Are You "Night Guy" or "Morning Guy"?
Are You "Night Guy" or "Morning Guy"?
The science behind Past, Present, and Future You
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld does a famous — and highly relatable — bit about “Night Guy” and his antagonistic relationship with “Morning Guy.”1
Rather than describe it, I suggest you take 35 seconds and watch this clip:
Seinfeld succintly sums up our fundamental human tendency to focus more heavily on the present than the future when making decisions.
I recently heard
, the CEO of Irrational Labs, talk about the psychology of pricing. She showed this Seinfeld clip and noted that when it comes to paying for something, “We are ‘Night Guy.’”In order to hand over our hard-earned money, our current selves demand immediate benefits.
Many companies get this — it’s why toothpaste brands promote the immediate benefit of fresh breath vs. the longer-term benefit of tooth decay prevention.
Kristen’s talk reminded me about a terrific book that goes deep into the research about our current selves, our future selves, and why so many of us struggle with the disconnect between these different versions of us.
Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today by UCLA Professor Hal Hershfield is my favorite type of non-fiction book — highly readable, engaging, and actionable. (Reminder: you can find my full recommended reading list here.)
In today’s post, I summarize some of my favorite insights from the book along with concrete ways to turn those insights into action (including a bonus strategy that Hal Hershfield shared with me directly!).
And because I always appreciate when others do this, I’ll share how I personally apply these insights to my own life in case that helps get your wheels turning….
(The last one is pretty personal, but instead of putting it behind a paywall, I decided to keep it available to all. If you find this content helpful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, as it really does allow me to prioritize this newsletter.)
And now, onto the insights from Your Future Self:
You’re a combination of separate, distinct selves
And those separate distinct selves — your past, present, and future selves — don’t always see eye to eye.
If you’ve ever looked at an old photo of yourself and thought “what was I thinking?!” (perhaps about an outfit choice or a significant other in the photo), then you've experienced the disconnect between your present self and your past self.
And if you’ve ever struggled to turn off your streaming service as the next episode of your favorite series autoplays (even though you know you should really go to bed), then you’ve experienced the conflict between your present self and your future self.
Hershfield reassures us that this tension is perfectly normal.
He writes, “We want the slightly over-budget, nicer car; we want the extra cocktail or delicious-looking dessert. And yet at the same time, we wish to be financially stable and physically healthy.”
Fortunately, he offers a solution: “By strengthening the connections between our past, present, and future selves, we can gain a new perspective on what’s important — and help create the future we want.”2
You should befriend your future self
Hershfield cites numerous studies (his and others) showing that a strong sense of connection between your present and future selves is linked to greater well-being.
This is true across a variety of areas, including finances, health, and relationships. Hershfield summarizes, “In short, the closer you feel to your future self, the better you’ll prepare for your future, whatever it may bring.”3
While Hershfield is careful to point out that these positive outcomes represent correlation, not causation, he also cites a few studies suggesting that you’d be wise to strengthen your relationship with your future self.
How? For starters, you can try to make Future You more vivid to Present You by using age progression filters or writing a letter to your future self. MIT Media Lab is even developing a Future You chatbot so you can have a conversation with your future self.
I was delighted to learn this insight because I’m already pretty tight with Future Abby. For as long as I can remember, I’ve referred to Past Abby and Future Abby as if they’re my good friends (albeit ones I sometimes roll my eyes at).
In college, I’d make it a point to clean my dorm room before school breaks so that Future Abby could come back to a tidy space, and I’ve previously written about my experience articulating a vision of Future Abby’s life.
While I don’t need help befriending my future self, as I contemplate growing out my grays, I am curious to test out the age progression filters! Maybe this will finally get me to do more than just lurk on TikTok…
(Bonus: Laurie Santos interviewed Hal Hershfield and tried out some of these techniques herself on a recent episode of The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. It’s worth a listen!)
