in the world by Business Education website, poets and courts and his book, as I keep mentioning your future self, how to make tomorrow better today, was described by Daniel Pink as the rare book that will change who you see in the mirror, which is, I understand really upset the people over at Botox, but we can talk about that too. Hal. Welcome to the evolving leader.

Hal Hershfield:

I think there's a collaboration that could be done with those Botox folks. But Scott and Jean, thanks so much for having me. I've been really looking forward to this conversation.

Jean Gomes:

Welcome to the evolving leader, Hal. How are you feeling today?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, thanks for asking. Um, if I'm going to be honest, a little bit physically tired my my wife, had a dinner at 630 last night with a group of friends she hasn't seen in a while. And she she came home at around 1215 and causing me to text her and ask her, did you leave this state? I've never seen a dinner last this long so, but you know what, I'm here. I've had coffee. I'm ready to go. I'm excited to talk to you guys.

Jean Gomes:

Well, good, good for your wife. I'm sure she had a wonderful time. So at the heart of this book that you've just written is the idea that. Our future self is a stranger to us, and that has a range of significant implications for our decision making, our well being and the quality of the lives full stop. Can we set the stage for this conversation by unpacking this idea a little bit and why this became the focus of your work? Yeah,

Hal Hershfield:

so I'll start with the second part of that, the reason why it became the focus of my work, I mean, dates back, gosh, over 15 years ago, around the time of the great financial crisis, and trying to understand why it might be the case, why so many people made decisions that had a lot of reward in the present but could come back to to to create potential harm later on. Right? So why do I sign up for a mortgage that I'm never going to be able to to keep up? You know? Why as a lender, do I do I lend out money when I when I know that this is probably not the right idea, and there's and, you know, none of these things are surprising, because there's so many tensions and pulls on the present moment right there. But I was trying to go deeper and understand, like, what is it about our psychology that makes thinking about the consequences of now later so difficult? That was really the, the impetus there, and, you know, from from there, I started realizing, man, there's so many decisions that involve trade offs between the now and later, the present and the future that go way beyond the financial but they have to do with leadership and how I think about allocating my time, and how I think about ethics and and and my health, and all of these sorts of things that involve these sort of now, later decisions. So, so that was really like how I got into this space.

Jean Gomes:

And can you just unpack the idea of that being a stranger to yourself, your future self?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, you know, in a nutshell, the the basic idea here is that one of the reasons that a lot of these present and future decisions are so difficult is because we often think of our future self as if it's another person and and that has some real implications when you start thinking about the way that we treat other people in our lives. In other words, there are a range of people that we interact with, some of them are almost complete strangers, like we might know them, like, I know, you know, there's like, I'm just thinking now about like another parent I know from my kids school, like, I know their name, but I know nothing about them. I don't know their hobbies. I don't know their I don't know anything about their personality, except for the fact that we're very loosely connected, because our kids go to the same school, and if that, like, I'm just thinking about this one particular Dad, if he were to, like, shoot me a text right now and say, like, I'm in a bind. I need some help this weekend, because, you know, I don't know there's been some mold in my garage, and I need to move stuff out of it. I I'd be like, first off, it'd be a little strange. I think there's no one else you can text. And secondly, I'd probably say no, and not because I'm such a bad person, but because I have so many other things going on this weekend. And the reason I think that that little, that little imaginary anecdote is important is because if we think of our future selves the same way, if they're like that sort of stranger who we we know they exist, but we have no real emotional bond to them, then doing things for their benefit, making these decisions that may end up helping them later on, feels almost strange and irrational, right? So I think that's kind of at the heart of it now, that the caveat here is that there are a lot of people who have they texted me right now to ask them, you know, to ask me for help this weekend, I would maybe begrudgingly say yes to right? You know it's like, whether it's like a best friend or, you know, a relative, or, of course, like if my kids or my wife, any of these people asked me to do something, I would drop what I have planned and do something for them. Now, I don't mean to say that every decision between now and later has to involve this, like painful sacrifice, but, but on, but on some level, whenever we, whenever we decide to not do something so that we have more of something else later. There is a little bit of a sacrifice there, and there is a little bit of that, okay, I'll do something now for you later, right? And we'll, we, I'm sure we'll get into the nuances of that, because it's really not black and white. But I think at, you know, at the heart of the matter, we sometimes think of our future selves as if there are other people, and what matters is the type of person that that future self is and the relationship that we have with that version of us.

