47. HAL HERSHFIELD: Making Better Choices Feel Easier

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Hal: If we make the process of achieving a goal more fun, more enjoyable, more pleasurable, we’re just, and this shouldn’t surprise anybody, we’re a lot more likely to stick it out.

[00:00:14] Michael: Hi, I am Michael Hyatt.

[00:00:15] Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

[00:00:16] Michael: And you’re listening to the Double Win Show.

[00:00:18] Megan: We’re excited to share with you our recent conversation with Hal Herschfield.

[00:00:22] We learned so much in this conversation, and I had several great ahas. I can’t wait for you guys to hear them.

[00:00:29] Michael: Well, lemme tell you just a little bit about him, not you, because you were. You know, on the interview, yes. But for the rest of you, hello is a professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he teaches marketing and behavioral decision making.

[00:00:41] His research focuses on how thinking about the future self can improve decision making, and both of us have futuristic, I think, in our top five strength finders.

[00:00:50] Megan: Yeah, that’s pretty much my number one.

[00:00:51] Michael: So we think about future a lot, but he is published in top academic journals, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal in The Atlantic.

[00:00:58] He’s renowned for using tools like neuroimaging and virtual reality to explore how people connect with their future selves, and we talk about that in the interview. He’s spoken at TEDx and consults with financial and health organizations. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children and your future self.

[00:01:16] How to make Tomorrow better. Today is his first book for a general audience. With that, here’s the interview.

[00:01:25] Megan: Well, Hal, welcome to the show. We’re so glad to have you.

[00:01:28] Hal: Hey, thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here.

[00:01:31] Megan: Okay. I have to ask you right out of the gate, because I don’t wanna assume people know what is the future self like, what is, what is this thing? What is this idea?

[00:01:40] Hal: No, I love that question. I I really have no idea where you’re gonna go with that question.

[00:01:44] But, um, look, the future self is, it’s not that crazy of a concept. It might sound like a science fiction term, but really at the end of the day, when we say future self, it’s any version of you that exists at some point down the line. Now, that could be five years away. It could be 10 years away. I could have a future self that I’m thinking about at retirement, which for me is probably 15 to 20 years away.

[00:02:11] I could also have a future self that I’m thinking about next summer. You know? Okay. I want to get in better shape. And, and then that also means that there’s many future selves along the way. So I think in some ways it may be better to talk about the concept of future selves,

[00:02:25] Megan: ah, than just

[00:02:25] Hal: one future self.

[00:02:26] Okay. And they all add up in some way. And then the last thing I’ll say is that I really, when I talk about this concept, I try to stay sort of open, you know, like open-ended with it. Because sometimes people are really concerned with their productivity and their ability to juggle all different things.

[00:02:44] And then that’s a future self that involves the different roles of work and home and social life, et cetera. And sometimes people are talking about a future self that involves health, and that’s a different sort of concept. And then there’s ones that involves finance. So there’s different concepts there, but it’s really just a version of us that exists at some point in the future.

[00:03:03] Megan: And why do we need to be thinking about a future self?

[00:03:07] Hal: Look, it’s relevant in so many ways and in so many. Arenas of our lives. And I think that the real reason that it’s relevant is not let, let me just be clear off the bat. It’s not because we need to put our heads down and do more for the future so that we’re happier.

[00:03:22] I don’t, I, I just really wanna start and not like, I think it’s gonna be easy for people to tune out if they hear me saying something like, eat more vegetables, save more money and go to bed earlier. Nobody’s gonna do that. The idea. Is relevant because it involves thinking about trade-offs between now and later, and thinking about sort of balancing out our happiness and our satisfaction over time between the version of us who exists right now and the version of us who exist in the future.

[00:03:53] None of this is, put your head down and don’t live for today and just do things for tomorrow. But it’s also not, let’s just live for today and don’t worry about tomorrow. It’ll take care of itself. It’s thinking about how do we balance out these considerations.

[00:04:07] Michael: Okay, so you start the book with this thought experiment where you walk through a magic gate and you meet yourself 20 years from now.

[00:04:16] So what question would you ask yourself if you walked through the Magic Gate and how did that lead to 10 years of research putting this book together?

[00:04:25] Hal: Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s really funny because in some ways. The research led to me asking that question is almost backwards. You know, um, if I were to suddenly meet my future self, I think at this stage, I would ask him, you know, what sounds like a pretty simple question, but are my wife and kids happy?

[00:04:47] And what can I do to increase more of that for all of us? Or maybe flip it around, you know, what should I stop doing? But, you know, the reality is when I started doing this research, I wasn’t married yet. I didn’t have kids yet, and the question would’ve been different then I probably would’ve said, you know, will I be married?

[00:05:08] What will my life look like? All those things. So I highlight that just to say that the conversations that we have with our future selves will almost certainly change as we age, as we go through life, as our circumstances, as they change both in a directed way by ourselves and because of external forces as well.

[00:05:28] Megan: At the beginning of our conversation, how you said it’s not really your future self, it’s more than one self. Like there are its selves plural, and that throughout our lives there are gonna be several distinct selves or, or maybe even many. Why is that good news and not something that should kind of freak us out or unsettle us?

[00:05:47] Hal: I can tell in your question that there is some trepidation, there is some worry. It’s like, what does that mean? There’s multiple versions of us because, you know, we kinda work hard to get some certainty and stability in our lives without being political about it at all. There’s a lot of sort of uncertainty in the world right now.

[00:06:04] Yeah. With regards to technology and the economy and sociopolitical occurrences around the world, et cetera. And you know, so to some extent I wanna grapple with something that’s certain. I wanna say, well, at least I can know who I’ll be in the future. Right. But the reality is there’s, there’s different versions of us.

[00:06:22] People change, we change and we change much more than we expect to. And the reason I think that that’s not something to fear is because it means that we have some control over our lives. It means that we can become different versions of us, we can change aspects of ourselves, we can change aspects when things happen and we’re not expecting them.

[00:06:44] And we can end up being more satisfied than we might expect to be. And so if I can like put that in a nutshell, it may be scary at first to recognize that my life could look different in 10 years than I expect it to be. But the reality that we know from decades of research is that as a human being, we’re quite good with grappling with change.

[00:07:06] We’re quite resilient. We have a healthy, what’s called psychological immune system, which basically means we can sort of fend off the changes that we don’t want and sort of learn to live with the way that life has become. You know, the thing

[00:07:19] Michael: I love about this is. It’s hopeful because I know so many people, in fact, my wife and I are been working with a young person from our church who is so deeply focused on the past that they’re just discouraged, resentful all this stuff.

[00:07:37] And what they need is really a big shift to think about the future. But they’ve just, they’re so, they’re just stuck looking backwards. But do you find that this concept creates that kind of hope,

[00:07:47] Hal: Michael? I I think that’s such a, it’s such a powerful observation, right? And, and I think it’s very human. It’s very real.

[00:07:54] To get stuck in the past, I personally do take a hopeful and optimistic standpoint. So my, my view, which is certainly shaped by my circumstances, that’s shaped by my, you know, my nurture and upbringing, but problem by nature, but also very much by my research, is that we should be hopeful, we should be optimistic.

[00:08:12] We can have some agency. And at the same time, I wanna recognize that. It can be hard sometimes to let go of the things that have happened in the past. Right. And I do just wanna say though, that can also be a driver of change. You know, I, I don’t think that we should say, well, you know, there should be no regrets, or we shouldn’t focus on the past.