We make mistakes that hurt our future selves
In Your Future Self, Hershfield outlines three common mistakes:
We anchor too strongly on the present. We choose certain rewards in the present over uncertain (but potentially higher) rewards in the future. We let our emotions in the present guide decisions, even though our future selves must live with the consequences. “Night Guy” is Exhibit A of our tendency to make decisions based on what we’re currently feeling, consequences be damned!
We don’t think deeply enough about the future. We procrastinate, leaving difficult tasks until the last minute (even though we know this doesn’t lead to good outcomes) and we say yes to things that we end up regretting because we think we’ll magically have more free time in the future (spoiler alert: we never do).
We ignore ways the future may differ from the present. We over-project our present-day feelings onto our future selves (“projection bias”), and we incorrectly assume our future selves will have the same preferences as our current selves.
Collectively, this short-sightedness in thinking about the future is known as myopia (yes, the same reason I wear contacts). It’s an apt term: we don’t do things that will benefit our future selves because we see the present so clearly while the future is blurrier.
If you identify more strongly with “Night Guy,” Hershfield outlines several practical ways to overcome your myopia; I’ll highlight two here I find especially useful.
One is using a commitment device. Commitment devices constrain your behavior and force you to make a choice that will benefit your future self.
While a commitment device can be an actual device (like this one that lets you lock up your phone or other physical temptations), it can also be an accountability partner — a person who’ll hold you accountable to something that will benefit your future self.
Fun fact: Without the notion of accountability partnership, Money and Love might not exist. When my former professor Myra Strober retired in 2018, she mentioned she wanted to write a book about the legendary Work & Family course she taught at Stanford Business School. Her course changed my life, and I told her the world needed this book. But a year later, when I asked her over lunch how the book was going, she admitted she hadn’t written a word.
I suggested she needed an accountability partner. She nodded — and then she upped the ante and suggested that we become co-authors.
Saying yes to her proposal led to one of the greatest collaborations of my life.
We didn’t take a picture at that fateful lunch (now nearly five years ago), but here’s one from another lunch in 2021!
For the book, we developed a five-step decision-making framework called the 5Cs. The framework wasn’t part of Myra’s course originally; we came up with it together to give people a flexible-but-sturdy tool they could use to make better holistic decisions.
The 4th C in our framework is to Check-in with trusted resources, which is another technique Hershfield recommends to counteract myopia.
Here’s a quote from an interview he did with professional poker player and decision-making expert
that explains the reasoning behind this advice:“When it comes to bigger, more abstract decisions, like career choices or where to live, we’re really bad at simulating these sorts of big decisions. It may make more sense to find somebody who's gone through a similar experience and ask them, because even though we think we're unique, we're not all that unique. Somebody else who's maybe similar to us who's gone through something, they've got valuable data points because they've already done it.” 4
What other approaches have you found to be effective in counteracting your own myopia? I’d love to hear them in the comments!
We make mistakes that hurt our present selves
The opposite of myopia is hyperopia — extreme farsightedness. This is when we act in ways that are too future-oriented, hurting our present and future selves.
Have you ever gotten a gift certificate to a restaurant and saved it to use “someday,” only to have the restaurant close before you had a chance to redeem it?
Or saved a nice bottle of wine too long, only to discover that it’s become undrinkable?
Guilty!
If this sounds familiar, I’m guessing you also identify more with “Morning Guy.” And if so, you may want to take steps to counteract your hyperopia.
Why? The above examples are fairly benign, but hyperopia has a darker side. As Hershfield explains, “if we live only for tomorrow, we might arrive at a future that’s devoid of the memories and experiences that make life worth living.”5
The majority of Your Future Self is dedicated to discussing the problem of myopia and what to do about it. And indeed, myopia is the bigger challenge for most people. But I’d assert that hyperopia is more of a struggle for those who identify as high achievers.