Scott Allender:

I want to get into those details. I want to look at some of your research and. Examples in the books, I loved one of the experiments with the gross drink that you talked about and what people did with that. But you start the book with the question, are we the same over time? And you point out a really interesting way of answering that question, by identifying when those closest to us might say they no longer recognize us, and that's usually connected to some sort of evolution of our moral traits, right? So if something about our moral traits have fundamentally altered, can maybe we start there?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, so I, I find this question, by the way, I feel like this could be one of those questions that you you stay up super late at night with a bottle of wine, or maybe more, you know, debating like, who, who am I? And am I the same person that I once was? You know, I'm in my mid 40s now, you know I'm by, I know we've just met, by the looks of it, you guys are mid 30s, right? We'll say for this, right? I, by the looks of it, we're in the same boat. And, you know, it's funny because I'm having now this experience of connecting with friends who I first connected with somewhere, sometimes upwards of 25 years ago, sometimes even more, if they're from childhood. And it's this funny question of like, what binds us and are we the same? And you know, the research on this is fascinating, and so much of it, so much of the really interesting stuff has been done by Nina strominger at at Penn. And the thing that her work really points to is that when we make these sorts of judgments, which are really difficult, by the way, but when we make these judgments about, you know, are we the same or not, one of the things that we're really sort of fundamentally thinking about is moral character, and things like your you know your interests could change, and of course where you live, and of course how you look. But the things that are defining in a moral way are is your sense of humor, biting, you know, or is it more gentle, you know? Are you the type of person who is, you know, typically compassionate? Or do you have like, sort of an edge, and it's not like a positive, negative thing, but like, what are those things that have been present as a hallmark of your sort of moral character? And if those things change, that's when we start saying that person is no longer really the person who I once knew, or, you know, I never really knew him, did I Right? And I think these questions are important for this broader conversation we're having, because I think at the heart of it is this overarching sort of curiosity of, well, you know, if it's possible that we change so much over time or don't change over time, what should we be doing now for the benefit, or, you know, detriment of some future version of ourselves? And I think these, these get to be, you know, they're deeply philosophical questions, and sometimes they're hard to answer. But I really love this idea of sort of pointing to morality as one binding factor here.

Jean Gomes:

So I was really interested in the research, where you're looking at the costs analysis that people are making. So you know, a young man who's a teenager smoking doesn't think about the costs that you know, 5060, into their health. What's going on in people's minds when they're when they're looking at behaviors that undermine their future self? How are they looking at the calculation?

Hal Hershfield:

So in some cases, I think they're not right. I think, you know, we have to acknowledge at the outset that, you know, if you take a 15 year old making that decision, I'm not sure it's even a calculation, right? And so, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book is that sometimes we are so weighted down by the present that we almost just miss the future entirely. It's like driving where there's so much fog ahead that we can't even see where we're going, but, but it's but it's more than that. It's like we didn't even decide where to go. We're just somehow driving right? So I think you have to acknowledge that in some cases, there is no calculation but that, but that can't be all of it, right? I think there are other times where, when making a decision that that could harm us later, we are making a calculation, but the calculation is one of the Bennett. Fits I'm experiencing now from doing this thing far outweigh whatever I perceive the cost to be most likely, because I'm really underweighting those costs, right? I'm not thinking about the risks involved with whether it's it's smoking or engaging in some other risky behavior or or not, you know, not saving at the rate that someone tells me to if I can save at that rate, you know? And I think there's a lot of different examples here. Another factor that I think could be involved here is that there's a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future. And by the way, this is an anecdotal observation, but I I suspect that our perceptions of future uncertainty have increased in recent years, that with COVID and various global events and and whatnot, it certainly and one of the things that I'm hearing, and as a researcher, I'm very hesitant to say, well, I hear this. You know, this is just anecdotal. When I talk to younger people, when I talk to my younger students, I hear something that I hadn't heard when I first started this research, which is, why should I think about the future? Why should I plan for the future when there's just no guarantee at all what things will look like, and that is, you know, that's hard to grapple with. That's a really hard thing to grapple with.