[00:08:30] Because another way to think about it is, let’s use whatever that is, whatever that material is. Yes. As fuel to propel us forward to make some changes. You know, and I, I think there’s, Dan Pink has a great book called The Power of Regret, and it’s like, one of the things I love about it is, you know, he has this sort of message in there of the things that we regret are often the things that we can aim to change moving forward if we learn something for it.

[00:08:54] But if we get stuck in it, like maybe the, your younger friend, then that’s where it can become detrimental and problematic.

[00:09:03] Michael: What I’m struck by is I’m thinking about the future. The first thing that comes to my mind consciously is, oh, things could be different now that could go two different directions.

[00:09:11] If I, if I continue on my current trajectory, it might not be so good, but if I make some changes now, then you know, I can meet a different future self. Yeah. Than was just sort of automatically determined.

[00:09:22] Hal: I think that’s exactly right and that, that’s what I love about it. I mean, I think this, you know, I, I do think this idea that.

[00:09:28] You know, we’re sort of faded for certain outcomes. That’s a deep philosophical debate. But you know, my belief is stems from exactly what you were saying. We do have some agency, we have some control. There are small things we can do Now that that blossom into bigger changes. Yes. Later.

[00:09:45] Megan: Hal, as you were talking, I couldn’t help but notice that you said a couple times we have some agency and what you didn’t say was, we have total agency.

[00:09:54] Yeah. And I think this is interesting. We were just leading a workshop for our community, um, at the time of this recording at the beginning of the year. And we were, we were talking about setting goals and things like that. And I’ve just come off of a really challenging last quarter personally. My, my youngest daughter had a big medical crisis and some things, you know, totally outside of our control.

[00:10:15] And so as we were talking with our community about this, one of the things I kept bringing up is I think there’s this tension between things happen that are outside of our control. Like I don’t, anybody that’s been alive for more than, you know, 10 minutes, like has, has realized that. And we have agency.

[00:10:30] Right. And so like there’s this tension between you can’t control everything, but you do have agency. Right. What have you learned from your research about the relationship between those two things? ’cause I have to think. That’s a very relevant question with regard to becoming someone in the future. You know, the interplay between what we can control and what we can’t control.

[00:10:48] Hal: Absolutely. And I, you know, I think first off, I’m sorry about your, your youngest. That’s, thank you. She’s doing well

[00:10:54] Megan: now. So just, you know,

[00:10:55] Hal: that’s great to hear. And you know, it’s interesting because that’s like one of the most on point examples, right? You know, when you become a parent, you just, you realize just how much you can’t control.

[00:11:05] Right. And we try, we try, you know, but it’s like you’ve gotta let go of that. And when I say, look, we have some agency, it’s it, I, I think you’ve sort of intuited exactly what I mean. There are certain things we can’t control. We can’t control the people around us. We can’t control the medical things that happen to us and our loved ones.

[00:11:25] You know, we can’t control certain macroeconomic factors that can have big impacts on our lives. We can control our reactions to them and we can also control the actions that we take. That can change our circumstances. Right. And so, you know, I think if I think about the research, there’s just a fountain of work on motivation.

[00:11:48] The way we deal with goals, the way that we make changes happen, and two of my favorite findings that come out of this is, one, it doesn’t have to be so hard. We have this sort of implicit belief, especially I think among people sort of our age, that, you know, no pain, no gain,

[00:12:06] Megan: right?

[00:12:07] Hal: I feel like that was a message that was hammered in for anybody in the sort of Gen X and older.

[00:12:13] And the reality is that’s actually probably wrong. What the research has found is that if we make the process of achieving a goal. More fun, more enjoyable, more pleasurable. We’re just, and this shouldn’t surprise anybody, we’re a lot more likely to stick it out. So I think that’s one really important finding.

[00:12:34] And then the other one I would say is that fantasies and thinking about ideal outcomes, that’s important. But if we stop there, it actually backfires. There’s great research coming out of NYU, Gabrielle Tongen, she’s a psych professor there. She’s found that if I just stop and think about, you know, the way I want the future to look, that feels good.

[00:12:55] But you know what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t spur action. And if we want to spur action, if we wanna take some agency, we not only need to think about the way that we want things to look differently, but we also need to figure out what’s the contrast between now and later? And what are the, and this is really over, this is really important.

[00:13:15] What are the overcomeable obstacles?

[00:13:18] Megan: Between now

[00:13:18] Hal: and later. I, I want to emphasize that because if you say to me, you know, my ideal fantasy is that I’m a billionaire and have a mega yacht, the big obstacle there is that I’m probably not gonna have a billion bucks. And I don’t know. And, you know, if you come back to me in 10 years and prove me wrong, great.

[00:13:33] But I don’t know that I’ll be able to overcome that one. And I, I think this is really important because it, it starts this general concept of, yes, think about the positive, but then also think about what stands in the way and what you can overcome starts to kind of temper the expectations and starts to create some realism around what sort of control we actually can exert to get to the places that we want to be.

[00:14:00] Megan: I love that. It’s kind of like, if you think you have unlimited control and possibility, like in a literal sense, you actually really limit yourself. You know, if, if you take into account the real challenges that you have and the constraints of your life, it’s actually freeing because you know, kind of like what you have to work within.

[00:14:19] And you can take a lot of action because you’re focused on the things that are within your control instead of like being in a fantasy about things that are totally outside of your control. And

[00:14:27] Michael: it gets you stuck.

[00:14:28] Megan: And it gets you stuck.

[00:14:29] Michael: Yeah.

[00:14:29] Megan: Because you’re gonna hit those obstacles that they don’t care whether you believe in them or not.

[00:14:33] They’re, they’re just there.

[00:14:34] Michael: They’re there. Exactly. You know, in the goal research we’ve done, there’s this concept called implementation intentions. Yeah. But it’s basically, I’m gonna anticipate the obstacles and try to overcome them before they happen so I can kind of grease the sled. So it makes it easier to actually accomplish the thing.

[00:14:50] Hal: You’ll, you’ll laugh. Um, that’s Peter Golder’s work. Yes. And Peter’s married to Gabrielle, who I Oh wow. Who did, did the positive fantasies work that I just mentioned. Small world. That’s amazing. So you can, a small world.

[00:15:01] Megan: Okay. Another question for you. I know that you have something called the future self continuity measure that uses overlapping circles and how, basically you talk about that the degree of overlap predicts everything from savings behavior to life satisfaction.

[00:15:17] Yeah. So I want you to just describe how this works and what does it reveal. This sounds fascinating,

[00:15:22] Hal: by the way. Most people don’t say Sounds fascinating about a psychological measure. So I really appreciate that. It really does. Um, we’re geeks for that. Yeah,

[00:15:30] Megan: we’re geeky.

[00:15:30] Hal: I love it. This is great. Okay. So, you know, look, I could ask you.

[00:15:34] You know, what’s your relationship like with your future self? That’s kind of a weird question. Let’s just put it out there. That’s a strange question. You might have a hard time thinking about it. I could say something like, you know, you’ve answered these surveys before the last time you had a rental car.

[00:15:47] And you know, they call you, Hertz says, you know, was your experience a one very bad or a seven? Very positive. So I could say to you, what’s your relationship like with your future self? One bad seven positive? We tried that initially and it turns out that’s, that’s also a hard question to answer. We had this kind of aha moment.

[00:16:04] I actually had this great young collaborator who, you know, she and I both had read some other work that examined close relationships. And the way that researchers who study close relationships ask people about their spouses or their partners, is what they do is they give them. A picture with a series of overlapping circles that basically go from not overlapping to all the way overlapping.

