Psychology: We view our future selves as strangers

[Felix]

http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/why-we-procrastinate

We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time, but a chain of successive selves, each tangentially linked to, and yet distinct from, the previous and subsequent ones. The boy who begins to smoke despite knowing that he may suffer from the habit decades later should not be judged harshly: “This boy does not identify with his future self,” Parfit wrote. “His attitude towards this future self is in some ways like his attitude to other people.”

TLDR: Feeling more connected to your future self makes you take care of your future self more and help with procrasination and planning for the future (and sticking to that plan).

[leeholsen]

i call that life planning.

my dad did that well, but i didnt get a hold of it until after 35. basically, at 40 you want to try and have saved 1/2 of what you need in retirement, by 60 retired, by 65 have traveled to these places you always wanted to go to; etc.

for instance, i may get married again; but she is going to have to know i'm not buying her new cars and shopping at bloomingdales; because i'm retiring in less than 10 yrs to pursue what i wish and not what some else tells me to; like a boss. sorry, but i'm not working until 70 just so my wife is always wearing the latest clothes. they need to go find someone else, thats not me.

[theanimal]

I try to live by the notion of hard-easy, easy-hard. If you do the hard part first, it will be easier in the future or the long run. However, if you take a shortcut or the easier route first, it will be more difficult in the future. It applies to basically everything.

What I'm wondering is if there are other ways in which we can better identify with our future selves?

[Felix]

Kelly McGonigal talks about this in her research on willpower. Basically, what you can do is image yourself in a conversation on something banal with your future self. To humanize him, I suppose.

The underlying idea seems to be to learn to consider your future self to be your best friend and grasp that emotionally.

As opposed to this:
http://www.pidjin.net/2013/10/24/future-me/

[Ego]

There was a study a while back about how those who speak languages with weak future tenses feel more connected to their future selves.

Edit http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... ts/279484/

Remarkably, he discovered that speakers with weak future tenses (e.g. German, Finnish and Estonian) were 30 percent more likely to save money, 24 percent more likely to avoid smoking, 29 percent more likely to exercise regularly, and 13 percent less likely to be obese, than speakers of languages with strong future tenses, like English.

and

"Overall, my findings are largely consistent with the hypothesis that languages with obligatory future-time reference lead their speakers to engage in less future-oriented behavior," Chen wrote.

[jacob]

Now when you say "we", who are you talking about ...

Because I wonder, given the INTJ affinity for contingency planning which I seem to almost take to an excess living almost in a kind of Many-Worlds interpretation of the universe, whether I'm more in tune with "future-me" than "present-me".

I also note that I don't seem to have an addictive personality in the sense that I can give up habits from one day to the other and stay off for years without reminiscing about the past. The past holds very little interest to me.

Interesting stuff about the Sapir Whorf implications. Incidentally, Danish has a weak future tense, although these days I think mostly in English or "geometry". The latter has zero future tense if it can be thought of as a language.

[Felix]

"We" is humans in general. I would guess that INTJs do not have that problem, interestingly. That Sapir Whorf connection is really cool. I find it interesting that this distinction seems to be a crucial factor in self-discipline and effective alignment with long-term planning.