Scott Allender:

I mentioned at the at the onset with Jean's trip and the joke around sort of his future self, is he okay with the decision to have made this long journey on no sleep, and then you're even example about, you know, staying up with a bottle of wine and talking and waxing poetic about ourselves could be a decision where the next morning we go, Gosh, I'm groggy from having done that. And I love that you have so many of these real examples that really brings it to life. And what I one of the things I really focused on was the language people use about themselves. You talk to us about when people use first person descriptions of themselves, and then when it sort of shifts into third person description.

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, this is, there's some great research. Emily pronum at Princeton was the one who started a lot of this work, but other folks have done it as well. Where, where in that particular work? They asked, they asked college students to, you know, write down a little narrative of, you know, something like a meal this year or a birthday this year. And you can imagine the types of things people write down. They say, you know, okay, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm sitting here. I see my friends nearby. I've got a drink in front of me. I'm eating some food. It's like the very, very much, the description that you would give me right now about a meal that you might have later tonight or tomorrow or whatever. But then she does something interesting. She says to a different group of people, um, you know, give me that same it's the same narrative, you know, tell me about a meal or a birthday in the very distant future. Um, which as a side note for undergrads, is anytime over 40, which, which? I actually was surprised. I thought they would say like, 25 is very distant future, right? But okay, over 40 and one of the things that these researchers find is that there's a shift that happens, where not everybody, but significantly, more people end up talking about their future selves using the third person. So rather than saying, Okay, I'm sitting there, I see friends, they'll say, Yeah, I see my future self there. I see him there. He's sitting there. He's got his friends around him, you know? And it's like a very subtle thing, but it's very it's, it's deep, it's, it's meaningful, because it suggests that in some ways, in the mind's eye, our future selves look like other people. And I think that's a fascinating demonstration of this concept that we were talking about a little while ago.

Jean Gomes:

So interesting. Yeah, so this kind of notion that you say, in the real way on our future self is sort of unknowable to us. How do we change that relationship? How do we move past being the stranger and move into a different type of relationship?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, no, I think it's a great question, by the way. I'll say, you know, I think we've, we've started off this conversation with a lot of things that could be seen as, you know, pessimistic or negative. We change. We're different, we're strangers. The future is uncertain. And at the same time, I, like, almost want to shout that I'm, like, really hopeful and positive and optimistic about the way that people can relate to their future selves, right? And I think, I think, you know, your question is a practical one, like, how can we change that relationship? I, you know, one of my favorite tools for doing it is that is, when I say doing it that is changing that relationship, is simply starting a conversation with that future self. And I think, you know, there's something hokey about that, admittedly, but I have now read. Had, you know, and conducted a lot of the research as well. And one of the things that I really love is a letter writing conversation, you know, or, I mean, I say letter writing, by the way. And something about the concept of writing a letter feels antiquated, so I almost want to say, you know, like a text conversation, or whatever it is with with your future self, but, but importantly, for the exercise to work, what you want to do is write a letter to some future self and then, and then take the perspective of that future self and write a letter back. Um, and the reason why that's such a nice exercise is it forces you to take the perspective of some distant version of yourself, whatever that you know, whether it's five years, 10 years down the line, 15 years, you know, excuse me, whatever it might be. Um, and I think we, you know, it needs to be acknowledged. We can never know our future selves like we keep talking about this analogy of the future self as another person, which I think is such a powerful analogy, but it's not totally accurate, because whereas my best friend is another person, my wife is another person, and I can take her perspective, and I can try to imagine a conversation with her, but then I can actually go and have one. I can never go and have a conversation with my future self, because definitionally, he doesn't yet exist. I actually, you know, by the way, we, I've been working with some folks at MIT to develop an AI tool to, like, actually allow people to mimic that conversation where, you know, you're writing back and forth, and it's, and it's, you know, it's, it's only as good as your ability to lose yourself in the exercise and recognize that, of course, I'm not talking to my real future self, but it's a proxy for it. I think talking to older I'll call it, role models, but older proxies for our future selves, older surrogates for our future selves, is another good way to start that conversation and get closer to those future selves. But at the heart of it, a lot of this work is all about making the future self and the future context more vivid, because it's really easy. No, there's nobody who is surprised that there is a future, right? We're we're so lucky. We're so fortunate in many contexts, especially in, you know, call it sort of, you know, I don't, I don't want to say just westernized, but I think in many fortunate contexts, there's cases where there's some certainty around the future, right? We like we like most of us, expect to wake up tomorrow. That being said, when we push things out further, the future just can become very abstract and we don't think about it deeply. And these sorts of exercises, I think, what they do is can provide some color and some concreteness and some vividness to that future. And then this is, by the way, this is an exercise that's enormously useful in leadership as well. There's some work that was done on leaders having them imagine that they were essentially traveled in a time travel machines in the future, and, you know, write a letter back, and what does that letter look like? And the leaders who do that and then write write correspondence to their employees end up writing more detailed and vivid, you know, sort of like state of the company type course, which I think is a really fascinating translation of this work, not just for our own selves, but to ourselves as leaders in business contexts as well.