[00:16:32] And they say, pick the group of circles that best represents the way that you think about and feel about your partner. And it’s so interesting ’cause it’s just a picture, but it, it means so much. ’cause you could look at that and say, we’re pretty distant right now. We’re, it’s like our worlds are not colliding or like we’re really in sync with each other.

[00:16:50] Their stories are my stories, my feelings or their feelings, et cetera we’re overlapping. And what the researchers in the relationship space found is that those answers to those circles questions predict lots of things. Like do you stay together over time? Wow. To make sacrifices for your spouses or your partner’s work.

[00:17:08] And they, for you, we had this moment where we said, wait a minute. It’s kind of the same thing. The future self is a little bit like another person. Now it’s not your spouse, let’s be clear, but. Maybe that’s one way we could ask people about how they feel about their, their selves in the future. Funny enough, when we, when we came up with that, another researcher at University of Chicago developed a very similar method, so we, it was like kind of out there for us.

[00:17:37] They hit on the same insight and over the years what we found is that the responses people give on that sort of measure are really indicative of, like you said, Megan, how well off people are financially. But that doesn’t just mean do you have a lot of money saved up? It also means things like what’s your overall financial wellbeing?

[00:18:00] Are you on top of things? Are you prepared in case an emergency hits? Do you pay your bills on time? That’s different than just, do I have a lot of money coming in? It’s like,

[00:18:09] Megan: mm-hmm.

[00:18:10] Hal: Is my financial boat on smooth waters? It’s also predictive of, am I likely to. Take care of my health and go to the gym. Am I likely to behave ethically when given the option to take a shortcut?

[00:18:24] Which sounds like, oh, that sounds like a different topic. But if you think about it, there’s lots of little things mm-hmm. Where we can cut corners and, you know, we get some gain in the present, but we might get, you know, punished in the future. And what we’ve found in several papers is that the people who feel connected to their future selves are actually more likely to, to take this sort of, you know, more difficult but ethical path.

[00:18:48] And like you said, it’s also related to how satisfied people are with their lives over time. The the thinking there is that if I’m someone who feels a strong relationship with my future self, then I’ll do things to put them in a good place later on so that I do feel satisfied with the choices that I’ve made in my lives.

[00:19:06] Michael: Part of this, I think it viscerally connects you, or emotionally connects you with the consequences of your choices, both good and bad. I, I can remember Tony Robbins has this exercise that he does in his live events. I dunno if he still does it, but uh, I think he called it the Dickens exercise where you just like, take, okay, if nothing changes in my life and I project myself out into the future, where am I in 20 years?

[00:19:28] And I mean, it’s a, yeah, can be a horrifying, but a wake up call and then, okay, then he takes you back through the exercise. Okay, if I made some changes now what could that do to my, my future self? He doesn’t call it future self, but is that the kind of thing

[00:19:42] Hal: you’re talking about? I wanna like drill down on that for a minute because if you just say to somebody, there are consequences for your actions, I think most adults and even kids over the age of six five will say, yeah, but I think that this is a really important thing to talk about because it’s much deeper than there are consequences for your actions.

[00:19:59] What I’m trying to say, and I think what that exercise that you’re mentioning does is it brings all the different present moments. Into a larger thread. It connects them over time. Ugh. What we’re really good at doing as human beings is making exceptions out of any present moment.

[00:20:17] Megan: Yeah.

[00:20:17] Hal: What, what I mean by that is, mm-hmm.

[00:20:20] I can almost carve out the thing I did today and say, it doesn’t count. I can tell, you know, okay, I’m trying to cut back on my sugar consumption could give you a million reasons why it’s gonna be okay for me to eat cake today. It’s my friend’s birthday at work. I had more of a commute. It’s cold in the Los Angeles.

[00:20:38] I deserve cake. It doesn’t count. Now look, if I have one piece of cake today, I’m not gonna wake up tomorrow. Suddenly with poor cardiovascular health, I’m not gonna wake up tomorrow suddenly looking different than I did today. But over time, those moments add up. And the power of the Tony Robbins exercise you just mentioned is that if I say.

[00:21:06] What happens if nothing changes over 20 years? Then you can start to see how they add up. If I tell you that all the present moments add up to our future self, then you can start to see how they all add up and connect. And if every day I spend a little bit of money, if every day I eat a little bit unhealthy, if every day I fail to call my friends that I’m connected to.

[00:21:26] If every day I’m a little bit impatient with my wife, then I’m gonna turn around in not that long a time and see, oh, my health has weakened, my relationships of atrophied. My connection with my spouse has moved from overlapping to not. And so I think that’s the power of this. It’s not just like there are consequences.

[00:21:46] We know that, but now let’s spell it out. Let’s actually see the connection, the thread that connects the moments.

[00:21:59] Megan: My three younger kids are adopted, and so they have complex trauma histories and and all the rest. And so we think a lot about the brain. We think a lot about executive function. And one of the things that our middle son has been doing is working with an executive function coach who specializes in working with kids who have trauma histories.

[00:22:17] And she will say to him a lot, okay, make a picture in your mind. Make a picture in your mind. And because he’s developing the ability to link cause and effect, but in a way that’s concrete. And I think sometimes as adults we say these kind of like aphorisms to ourselves, like actions have consequences, but we don’t go through that exercise of.

[00:22:39] What are those consequences and what would it feel like, like to inhabit them as our future self? You know, that’s not something we necessarily do.

[00:22:47] Hal: Hmm. A hundred percent agree with you. And I mean, and you know, what you’re saying about your son is so interesting too because I’m starting to do some work now on the sort of development of the future self concept in adolescents and adolescents.

[00:22:59] We, you know, we think of as like 10 to 24. This is, you know, the modern conception is not, the adolescence is it’s so long. And you know, anyone who works with somebody who’s 22 or 23 recognizes. Adolescence is still happening. Still a hundred percent.

[00:23:16] Megan: If you’re parenting young adult children, you know this very personally as I do, you know this to be

[00:23:20] Hal: true.

[00:23:21] Exactly. And it’s interesting because that concept of the future self, we can see there’s changes even between the ages of four, five, and six. And then that’s sort of like one version of the future and the future self, and it’s a short time horizon. And then there’s other ones and then, and then you bring up this really powerful concept of like, well, let’s create that picture.

[00:23:41] What does that look like? Let’s not just make it abstract, but like concrete. Let’s give, and I think what the coach is doing with your son is let’s give him an anchor point.

[00:23:50] Megan: Yes.

[00:23:50] Hal: Something to kinda latch onto so that it’s not just how will you feel if this happens? I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m gonna eat tonight or tomorrow.

[00:23:59] You know? Let’s give some concrete, tangible sort of vision there, and I think that can really

[00:24:04] Michael: help.

[00:24:04] Megan: Yeah.

[00:24:05] Michael: In the book you talk about these three time travel mistakes. You use this as a. Metaphor, but missing our flight, poor trip planning and packing the wrong clothes. So let’s start with missing our flight.

[00:24:19] Unpack that

[00:24:20] Hal: for us.

[00:24:20] Megan: Yeah.

[00:24:20] Hal: Yeah. I mean, the analogy there is, um, this hasn’t happened to me. I wanna be clear, but I feel like everybody knows somebody that’s happened to where they get to the airport and they realize they have a little time before their flight, and then they, you know, they might go to the bar, they might, whatever, watch a game, and then suddenly they look up and they realize, oh my gosh, my flight is boarded and I’m racing to the gate and the gates closed.

