You’ve discovered that you can time travel.

It’s ten years from now.

You’re sitting across a table having dinner with a stranger – they’re telling you everything that’s happened in their life over the last decade.

You’re hanging onto their every word.

The wins.

The losses.

The joys.

The regret.

The surprises.

You’re completely absorbed.

The more they talk, the more fascinated you become. You’ve never been more interested to hear someone’s story. Who is this person?

It’s you.

Your Future Self Is Built Today 

How would today’s decisions change if it was your future self calling the shots instead of you?

With never-ending demands on our time and attention, most of us don’t need to look far for evidence that we could make better choices. Unmanaged stress, stretched relationships, missed workouts, late nights.

Humans are masters of self-deception.

We do an excellent job of unconsciously convincing ourselves that these little decisions don’t make a measurable difference to our lives.

Why?

Because it would be too uncomfortable to acknowledge otherwise.

Our lives are shaped by our ability to sacrifice temporary rewards now for more substantial payoffs later.

So how can we get better at playing long term games instead of ungratifyingly short ones?

The answer lies in an fMRI machine. 

The Other You 

fMRI machines revolutionised our understanding of the human brain.

By tracking changes in blood flow, the technology allows us to measure brain activity in real time. When an area of the brain becomes active during a task, it “lights up” on the scan, effectively mapping out which region is responsible for what.

Let’s imagine we decide to do three mini experiments together.

You’re lying in the scanner.

For the first, I ask you to think about yourself. Your brain responds with a pattern of activity – let’s call this ‘Thinking About Yourself’.

Next, I ask you to think about somebody else. Anyone will do – a friend, stranger, colleague, family member. You follow suit. Unsurprisingly, a completely different pattern of activity shows up. Let’s call this ‘Thinking About Others’.

So far, so good. Our minds behave entirely differently when processing information about ourselves compared to other people. This makes sense.

You wait for your final instruction. I ask you to think about yourself, but in twenty years’ time.

This time, your brain does something weird.

I look to the ‘Thinking About Yourself’ network.

Nothing. Not a flash. Instead, something strange has happened.

You’ve activated ‘Thinking about Others’.

This is a major problem.

Somebody Else’s Problem

Hal Hershfield is a Professor at UCLA. After nearly two decades of research, his work has pioneered understanding of our relationship with our future selves.

When we think about our future selves, our brains behave as if we’re thinking about a completely different person.

“We see our future selves as if they are other people” Hershfield explains. But this discovery is more than just a remarkable insight into our psychology. It’s a key that unlocks the door to better long-term decision-making.

Why?

As Hershfield writes, it “matters for a very simple reason: we treat strangers differently.”

The less connected we are to someone, the less likely we are to make sacrifices on their behalf.

This goes far in explaining why we’re masterminds of making small decisions that snowball into big problems for ourselves later down the line.

Our future selves feel blurry and distant from us.

They’re strangers.

We opt for short term gratification because we can’t quite picture the long-term penalties that will eventually come our way.

As far as our brains are concerned, they’re somebody else’s problem.