Archive for the ‘Thomas Schelling’ tag
Precommitment: Commit in Advance to Keep Yourself On Track
Our future and current selves rarely see eye-to-eye. As much as we’d like to indulge in every short-term pleasurable activity as they present themselves, it’s not always the best thing for us when we look at our life in its totality. Our time perspective can go a long way to optimizing for the right focus at the right time, making sure we indulge when we can (being “present hedonist”) but also keep an eye on the long-term prize (being “future goal-oriented”). With the right time perspective we can make sure we’re not foregoing our health, our life goals, or any multi-step, complex accomplishments for today’s six-pack of beer, a McDonald’s Happy Meal, or 10 hours of mindless television. It’s one thing to claim that time perspective can “solve” this for us, but that feels too theoretical. Time perspective is about strategy, but there are also tactics we can use to adapt to a new time perspective. One of the tactics that can help us adapt is precommitment.
The term precommitment was first introduced by a Nobel-prize winning economist named Thomas Schelling as part of a self-management system called Egonomics. Calling Egonomics a “system” may not be entirely accurate since it was originally described as “the art of self-management” in a research paper (available here). At the core of Egonomics is the idea that within each person exists two selves: the future self and the present (or past) self, constantly at odds, leading to a sort of cognitive dissonance between the two. Both selves exist within us and are equally valid, but aren’t always active at the same time. It’s a natural and ongoing conflict between immediate desire and long-term goals.
“Many of us have little tricks we play on ourselves to make us do the things we ought to do or to keep us from the things we out to foreswear. Sometimes we put things out of reach for the moment of temptation, sometimes we promise ourselves small rewards, and sometimes we surrender authority to a trustworthy friend who will police our calories or our cigarettes. We place the alarm clock across the room so we cannot turn it off without getting out of bed. People who are chronically late set their watches a few minutes ahead to deceive themselves.” – Thomas Schelling, “Egonomics, or the Art of Self-Management”