[00:24:39] It’s happened to me one time. I love it. Well, by the way, one time is, is the right number of times. Exactly. Well, did you clear

[00:24:49] Michael: it? It wasn’t because

[00:24:50] Hal: I was at the bar. It was, I was immersed in my work.

[00:24:53] Megan: Oh, that’s funny.

[00:24:54] Hal: I love it. I love it. But that, you know, that’s really highlights this concept where it’s like you get so wrapped up in the moment.

[00:25:03] You sort of fail to look up and see the future and so, or you see fail to, you know, see what you’re, you’re missing. And so the, the sort of like meaning behind that, to unpack that. The idea is sometimes we get so anchored on the present that we fail to really think about the future. And I want to be clear, I’m not saying that like we’re sort of fruit flies running around going, oh my gosh, I forgot there was a future.

[00:25:27] But hopefully the analogy of that airport example resonates where you’re like, just so stuck in what’s happening right now, that you fail to consider that there’s more to life than right now. That’s a hard thing, by the way, because

[00:25:39] Megan: mm-hmm.

[00:25:40] Hal: We live in the present. Every moment is the present. Those are the feelings we have.

[00:25:44] Those are the actions we’re taking. And we have this sort of psychological tendency to think everything that’s happening right now is more important, is sort of bigger and weightier than the things that’ll happen in the future. That’s very natural. And so, you know, so part of the lesson there is like, what can we do to just.

[00:26:03] Kinda loosen the foothold of the present so that we can step out of it. So that’s the first sort of time travel. I had some fun trying to think about this, the time travel mistake there.

[00:26:13] Megan: I love that. Okay. You also talk about poor trip planning. Yeah. Which I think you described as essentially procrastination, but you talk about the idea that my future self isn’t gonna wanna do this anymore than my present self does.

[00:26:26] You know? Yeah. Which I think makes so much sense because I think about that with working out. It’s like, for me, I had such a breakthrough with working out when I stopped feeling like it was a prerequisite that I wanted to do it. You know what I mean? And I don’t hate it. Like I found something I enjoy and all that kind of stuff.

[00:26:43] Which I think to your earlier point about we should, we should try to make this less torturous fun. Yeah. You know, if, if you can. But it’s like, what if I didn’t need to wanna do this, to do this thing that’s good for me in the future. I just needed to like

[00:26:55] Hal: do

[00:26:55] Megan: it. You know?

[00:26:56] Hal: So, you know, and the, this sort of analogy here is like.

[00:27:00] It’s almost like a step up from the being anchored in the present. It’s like, I’ve thought about the future, but not that much. Yeah. And so, you know, the poor trip planning is like, I’ve booked my flight, maybe I’ve booked a hotel, I this, I’m guilty of this. I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, where you, you’re lucky enough to get away.

[00:27:18] You’ve gone through the exercise of booking a flight, booking the, the hotel, and then you get to the place and you’re like, and now you’re spending your time there figuring out what to do. Now, just to be clear, sometimes that can be great if you’re like truly spontaneous and you’re like, I’ll just pop into this cafe.

[00:27:34] I’ll do this thing. That’s great if you can do that. But more often than not, at least with me and many people I know, you get there and you’re like, I can’t believe I’m wasting the time, my precious time planning out what I’m supposed to do. I should have done this before. And so I think, you know that the analogy is.

[00:27:51] When we’ve, we’ve thought a little bit about the future, but not in a really deep or meaningful way, and you brought up procrastination. I bring it up in the book. It’s a perfect example. Procrastination occurs when we know, we know the future will exist. Nobody’s like, I can’t believe I have to pay that bill.

[00:28:07] You know, I have to do my taxes. It’s just how we keep putting things off, and we do so in a way where we recognize that we’re harming ourselves. That’s the irony of procrastination. It hurts while we’re procrastinating. It hurts after we procrastinated too, and. I had a conversation, there’s a Canadian psychologist named Tim Pickle, and he’s like, doctor procrastination.

[00:28:30] Professor procrastination. And he, he said to me, and it’s like, what you just said, Megan, like I don’t wanna do it now. It’s a good chance I’m not gonna wanna do in the future, so I might as well just do it now. Yeah. Just do it and eliminate all that feeling of negativity along the way. Now that’s easier said than done, but the concept has really resonated with me, you know?

[00:28:50] Yeah. And it’s like, it kind of also maps onto that productivity aphorism of, you know, don’t do things twice. Right. You know what I mean? But it’s like, you know, don’t open the email, read it and think, oh, I don’t want to handle this. Close it out and then have to do the whole thing again in two days. Yeah.

[00:29:07] You’ve just doubled your work.

[00:29:09] Megan: It’s gonna suck just as much a second time.

[00:29:12] Michael: Exactly.

[00:29:12] Megan: Actually worse. ’cause you’re gonna feel bad about yourself that you’re doing it a second time and you’re gonna have to do it a second time. Oh

[00:29:17] Michael: man. Yeah.

[00:29:18] Megan: Don’t ask me how I know.

[00:29:19] Michael: Okay, the third mistake is packing the wrong clothes.

[00:29:23] Hal: So talk

[00:29:23] Michael: about that

[00:29:23] Hal: one. Yeah. So this one is the last step up. Now, I’ve really thought about the future, but I haven’t thought about it in a way that stays true to the actual future. And let me give you the example there. Another, I’m, I’m going on a trip. I planned out the trip. But let’s say, okay, imagine I live in Chicago, it’s January, it is cold.

[00:29:46] I’m lucky enough to be able to take a trip to a warm weather place. And I think to myself, I know it’ll be warmer there, but man, am I cold right now? I’m gonna put in a couple light sweaters. I’m gonna pack my bag so that you know, I’m warm if I need to. And then you get there and you realize I haven’t pulled out one of those things.

[00:30:04] And now is that really a problem? Okay. No. So I’ve taken up some extra space in my suitcase that I could have used for something else, fine. But if I think about the actual analogy here, the analogy is I’ve thought about the future. When I think about the future, I use all of my present day feelings and thoughts and in an unfair way over project them

[00:30:29] Megan: onto

[00:30:29] Hal: my future self.

[00:30:30] I’ll give you an example of this. I could be planning out my will. I could be planning out certain career path. I could be planning out lots of things that will have an impact on myself later on. And in doing so, I don’t give space for the reality that my feelings might change in the future. That my future self is a different person.

[00:30:54] Now, it is fine to say, okay, the only thing I know is my present self, so I might as well pay attention to what I’m feeling right now. The problem arises when I almost say, let, let me just project that. Onto the future self and say he’ll feel the same way. I always point to tattoos as a great example of this, and I’m not anti tattoo.

[00:31:13] I wanna be clear. Lots of people have, you actually have full lot people get enjoy

[00:31:17] Megan: sleeve. You have a full sleeve under that sweater, you know, nobody would guess it.

[00:31:22] Hal: I will tell you that the surprise hit of, uh, Christmas this year was a tattoo pen, a washable tattoo pen with stencils. And my son, who’s six, walked out and it was like this jarring moment where he was covered in tattoos on his face, his arms and legs.

[00:31:38] I was like, he looks like a different person right now. That’s

[00:31:42] Megan: awesome.