Jean Gomes:

In having this dialog you've also learned what doesn't work to make this conversation really productive. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the things that you've seen there?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, Yeah, that makes sense. And you use the word fantasy, I think it's funny because I haven't, I haven't done as much. You know, as researchers, we look for the things that that do work, and often as and I think this is a failure. We don't do the work on like what doesn't work. I used to think that simply writing to a future self was the thing that worked, and I do have some research that shows that there's an impact of that, but the recent research suggests that that's far less effective than doing the sort of two way conversation. So I don't think that is as useful. I don't think that simply imagining the future is as useful as having a conversation, but a guided induction where we're actually like sitting down and really thinking deeply about visualizing the future is something that's that's more useful than, say, than sitting down and sort of just just, kind of imagining. One of the other things that that other researchers have found, which I think is fascinating, is that simply fantasizing about the future doesn't do much, much for our motivation. And it's ironic, because there's something very positive about, you know, sitting. And imagining any number of positive outcomes, whether it's in my personal life, in my professional life, when I think about retirement, but ironically, what these researchers have found is that when you end up positively fantasizing about the future, and this is Gabrielle otzengen at NYU, what she's found is that you get some energy from doing so you get some utility, like, to use an economist term, but then that doesn't translate into getting up and doing something. It's like you feel good about it. You sit back, you have that sort of like fantasized, idealized image of the future, and then, and then you go about your day, and you don't make a change. And one of the ways that she's found that you can rectify this is by engaging in an exercise called mental contrasting, where you do fantasize about the future, like don't stop doing that, but then contrast your idealized vision of the future with your realistic reality of right now, and think about the obstacles, the overcomeable obstacles between now and later, so that you can try to figure out, okay, what are the small steps I need to take to get at least somewhere near that positive image of the future. And by the that brings home a lot of meaning in here, which is, it's way, Jean, I think one of the reasons why that insight is important is because I think a lot of people have the intuition that one way to motivate people is to get them to think really positively. You know about the future. And I'm not saying don't, but I'm adding an ingredient in there, which is that contrast, yeah, between now and later as well. almost like a displacement from the present. You're not actually sitting in the future. You're, you're, you're trying to offset, you know, whatever you're experiencing right now. And it can feel, feel fun to do that, but actually isn't moving you into any form of action. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Scott Allender:

How much does making our future selves more familiar to us depend on making our present selves more familiar to us? I'm looking at this from a lens of self awareness. Because, you know, there's a lot of research out there that would suggest that often we're not very self aware of our current selves, right? And I'm just wondering if you saw a correlation between the amount of self awareness, self awareness somebody possesses today, and their ability to imagine and connect with a more familiar future self.

Hal Hershfield:

Scott, that is such an interesting question. Well, can I just put it back to you for a second like, have you? Is this something you've noticed in your own work, in terms of trying to make any changes?

Scott Allender:

Yeah, so I'm, if long term listeners would know this, that I'm an Enneagram guy. I use that system to try to help people understand what is often latent or unconscious motivations. And you know, when I coach people, there's usually a lot of aha moments where they go, Gosh, I didn't even know. That's why I saw these things the way I see them. I didn't know that's why I get triggered by this thing, right? There's a lot of like moments where people go, ah, like I've been living the last 4050, years, not even aware of why I felt and saw and acted certain ways, and so I was just curious, you know, if, if that's happening in the present, I'm wondering if there's a correlation to the ability to connect and imagine a more familiar future.