Since Money and Love came out last year, I've had the opportunity to give talks at selective business schools (such as Stanford GSB and London Business School) and top companies (such as Goldman Sachs and BCG).
The stories and questions from folks in these audiences make it clear that they’ve gotten so good at prioritizing their future selves (at least, from a career perspective) that they struggle to prioritize their present selves when it comes to taking time off, nurturing their relationships, and investing in their health.
I’m fortunate to be connected with Hal Hershfield through an author group, and when I reached out to him to share this observation, he told me that he sees this all the time from high achievers as well.
I asked him to share a strategy to counteract hyperopia, and here’s what he advised:
“One strategy that I really like is adopting a birds-eye-view of time. We often do a pretty good job of looking ahead and seeing what next week or what next month has in store. But that view of time is more of an ‘on the ground’ view, and it forces us to consider time expenditures as ‘either/or’ tradeoffs. As in, “should I go out with a friend for drinks next week OR take care of things at home….should I go to this conference next month OR have that extra time at home,” etc.
Another way to look at time, though, is to occasionally try to zoom out and look at the next year or five years even. Doing so, I might say “I think I’ll try to limit myself to X number of work trips this year…or here’s a list of friends I’d like to see at some point – how can I roughly figure out how to schedule time with them so that I don’t feel like I’ve tipped the ‘time scale’ too much on one side or the other.”
I love this strategy. Hyperopia is my bigger challenge, too, and I realized I’ve been employing this approach myself (even without identifying it as a formal strategy).
I made an intentional career pivot from corporate leader to author and entrepreneur in part to have more autonomy over how I spend my time. While this autonomy has allowed me to reinvest in my health, relationships, and creativity in important ways, it’s come with a side of financial and professional uncertainty.
While I’ve made peace with this uncertainty most of the time, when my Anxiety takes the controls, I zoom out and remind myself that this uncertainty is the result of an intentional tradeoff.
After more than two decades of prioritizing W2 employment, I'm nurturing my long-held entrepreneurial aspirations. I’ve intentionally timed this entrepreneurial pivot to coincide with my kids’ middle school years (when they’re developing their values and navigating more complex social and academic challenges yet still want to hang out with me).
At the encouragement of a wise friend, I wrote down why I’ve chosen to make this tradeoff now and how/when I’ll revisit it in the future so I can quickly remind myself when needed. That — along with a few deep breaths — helps me steer Anxiety back to her recliner where she belongs.
Your turn: I’m curious what your biggest challenge is when it comes to your present and future selves, if you’re open to sharing…
Abby’s Latest
If you’ve gotten my hints in the last section, you won’t be surprised to hear that this past weekend, my family watched Inside Out 2 at the Alamo Drafthouse. This theater is my absolute favorite place to see a movie (good food that you order from your seat! strong norms against cell phone use! family friendly viewing times!), so the movie-going experience itself was a delight. I also loved everything about this movie (well, everything *except* the oversimplified way Riley’s dad’s emotions are depicted at the end. Men can have complex emotions, too, Pixar!).
It’s an entertaining movie for all ages, but Inside Out 2 is truly a gift for those with young people in our lives. I’ve referenced this movie every day since seeing it when talking with my tween kids. I especially love how it’s given me a casual short-hand way to check in about what they’re feeling (“which of your emotions has the controls right now?”). Plus, it’s only 1 hour and 36 minutes! Definitely put it on your list.
Deliberately yours,
Abby
Yes, I’d prefer it if he used a more gender neutral term, but I think we can agree that “Night Person” and “Morning Person” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Hal Hershfield, Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2023), xiii-xiv.
Ibid, p. 68.
Annie Duke: Q&A with Hal Hershfield, June 6, 2023.
Your Future Self, p. 231.
This was *such* a fabulous edition, Abby—I'm still blown away from learning about hyperopia! 🤯
Thank you, Maddie! I found it so helpful to learn the term. As they say, you have to name it to tame it! 🤔