[00:31:43] Hal: But the, you know, this sort of, the tattoo example is, I’m gonna do this now and I’ll always enjoy it. Now there’s another way to think about it, which is, I’m gonna do this now. It represents something from now, and I don’t know how I’ll feel about in the future.

[00:31:54] That’s realistic. But where I say, always want this thing, that’s where the problem arises. And the last thing I’ll say about this time travel mistake is that I, I see it come up with. Career decisions a lot.

[00:32:08] Megan: Hmm.

[00:32:08] Hal: Where somebody makes a decision early on, they say, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna become an ex, whatever the profession is.

[00:32:16] And at some point along the process, this is more for younger people than middle aged people, but I would say some point along the process they realize this isn’t for me, but then they say, I, I just gotta keep doing it. That’s what I decided before, that’s what my future self wants. And it’s, and you see this where they just keep going with something, even though there’s this realization that my future self may not actually want this.

[00:32:39] And that becomes, I think that can become problematic if we sort of stick it out for too long there.

[00:32:44] Megan: Hmm. Yeah. Really good. Maybe you really have a lot of regret when you do get to middle age. You know, if you, if you stick it out that long. Okay. So I’m thinking about the reality. We, you know, again, we’re recording this kinda right around the new year and we had a meeting yesterday where we were talking about some big financial goals we have for the business.

[00:33:01] And it’s exciting and it’s a little scary and we’re not quite sure how we’re gonna do it, but you know, we’re gonna like forge ahead anyway. And I was thinking of, and last night, kind of this morning, preparing for this interview, I was thinking, you know, the truth is, as the CEO of the company, in order for us to hit those goals, I have to be a different kind of leader.

[00:33:21] Like the leader that I am today. The human that I am today has gotten us to where we are. And if I wanna get to a different place in the future, like there are things about. Me that are gonna have to be different, that I’m gonna have to show up differently. Mm. You know, you talk in the book about this kind of tip about instead of thinking forward from today, like two years from now, I wanna be at this point with this goal to start in the future and mentally travel backwards to the present.

[00:33:47] So talk about the going home effect and why does that reverse mental time travel, make the future feel closer? And like in a case like mine, let’s make it really practical. How can I use that to help me be the CEO that’s gonna get us to that goal two years from now?

[00:34:02] Hal: Okay. I’ll, I’ll be like, I’ll sort of talk about the idea and then I’ll get practical.

[00:34:06] Yeah. Great. So, I mean, you know, here, here, here’s the, lemme make it simple. Think about the last time that you went to like a new restaurant. Okay. There, there’s the trip there, and then there’s the trip home. If I were to ask you which one felt faster, the trip there, or the trip home, what? What would you say?

[00:34:21] Megan: Oh, coming home? Yeah.

[00:34:21] Hal: Okay. Great. Phew. Yeah.

[00:34:24] Megan: Classroom demonstrations over.

[00:34:25] Hal: Yeah. Look, I feel this way all the time where it’s like. The trip there. What happens is you’re driving, you’re driving, you’re driving, you’re not there until, that’s the restaurant. Okay, I see it. I parked in front the trip home. You’re not there until you’re home, but you feel home and you, there’s, there’s always some marker that’s nearby.

[00:34:42] It’s like, okay, here’s the last traffic light home. Here’s that house on the corner, whatever it is, where you’re like, okay, now I’m home. Even if it’s still another 10 minutes, but it’s like, it just feels like you’re home. What we’ve found, and it’s kind of of strange idea, is that when, when we think ahead to the future, it’s like kind of this like trip in our mind and there’s this uncertain destination going to my future self.

[00:35:05] I don’t know him. I don’t know what the world is gonna be like when I go let, let me start in the future and kind of travel backwards. It just feels like that that distance feels shorter and the reason is, is similar to the driving to the restaurant. It’s like, okay, I’m coming back to sort of a certain location.

[00:35:21] Now, practically speaking, what that means and what we can do with that is. Rather than, like you said, Megan, rather than say, let, let me think ahead to two years from now and how I wanna get there. Let’s just start two years from now. What’s, look, tell me the story about two years from now and then I want you to walk backwards or travel backwards from two years from now to now.

[00:35:42] What are the things, you know, as you go that distance? What are the things that have happened? Where are the wins? Where are the things that you did? Right? Where are the losses? Where, where, oh man, that’s a stumbling block. What are the obstacles that arose? And the reason why this is a, a powerful exercise is because it can more concretely highlight what things could have gone wrong, what things could go right.

[00:36:06] And then to like almost circle back to the beginning of our conversation what you might be able to do about it right now.

[00:36:11] Megan: Yeah.

[00:36:12] Hal: In, in that exercise, if you realize, you know, I didn’t anticipate how, for instance, you know, if you’re in this type of business, how, if. The addition of tariffs could impact my business.

[00:36:22] All right, well, is there anything I can do about that right now? Do I need to be more conservative in another space? Is there some way I can hedge or buffer? Whatever that means. The basic idea is let’s go from that sort of like mental time travel trip

[00:36:36] Megan: mm-hmm.

[00:36:37] Hal: To the concrete obstacles that that may arise.

[00:36:40] And then again, the things I can do about it now.

[00:36:43] Megan: It’s kind of like a consultant that we work with will often say, when we’re talking about the future, if this fails, why? Yeah. And if it succeeds, why? Like, why did it succeed and why did it fail as though you’re already in the future. You’re starting, like you said, two years in this case, in the future.

[00:37:00] And to me that’s helpful because I notice the pitfalls that I don’t notice when I’m building a strategy. I have to, that’s a, it’s a different kind of strategy. It’s a different kind of question that elicits a different answer than when I say, how could I get to the future is very different than why did I win?

[00:37:18] Or why did I fail? Like those are just very, I don’t know. Somehow it’s mm-hmm. It puts me in the middle of it and the part of where it’s agency and it’s not theoretical and the world isn’t perfect and I’m like, oh yeah. ’cause I probably did that thing that I always do, you know,

[00:37:31] Hal: 100%. And research would call that a pre-mortem.

[00:37:34] Yeah. Yeah. Where I sort of think ahead to, to where this could have gone wrong. And I think both exercises together do this sort of reverse mental time travel and then do the pre-mortem. Yep. And I don’t mean to sound like too, uh, like jargony, but I think these exercises together can be really powerful.

[00:37:52] Yeah. Rather than just say, well, I hope it goes well, hope we meet our goals. I hope I become the different leader. It’s like, all right. And, and by the way, I do this whenever I have students, you know, I’m a researcher and my students and I run experiments and studies, and sometimes we’re working with companies and we’re doing like.

[00:38:08] Really time consuming and expensive work. And I say it’s two months from now and the, it didn’t work out what happened. And every time we do that we realize, oh, we gotta tweak this thing. And sometimes it still doesn’t work, but we learn something. But at least when we get there, I can say,

[00:38:23] Megan: yeah,

[00:38:24] Hal: we did everything we could to do it right.

[00:38:26] And we can’t control everything, but we can control some of it.

[00:38:37] Michael: Okay. I wanna talk about my favorite topic, technology.

[00:38:41] Megan: No

[00:38:41] Michael: good. And one of your more famous interventions where you show people digitally aged photos of themselves. Mm-hmm. And I think you famously had Jane Fonda go through this, your VR studio. Yeah. But, but talk about how you do it. How we can do it. What we

[00:38:56] Hal: could expect from that experience.