Hal Hershfield:

I love that. I love that concept. You know, from a research standpoint, it's not something that's the best way. So I haven't investigated it. I don't know that others have as well. If I were to take my researcher hat off and just think through it, it certainly makes a lot of sense. It like passes the smell test, right? Because there has been recent work that's looked at this idea of connecting to our future selves, but but not just connecting to our future self, connecting to them, because we have more what these researchers call self certainty. We have more of a sense of what are the certain aspects of ourself and what will remain sort of certain over time. That's sort of, you know, tangentially related to your question there, which is, I think, you know, if I can have a sense of who I am now, it's certainly a lot easier to anchor on to that, to try to project who I might be in the future. And you know, one of the one of the exercises that we often do is ask people, How similar do they think they'll be to their future selves in terms of their likes, their dislikes, their ideals, their values, their personality, their you know, the all this sort of bundle their ideals, um, all of these sorts of things that represent sort of a picture of who someone is. You. But fundamental to that is also having some awareness of what my likes, dislikes, ideals, values, personality, etc, are right now. And if I if that's very, very fuzzy, then I would imagine it would be hard to project that into the future. But from, like, a strictly empirical sense, that's not something I've looked at, though, man, I want to, like, go call up some of my PhD students right now and be like, look, we've got to do this. This is a great, you know, important question, yeah? And

Jean Gomes:

we'd love to, love to hear, you know, kind of like, what happens when you have yeah conversation,

Hal Hershfield:

yeah, yeah. Do you guys have some funding for

Jean Gomes:

that's the second time you've asked for money. How in this show?

Hal Hershfield:

As I said that, I said, Actually, I can't make the same joke twice. Okay, good. Oh,

Jean Gomes:

it's a joke. Okay, as long as this joke

Hal Hershfield:

third, third time will be real.

Jean Gomes:

Your pitching strategy to fund the lab, I can see it. It's working.

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, exactly.

Jean Gomes:

We're talking about trying to build and vision, some sort of picture of our future self, so that we can remove change the relationship from the complete stranger, where you don't have any empathy or relationship an emotional kind of bond, but you talk about the fact that there's a rocky road to close that gap, and you also talk about commitment devices that help us to look after the interests of our future self. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, so this is one of my favorite topics to look at and research and investigate. And here's the, here's the basic idea. There's, you know, we've been talking about sort of present and future selves. Is these two things, but it's really, you know, I don't want to over complicate it, but it, but it's certainly more than that, because there's some present version of me right now there, and then there's some like, let's call it some like, you know, cumulative or eventual future self, you know. Let's call it me at age, you know, 65 and I have some vision of how I want that, that version of my life to be. But then there's all these other little things along the way, right? There's all these other little future selves along the way. And I could, by the way, I could have a goal right now that I want to, you know, get into shape to run the LA Marathon in six months. Now that's a six month future self, that that version of me may lead up to a future self at 65 and there may be little steps along the way that are going to necessitate that I do the things I need to do to get to the version of me in six months and in 20 years, and whatever it is, and those are the things that can be really hard to grapple with. So specifically, I need to wake up tomorrow morning and run a certain number of miles so that I get in shape to actually do the the marathon. If I, you know, if I could. This is now the first time I'm publicly mentioning this, so it's like gonna have to happen. It's a commitment. Now, that's it. Speaking of commitment device? Well,

Jean Gomes:

we could be your commitment device. How? Just, you know,

Hal Hershfield:

yeah, let's do it. Let's, let's do it now. Like I think probably a lot of people recognize that there's so the present version of me wants to, wants to say that I've, you know, done a marathon, and I want six months from now to have done it. That future guy, I think his interests are very much aligned with mine. I think he wants to run that marathon. It's not him. I'm worried about the it's, it's me tomorrow morning, that's the guy I'm worried about, because it's going to be, it'll be Saturday morning, and I'm probably going to be tired from the week, and I don't know if I'll be able to get up and actually throw my running shoes and, you know, go outside and take an hour long run, or whatever it is, and it's, and it's that one that I have to sort of help out. And the the idea that economists and psychologists have come up with, it's, it's called a commitment device, or a pre commitment device, and the idea is that you constrain some potentially undesirable behavior. Now, I think there's versions of this that we've all done, right? So, you know, I think a lot of people know the idea of putting out your workout clothes. You know, like reducing whatever amount of friction, putting my alarm across the room. These are, I think, sort of basic things. There are more. There's a whole menu of commitment devices that range from very, very light. So for instance, telling myself I'll get up and run to very, very punitive. If I don't run, I'm gonna have to owe$500 to a group. I don't want to give money to an anti charity all. I won't go political. I'll call it like the sports program at USC, our crosstown rival in LA, okay, just to keep it to keep it diplomatic here, yeah, now the issue is. Is, here's the irony with these commitment devices, the stronger that they are, the more effective they are, right? So if it's that, you know, if, if I, if I, if there's an automatic, like, if I could set things up so that if I don't get out of bed, $500 automatically gets charged my credit card to an anti charity, you better believe I'm going to figure out a way to get out of bed, right? If I simply tell myself that I'm going to do it, or I tell my wife I'm going to get up, and I go against that, like, oh, okay, I didn't follow through on my word. It's not that painful. So the problem here is that the the most, the most sort of punitive ones, are the most effective, but they're also the least likely to get adopted. Because, you know, I think people on some level recognize that there's a chance that I'll mess up, and I don't want to, I don't want to have to get punished there. So I'm actually doing a lot of work right now with one of my students, Megan Weber, and collaborator, Craig Fox, and we're trying to figure out, how do we get people to actually start adopting these commitment devices, because we know they're really powerful. One of the you know, I'll give you one quick insight that we've had, which is, we're trying to remind people that the obstacles they've faced in the past will, will, will certainly still be there in the future. And we all have a tendency to think optimistically that somehow this future version of me is going to be the guy who was, like, able to wake up and go on a run, or happily able to, you know, not order the dessert, and happily able to do whatever the thing is that I think, you know he should do, and in reality, that, you know, we never really become that guy, right and that, and I don't want to say, like, I'm not trying to say that's like, a, you know, again, I'm not trying to be pessimistic about ourselves, but I think it's a realistic thing that, like, situations are really powerful. We get tired, we get hungry, we get we put ourselves in context where we're likely to succumb to the thing that we don't want to succumb to and recognizing that, I think, is what gives me optimism and hope that, yeah, you know, there are a lot of barriers we face, and the barriers that made it really hard for me to get through my to do list on time last month are going to be the same barriers that are going to make it hard for me to get through my to do list next month, and knowing that, what things can I put into place? Right? I, you know, recently, by the way, I've had this same realization with social media, where I know that the benefits I get from it are far outweighed by the cost. I feel like I'm on my phone too much. I don't feel like I'm getting positive utility from sort of Mindlessly scrolling through I feel like I've ignored my kids, and I'll tell myself, I want to stop going on Instagram. I might tell my wife, you know, I think we should model better behavior. You know, we should do this, right? But the thing that's worked recently is I downloaded an app called One sec, and you basically link it to the apps that you were sort of mindlessly going to. And it does something really simple. It adds 15 seconds to your ability to get into the app. And it shakes your phone a little bit. It's like a wake up call. And then it says, take a deep breath. And then it goes, Do you want to continue on to Instagram or not? And the no is big, and the yes is little. And if you click yes, called again, it's called One sec, you know, like I want to, I

Scott Allender:

want to put that on my wife's Amazon. Oh, God,

Hal Hershfield:

very funny. You can put, you can use it for any app, and by the way, then it does this funny thing where if you say yes, there's still another screen, you have to go through and ask you why. And it's like, I'm bored, I'm angry. I'm on the toilet. Is one of the options.

Jean Gomes:

The data it's collecting on you.

Scott Allender:

Jean you're on the toilet far too often.