[00:38:58] By the way, I love that you mentioned Jane Fonda Michael. ’cause that’s one of those things where it’s like, now when I teach my 28-year-old MBA students, I wouldn’t say it ’cause it certain cultural references that land, this is, you know, some of my early research that that’s continued. And the, the basic idea here is if one of the things that really makes thinking about the future difficult is that the future is so abstract, then one thing we could do is just try to make it as concrete as possible.

[00:39:26] And one way to do that is visually I can show you an image of the future of your future self. Now, I mean, the funny thing is when we started this, which was about 2026, now we started this about 17 years ago, and. You can imagine the technology wasn’t as good then it, it did. What we did is we, you know, we used age progression.

[00:39:47] We worked with graphic artists. There were some programs, and we basically applied what’s called an age filter, and we, you know, we mimicked all the physiological things. I, I’m sure you don’t want me to talk about all the things that happened to our faces as we age, but we, you know, I’m living it, brother.

[00:40:02] We know what we’re talking about. We’re living it. Right. The worst part about doing this research is that I started when I was in my twenties and projected ahead till I was 65. And now that I’m in my later forties, I’m like, oh God, I look older now than I now, the reality is, what, what happened is we would then, in a variety of ways, we would show people their future selves.

[00:40:28] We sometimes we would do it in virtual reality where they would talk to their future self. We would do it online, whatever we did. But we found is that the people who were exposed to their future selves. We’re more likely to want to make changes and actually did make changes. Some, sometimes this is financial decisions, sometimes this is health, sometimes this is ethics.

[00:40:47] Now I’ve, I’m collaborating with some sort of like wiz kids at MIT where they’ve created this future you platform where you essentially talk to your future self. It’s just, oh wow. It’s actually, anybody can use this. If you, we can, I can, I can send you the link later. We can put it in the, that’s what the show notes.

[00:41:03] Yeah. In show notes. Um, my warning there is, this is sort of still in the beta mode and you, you gotta suspend disbelief a little bit. You’re sort of having this conversation with a technologically assisted future version of you. And if you do suspend disbelief, it’s a very powerful experience. And by the way.

[00:41:19] I went in not suspending disbelief, and it was still powerful. I went in kind of skeptical and I was like, oh my God. 30 minutes later I was still sort of chatting away. How can we apply this and what does it mean? Here’s what not to do. There’s now there’s all sorts of ways we can press a button and get a, yeah.

[00:41:37] Very realistic image of our future self. You can do this with pretty much any of the AI tools. There’s apps. Space App is one of my, I I’m not, I don’t have any sort of financial relationship with any of these companies, so I think the Face App is probably my favorite. I think they do a great job. Here’s what not to do.

[00:41:53] Don’t just like create an image of yourself and be like, I’m done. The idea here is that that imagery, the technologically assisted imagery, needs to be thought of as an Imagination Aid. It’s something that that can help you think more deeply about the future if you use it as such. In other words. Take that age progressed image and look at it and do that time travel exercise we were talking about, write a letter to that future self.

[00:42:22] Have that future self write a letter to you, which by the way, that’s a, that’s really hard mental exercise, but it forces you to step into the shoes of that future self. If we do that, that’s when we can really take advantage of the technology. But you know about, about a year or two ago, there was a trend on TikTok where people could age themselves and it was like, not just static, it was dynamic.

[00:42:46] You know what I’m talking about Megan? Yeah. And like it was so interesting ’cause you’d see like a 22-year-old with their girlfriend, you know, click a button and then they’re both there and they’re like laughing about it. And I had calls from journalists who would say, is this gonna make a lot of young people suddenly like, contribute to their 401k and start going to the gym?

[00:43:06] And I was like, no. ’cause this is sort of novel. It’s funny. If they’re using it as an actual imagination aid. Yeah, I think changes can happen, but if you just press the button and then go about the rest of your life and move on with your day, it’s not gonna make a difference. So it’s really about kind of using it to the full extent.

[00:43:25] Michael: I just thought of a image I’d like to generate. I’d like to try this on Gemini, which has that. Yeah. What’s a nano banana image generation thing? So upload a photo to yourself and say, okay, here I am at age, I’m 70. Here I am at age 90 doing pull-ups. Or here I am at age 90, you know, in a wheelchair or whatever.

[00:43:47] So, you know, just it’d, it’d be interesting to seek sort of the two futures

[00:43:51] Hal: and basically it’s my choice by the way. Come back to me. ’cause I’d love not only to know was I, I’d love, just as you know from a, I’m also sort of techno, like I, I get sort of geek out about this stuff. I just love to know like what it looks like.

[00:44:03] But I also like, I’d love to hear your opinion on like. From an emotional standpoint, what did that do? Yeah, what did you feel when you saw those? And I, I will, when I was working on the book, we have this great sort of marketing communications team here at UCLA and I’m in LA so a lot of the folks that work in this space used to be in Hollywood.

[00:44:23] And the guy who runs our team here said, you know, I got this idea. You can say no, but I think it’d be really fun to aid you and do a little video and just see what that would look like. And so he hired some Hollywood makeup artists and they came into my office and they spent four hours with me. So this is not like a technology thing.

[00:44:45] The last person they had done this to was Benedict Cumber back. And I was like, this is the strangest experience. And they do this thing and I look in the mirror just to tell you how real it was. I walk outta my office, I walk by one of my best friends here. He just walks right by me, just assumes there’s just an older guy walking through the building.

[00:45:05] And I go into the bathroom, they like sort of film me in the bathroom talking to myself in the mirror. And it was emotionally like an incredibly moving experience. It wasn’t happy, it wasn’t sad, it wasn’t lonely, but it was kind of a swirl of those things because I couldn’t stop thinking about what will I be feeling?

[00:45:29] Like what will my life look like when I’m, when I’m this guy and you know, who will my, the people I love be, what will they be doing? What’s the world gonna look like? It’s the question that I’ve asked before, but in, in a way that was. So much more emotionally rich. And so I’d be curious, you know, there’s a difference between having makeup artists do this to you for four hours and having Gemini do it and seeing the pictures on the screen.

[00:45:54] But like, if you really were to immerse yourself in it, Michael, I’d love to know like what does that experience look like for you to go from 70 to 90 and different options? And by the way, there’s a very good chance you’ll be doing pull-ups in 90, and especially now. Especially now. I’d like to know after now.

[00:46:09] Right. So, well,

[00:46:10] Michael: you know, yeah. My dad is 91 and still living, and he is in a wheelchair. Wow. But, uh, every time I visit him, you know, I get a little bit of picture about one of my futures could look like. Mm-hmm.

[00:46:21] Megan: And he, and he really lived most of his life in a time where thinking about the future self making decisions on behalf of the future self, like that was not kind of mainstream, you know, that was not as accessible, I think as it is now.

[00:46:36] I think people are talking about it a lot, right. In ways that are different and it just live in a different context with. Yeah, more choices and more affluence and things like that that make this accessible to many of us in ways that it kind of wasn’t before. But as we’re kind of, you know, nearing the end of our time together.

[00:46:51] Hal, the thing I keep thinking about is this concept of the future self in many ways is a way to get leverage in the present to reach your potential. Because we all know, like if we’re gonna become who we are capable of becoming, like I think we all have a sense of like, there’s more here than the way I’m showing up today.

[00:47:12] Like I have more potential and all that. The challenge is I have to do things today in order to get to that person. That person doesn’t just magically appear. That person, like you said earlier, is the sum total of, among other things, many other things, some of which we can’t control, lots of little choices that we make along the way.

[00:47:31] And so yeah. You kind of talk about this idea of temptation bundling and tangential immersion as like an a way of. Neurologically reducing the pain of doing stuff that we know we need to do today. We’re gonna become the person we wanna be in the future. Can you help make this really practical for us?

[00:47:50] Like, how do I get myself to do the things I need to do today so that I can become the person I wanna become tomorrow? I mean that’s Yeah, absolutely. Just that. If you can solve that for us, like we’re good. It’ll be a

[00:48:01] Hal: home run.

[00:48:01] Megan: Yeah.

[00:48:01] Hal: I’ll say it. Seriously. Last question. No pressure. Um, temptation bundling is a great concept.

[00:48:09] This is from Katie Milkman’s group at at Wharton. The basic ideas, and this kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, take anything that feels like it’s painful, unpleasant, et cetera, and pair it with something that’s a temptation. That’s good. You know, the classic example is you’re gonna work out, pair that workout with watching whatever show you wanna watch on Netflix or audio book that, you know, it’s fun, it’s your guilty pleasure.

[00:48:37] Megan: Yeah.

[00:48:37] Hal: But by the way. You can’t listen to that book. You can’t watch the show unless you’re working out. That’s the key there. So this isn’t like I’m up at night watching the newest show, and tomorrow I’ll go to the gym and watch it too. No, no, no, no. I’ve gotta pair it with the temptation to almost like jumpstart myself to do it.

[00:48:56] Megan: That’s the leverage. Um,

[00:48:57] Hal: that’s the leverage there. And I mean, I just think that concept is so powerful. Yeah. It’s, and it’s not just for exercises. You know, I, I talked to a financial advisor who says the hardest thing for couples to do is to sit down and have that conversation about money. Maybe not the hardest thing, one of the hardest things.

[00:49:15] And she always says, I always tell them to go on a Monday date, go out to dinner or have a glass of wine. Do whatever you want to do. That’s gonna be a fun night. And have the conversation there so that it’s not like, okay, after the kids go to bed, we’re tired, we’re exhausted, and, and now we’re gonna have this kind.

[00:49:30] It’s just not a recipe for success. Now, tangential immersion, this is, you know, another one that sounds kind of like a. Jargony. This is from my friend here at UCLA, Ali Lieberman. The idea there is that it, it’s, it’s like this other thing, temptation bundling. But the idea is that I’ve gotta be careful to match the, the experiences, the positive and negative experiences.

[00:49:54] Here’s a great example of brushing your teeth at night and in the morning it’s a twice a day thing. Um, and, and you can say, oh, well, teeth brushing, because that’s really that important. But, you know, I think we know from a lot of research, it’s not just for our teeth, but there’s really compelling work that there’s Exactly, and I, it took me a while to get around.

[00:50:12] Then I’m like, oh, this is, this is not just a, like, are my teeth clean and if I want ’em to really, you know, I really want to get the benefits. I gotta do for two minutes. Two minutes. Feels like an in interminably long time. If I’m just brushing my teeth and what her work suggests is, let me pair. That experience with something that’s immersive, but like not too immersive.

[00:50:32] If I’m like gonna go watch, I’ll brush my teeth and watch, you know, like a really engaging mystery while I do it. It’s like you might end up just kind of stuck. It’s like the show was too exciting and if I pair it with something that’s like not that interesting, like I’m gonna lose interest in both. So you gotta figure out like, is there a game I can play on my phone?

[00:50:53] I’m not trying to suggest more screen time, but is there,

[00:50:55] Megan: yeah, that’s great. Something though I can do

[00:50:57] Hal: that’s like equally exciting as the thing that I need to do is, is boring or painful And if I can kind of match them, that will predict. Persistence. That’s the idea that, so

[00:51:10] Megan: you can play solitaire, but only while you’re flossing your teeth with a one handed thing.

[00:51:16] Hal: There you go. There you go. That is really good. Or

[00:51:18] Megan: something like that. That’s powerful. That’s actually great. ’cause there’s all these little things that we normally would feel like are bad for us or we shouldn’t be doing. Like, you know, you don’t really wanna be spending much time playing Candy Crush on your phone unless you’re flossing your teeth or something like that, you know, and then knock yourself out.

[00:51:34] Right.

[00:51:34] Hal: And, but, but like, really importantly, don’t do it otherwise.

[00:51:37] Megan: Right. Like, save it. Yeah.

[00:51:39] Hal: Save it for that moment, you know? So you blame dopamine to it

[00:51:42] Megan: basically is what you’re doing, right?

[00:51:44] Hal: Exactly. Exactly. You know, I, I, my like guilty pleasure is, um, is like spelling B game. And you have put all the letters together and I

[00:51:51] Megan: mean, I don’t really know you, but I’m gonna just say that sounds so.

[00:51:54] Perfect for a professor. My guilty pleasure is a spelling me game. Of course. It’s

[00:52:00] Hal: okay. I love that. As it came outta my mouth, I regretted it. The other night I, I got caught up in it and I was brushing my teeth and I was like, I have one of the electric toothbrushes. And I was like, I’m going for another cycle here.

[00:52:12] ’cause I got,

[00:52:13] Megan: oh my gosh. It’s amazing.

[00:52:16] Hal: I love it.

[00:52:17] Michael: Well guys, we could go on for another hour. I know. This is so

[00:52:20] Megan: fun.

[00:52:21] Michael: The book is Your Future Self, how to Make Tomorrow Better Today, how in addition to buying and reading the book,

[00:52:30] Hal: how can people follow your work? halherschfield.com. It’s got, you know, my latest work.

[00:52:35] I also post a lot on LinkedIn about, you know, what I’m up to and my thoughts and stuff. Cool. And I think those are probably the best, the best ways. Yeah. And the books available wherever you buy your books. So Better books everywhere. Yeah, exactly. I really appreciate you having me on. Thanks. Glad I’ve learned time.

[00:52:47] It’s been a great conversation. Yeah,

[00:52:49] Megan: appreciate it.

[00:52:50] Hal: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:53:00] Michael: Okay, Megan, let’s start with you ladies first. What were your takeaways from this conversation with

[00:53:05] Megan: Al? Besides the fact that while I have never put Candy Crush on my phone, I think I’m gonna do it for toothbrushing. No, I’m just kidding. I actually loved that concept. That was the last thing we talked about.

[00:53:16] Temptation bundling. That was the phrase, right? Yes. And I love the idea. That we need to think about things that we wanna do in the future. How can we make them more sort of palatable to ourselves by linking them up with something that we actually enjoy? In some ways, I think, like he said, you know, those of us who are Gen X or or older, we kind of have this idea that like, if it’s, you know, worth doing, it should be hard and we should be able to just muscle through it and whatever.

[00:53:45] We could do hard things. We could do hard things. I mean, yes, that’s inescapable in life. It’s true. But when we think about the sustainability of habits, and I really, we didn’t really talk about habits specifically, but I think what he’s talking about are a lot of things that have to relate to habits. If you think about your future self, if we can link those up with something that we enjoy all the better.

[00:54:03] Michael: I had a breakthrough in that concept too because I, I kept thinking I’m struggling. I strength training no problem. ’cause I have a trainer that shows up at my house just like you do. Yeah. In fact, it’s the same trainer. But, um, my off days, getting myself out there to walk.

[00:54:17] Megan: Is

[00:54:17] Michael: a chore. I dread it. I’m inconsistent.

[00:54:21] And I thought, oh, back when I was consistent. It’s because, not just because I was listening to books, I was listening to novels.