Hal Hershfield:

I give it all of that data. And you know what the funniest thing is, it forced me to realize how often I mindlessly do something that I said, you know, I'm the guy who doesn't want to be on Instagram tomorrow. Me wants to say I didn't do it yesterday. And then, um, you know, I found myself literally walking from the dining room table to the toaster in the kitchen to get my kids toast. And I'm like, Well, I have a half a second. And it's like, oh, well, I don't need to go on this now, and it's far reduced my time on it. No, have I got on other apps instead? Probably a little bit, but maybe more effect, more like productive ones, like the New York Times or something like that, right? So it's, you know, I think it's the principle here, is recognizing that we need help with our behavior, and that's okay. And it's those little rocky road, you know, the rocky bumps that we can smooth out by putting some constraints on potentially undesirable future behavior.

Scott Allender:

My tendency is when I start imagining. A better future self is I have too many of those things I try to take on at one time. I, you know, I sent Jean a list of on my last birthday, I sent Jean a list of like 15 things I was going to do, right? And guess how many of them I've done? Maybe four. Yeah,

Hal Hershfield:

you know, I wish. And I know there's like a joke in there too, but I think there's wonderful research on setting, you know, what you what we call a, like a goal range, where I love the idea of saying, Well, how about if I just tackle one of these things, and at best, three of these things, right? Or, or, you know, or you can get more, you know, more literal, and, you know, I want to go, I want to run anywhere from four miles a week to 12 miles a week, right? And the nice thing about that is that the low end is achievable, but if it becomes too easy, then I have something else I can work toward to keep me motivated, right? But I, you know, I worry about, like the 15 I love that my father in law, by the way, does the same thing every year. He has this list, and it's like, and I'm like, Are you really gonna tackle all of those things? Right? But I also, you know, I love the idea of, like, what's the one thing? What's the just the one thing I can do to make it as simple as possible. And think about the counterfactual of what, what will change in my life if I do that one thing, right? So, you know, we've, you know, we've, I've been exploring the idea of trying to motivate people to take more steps by simply saying, like, if you simply take X number more steps per day, these are people who are sedentary. It could add, you know, however many years of healthy life to your life, right? Not not just like extra years, but like health span, right? Where we're talking about, like, actually feeling good, right? So I think it's good to think, you know, to keep it you can think small, but then also give yourself a range, so that, like, you get challenged as well.

Sara Deschamps:

If the conversations we've been having on the evolving leader have helped you in any way. Please head over to Apple podcasts and leave us a rating and review. Thank you for listening. Now let's get back to the conversation.

Scott Allender:

So can we shift the focus of the conversation a bit from our individual relationship with our future self to the implications on the economy and society. For example, you've looked at the implications on the growing percentage of American workers who have become freelancers and therefore responsible for their own retirement savings. Can you talk to us a bit about that?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah. I mean, I think you know, this is actually a hot topic right now in behavioral economics, where there's essentially the individual. And then there's society, or you can call it policy makers, and at least, you know, I'll give you like the example of the American model of retirement savings, which was that in it, you know, for the longest time, workers were on pensions. You know, part of my pay package was that my company was setting aside money for me that would then get put into a pot, and when I retired, I would get, essentially an annuity. I would get paid out until I died, which is a great model, until you start recognizing that people are switching companies all the time. People are living longer than expected, and it becomes hard to sustain, and also it doesn't leave that much choice to the worker. So then there's this shift toward what you call defined contribution plans, where workers now get to the set how much do I contribute? How do I allocate that portfolio? And I can take that money with me if I move jobs, which is, of course, much more common now than it was 40 years ago, 50 years ago, the issue is that now you've put all of the onus on the worker. And I think the debate that's happening in behavioral economy, behavioral economics at the moment, is when we come up with solution that individuals can implement themselves, aren't we implicitly saying that everything is the workers problem or the individual's problem, and might it be better to think about the mixture that can occur in terms of some solutions could be state, you know, at the state level, or at the company level, and some solutions might be at the individual level. And I think there's, you know, that sort of moderate position is one that I really gravitate toward, because I think it really is quite difficult, you know, to ask somebody especially who's 22 and starting working, you know, Hey, how are you going to allocate your portfolio? You know, how much you want to set aside? Well, God, that's not for so long, right? You know, it's like, it's easy to imagine why, like, you need more right now, and sometimes you do, by the way, but I think the that sort of juxtaposition between putting the responsibility on the worker and then spreading it out over society and over companies is one that I would I would bet we're going to start seeing more conversation around within the field of. Behavioral economics, and of course, it's you know, at the policy level as well.