[00:54:29] Megan: Really? I did not know that.

[00:54:30] Michael: Yeah. And so I have to go walk to get back to the story to learn what happens next.

[00:54:34] Megan: Yeah.

[00:54:34] Michael: So that’s a, a real pull. But here’s one, you, you know, you’ve listened to a podcast now on this topic, so that makes you an expert.

[00:54:40] Um, if you were consulting with me or if how were consulting with me, one of the challenges I have is doing the normal bread and butter, vanilla financial processing, like transactions, you know, and I’ve given that to an accountant in the past and they did a great job concept except that I lost contact.

[00:54:58] You mean coding your personal

[00:54:58] Megan: transactions? Like, uh, reconciling

[00:55:01] Michael: quicken. Let’s just be really,

[00:55:02] Megan: yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:55:02] Michael: So what temptation could I pair with that? Because that’s pretty immersive when you’re doing it.

[00:55:06] Megan: Yeah. You

[00:55:07] Michael: can’t really think about anything else.

[00:55:08] Megan: Yeah. Well, this has nothing to do with what we just talked about.

[00:55:11] Okay. But I actually just went through my own. Version of planning personal finances for next year. And I was saying that to kind of our point we’re talking, they’re like all these things that happen that are outside of your control, that derail me on stuff like that. Like we just went through this big medical crisis with Naomi that was on and off again for three plus months and you know, we were just kind of hanging on our fingernails during that time.

[00:55:31] Well my personal financial management during that time took a real backseat, which was okay, but like it’s not gonna be helpful if I continue that. So as I was working on this with Claude, I did like a whole big project and you know, like you can imagine you would probably do the same thing. One Claude is an

[00:55:47] Michael: artificial, oh sorry, intelligence CLA is not

[00:55:50] Megan: actually a person, but is an a AI platform and an LLMA large language model.

[00:55:55] And I was go, I was doing kind of a, a query back and forth and I was saying this plan that we had come up with was great. However, I know myself. I know my life and I know where I’m gonna get tripped up, and where I’m gonna get tripped up is life is gonna happen. Something will blow up with kids. You know, we have kids that have lots of needs and I’m not gonna be consistent with the habits that I need to be consistent with.

[00:56:22] Basically, I need to be consistent with number one, saving in a certain way. Number two, I need to not overspend. Budget, because those two things are related. Right? Well, what it came back with was fascinating. It basically said you need an execution plan that matches the reality of your life, not the thank you, not the agree ideal state.

[00:56:43] And so it said to me, you need to quit using Quicken. Like you’re using it. You basically need to automate all these different things. So basically said, um, you’re gonna automate three different, you’re gonna have three different accounts. One for things that don’t change. You’re just basically gonna have like, you know, like how you probably have your mortgage auto drafted, but the, all the things that are kind of in that camp, things that you’re not tempted to overspend and you can budget, you know, like your utilities, they’re variable, but they’re, you’re not gonna ever like go over your water bill budget.

[00:57:12] You know, like that’s not a risk. And then you need to determine, here are the, in my case, five to eight categories where I consistently go over budget, meaning I need to watch these things. Hmm. And it said. All you need to track is this. Don’t track any of that other stuff. It doesn’t matter. It’s not the problem.

[00:57:29] The problem exists in this very narrow band of things. And so it said deposit X amount of money in an account. And you basically watch that account and you watch it dwindle throughout the month and you pace your behavior. ’cause these are basically behavior driven risk factors. You know, like I go over on food, I go over on clothing, I go over on household supplies, like stuff I’ve ordered from Amazon, you know, uh, you know, my name is Megan and I have a problem with Amazon.

[00:57:57] Um, Amazon aholic. Amazon Aholic. And basically if I, no, I have X amount of dollars and it’s the middle of the month and I’ve outpaced what the middle of that is. I need to slow my role.

[00:58:09] Michael: Okay, this is brilliant. And I was

[00:58:11] Megan: like, yes, finally. Okay, but lemme

[00:58:13] Michael: just ask you at a practical level. This may just be peculiar to my personality, but I do things like when I do ’em, there’s a certain level of perfection that I have.

[00:58:21] Megan: Right? Well, and I don’t think

[00:58:22] Michael: it’s a, it comes, I’m not an Enneagram one, but I think it comes from like, if somebody in the future discovers my Quicken account, will they note that all the CAT transactions have been categorized appropriately? Well, which, what are you gonna do on a practical level?

[00:58:36] Megan: I mean, what I’m gonna do on a practical level is I’m going to just transfer.

[00:58:40] I’m gonna auto transfer that money to the card for the behaviorally driven stuff. And I, I think what I’m gonna do, and actually need to talk to you about this from an AI standpoint, I want to set up an auto text or an auto email that emails me the balance of that. So I don’t even have to do the act activity of going to check the balance and log in.

[00:58:59] Like I want it to come to me just like our, our, in our business, we get a daily cash report. I want that to come to me and. If it’s good, it’s good. And if it’s not good, I’m gonna slow my role because what I’m ultimately solving for is I’m not trying to be the master of Quicken, which is what I use. Also, I’m, I’m doing very much what you’re doing.

[00:59:18] I wanna be the master of reaching my long-term financial goals.

[00:59:22] Michael: So you’re not, you’re not gonna worry about reconciling accounts on Quicken and doing all that kind of stuff. I’m

[00:59:26] Megan: not, I’m gonna set it up where these other two accounts are ones that also have, uh, balances or, or deposits that are made to them.

[00:59:36] But those aren’t the ones I need to pay attention to. ’cause that’s not what’s getting me in trouble. What’s getting me in trouble is a handful of, of things that I know are the problem.

[00:59:46] Michael: Okay. So the lesson in this I have is go to your favorite large language model Yeah. AI and get it to brainstorm with you.

[00:59:56] And how can I create something that’s a temptation and couple it with something that I consider? Sort of torturous or at least boring.

[01:00:05] Megan: Yeah.

[01:00:05] Michael: And get some ideas because that’s where I, and that’s the best way to use ai, by the way, is a, as a co thinking.

[01:00:11] Megan: Right.

[01:00:11] Michael: Partner or a collaborator. Well,

[01:00:12] Megan: and I think too, kind of to the future self idea, the point your future self isn’t gonna be, you’re not gonna be high fiving your future self and your high, your future self is not gonna be high fiving your present self for reconciling your quickened transactions.

[01:00:26] Neither is mine. Literally.

[01:00:27] Michael: Nobody cares. No,

[01:00:28] Megan: nobody cares. ’cause no one knows. Yeah. It’s like a level of gee read that doesn’t matter. My future self is gonna high five me when I retire 20 years from now because I had enough margin in my personal finances to do the investment work that’s necessary to make that very comfortable when that time comes.

[01:00:48] And to do that, I need to be consistently not overspending and consistently taking that margin and doing the right things with that margin.

[01:00:55] Michael: That’s fabulous. Well, this is a great takeaway and I wish we had time to go on with some more takeaways, but that’s probably sufficient,

[01:01:01] Megan: probably sufficient.

[01:01:02] Michael: Okay, so guys, I hope this was a helpful episode for you.

[01:01:06] All the links that we talked about will be in the show notes, so check that out. And guys, if you would please review the show, post a rating, posting a rating’s, super simple. All you gotta do is select one to five stars, hopefully five stars. But then give us a review that’ll help us get visibility inside the Apple algorithm so that more people get exposed to this content.

[01:01:27] We’ll see you next time. Bye.