Jean Gomes:

So one of the things that comes to mind in this conversation. People listening in who are parents might be thinking, how can I help my children? How can I help Gen Z and younger use this future self thinking to not become beaten down by the uncertainty of AI and so on. How can they how can they use in a constructive way? What advice would you give to parents?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, I think there's a couple things at play here. So one is, you know, look, we can't ignore the power of modeling, right? So, you know, if, if the parent is a representation of the child's future self, give, give them to give them something to to look forward to, right? The other one I think, is you can't wash away reality. And I think the reality is that there is a lot of uncertainty, and what will the job scape look like? What will how will AI impact my life for the better and for the worse and and at the same time, I think we need to have the conversation that this isn't the first time in history where the future has been uncertain and it will arrive. And you know, one way to make it brighter is to do some things now, to put ourselves in a better position for later. But at the same time, I think it also needs to the conversation needs to be had around living in the present too. And that, you know, this is something that I think our children, and especially teenagers, have no problem doing, but where I think the problem arises is the balance between Present and Future, and that so often the conversation around taking care of the future takes the flavor of, you really need to stop doing these sorts of things that lean into today and spend more time sacrificing for the future. And I think there's a problem there, because it's almost like saying, you know, stop eating dessert. I'm not going to do that right. But the moderate sort of harmony or balance position of sometimes it makes sense to do the thing that may not be the right decision for the future, but it is right for now. That's okay. But if you do that all the time, then you have a bleaker future. But if all the time you're like, Okay, I'm gonna stay in and study you also have a bleaker future, because in some ways, You've robbed yourself of some of the memories. You've robbed your future self of some of the memories that could be created right now. So I what I really like the idea is having just a more, more of a real, honest, authentic conversation around creating balance between now and later, and when it makes sense to lean in and do the thing now, and when it makes sense to take a step back and do the thing that might be good for the future, and I and I, and again, this is my non researcher hat, but my suspicion is that starting that conversation early will be a good thing To see how that plays out later on in life, when, when as a late adolescent or as a college student or as a young worker or young adult worker, you do have some real decisions about now and later, and if you always do one or the other, I think it's a less positive picture than if you figure out how to balance or harmonize between the present and the future.

Scott Allender:

There's so many more questions I have. We're running out of time, so we have a diverse group of leaders listening all over the world. Maybe, what's one piece of practical homework you've given us so much practical insight, but what's one challenge you might leave a listener With to go put into practice straight away?

Hal Hershfield:

Yeah, I love that. I love that question, Scott, let me. Let me answer two ways. I would say really concretely. I really like and I want to support the idea of a letter writing exercise. And I'll add a layer to that, which is write a letter to your past self as well, to grease the wheels of this sort of time travel I'm having you, you know, think about but then, as a second order, I would say, ask yourself the deep question of, not only how do I want the future to look, but how do I want the present to look in relation to that future, and where do I see that balance happening? You know, we started by talking about Jean's trip and sort of, you know, the craziness of going over and I travel International. And what I love about that example is you can look at it so many ways. Is that, you know, is that bad for today's self? I don't know, maybe you're tired today, but overall, I think that sort of experience leads to a richness in your life right now. That said, if you did that all the time, you might burn out, right? So it's like, what's that, you know? So, so, so then, sorry, here's the second practical thing. Take the bird's eye perspective and stop asking the question of if I should do something, but rather, when should I do something and when should I not do something? So it's you know, should I travel or not? That's a hard question to ask. When should. Take these sort of crazy overnight, you know, trips internationally. How many of them per year should I take? And when should I not? When should I be home? That then creates a perspective that isn't so myopic, but rather takes the 10,000 foot view so you can see where all the different puzzle pieces fit together.

Scott Allender:

Yeah, that's so good. That's so good. Thank you for joining us today, folks. If you haven't read your future self yet, make sure you get a copy straight away. This is filled with so much good research, and it's so easy to read, and it's conversational, and it's filled with stories, and it's just it's engaging the whole way through. So you've done a really great service to the world with this book. Hal, thank you so much. And until next time folks remember the world is evolving. Are you?

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Jean Gomes

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Scott Allender

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