So… didn’t go too well, did it? It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard in principle. Our eyes are pretty amazing. They only register a narrow band of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, visible light. But there’s nothing that says it has to be exactly that way. It’s not too much of a stretch to suppose the proteins sitting on our retinas could be just a tad different. An amino acid tweak here and there, giving them the ability to recognize a broader EM range. You can imagine some CRISPR equipped mad scientist making that happen.

You don’t even have to imagine too hard. As it turns out, not all visual systems perceive the same wavelengths. Bees, for example, can’t see the reds tones that we do, but are able to detect into the ultraviolet range that’s invisible to you and I.

If you could see in that range, what would it look like? Extra purply purple? A violetness beyond violet? Well, no. Those are just colors that you can already see. When you try to imagine (which is really to ask you to simulate the experience of) a wholly new color, you run into a wall. The brain just can’t do it. You’d have better luck working on your dance moves and asking a bee.

The point of this exercise is to illustrate the impossibility of conceiving the experience of something we are not built to perceive. We can describe the wavelength of ultraviolet light and understand it as an abstraction or analogy, but we can’t experience it as a color. That particular electromagnetic frequency is outside the realm of our sensory experience, and consequently we can’t really imagine the sensation of seeing ultraviolet. It is, quite literally, inconceivable to us.

Conversely, other things are so deeply ingrained and hardwired into our perception that imagining either their absence or a different experience of them is equally unthinkable. Our intuitive, gut-level understanding of the world is bounded by how we experience it. Our perceptions structure our understanding in ways that are hard to recognize from the inside.

Edge cases, where something is broken, can help us glimpse outside of this box. Take something as fundamental as motion. It’s such a basic part of how we interact with the world that I struggle to imagine its absence. What would it even mean to experience the world without motion? Trying to picture it amounts to little more than my conjuring up a series of mental still-frames. Which I suppose is fairly accurate when everything is staying put. But what happens when someone stands up? Or a dog chases a squirrel? My brain hurts a little even attempting it.

Despite my difficulty, it turns out an unlucky few are broken in just the right way so as to make this their reality. A  neurologic condition, Akinetopsia, also known as “motion blindness”, renders sufferers unable to perceive motion. A mild form can be induced by medication, while a more severe version can be caused by stroke, trauma, Alzheimer’s, and other brain lesions. It is exceedingly rare, with only a handful of documented cases (I’ve certainly never seen it in the ER). It’s also extremely debilitating. Simple tasks like pouring coffee are challenging because the liquid appears frozen. The victim of this malady is unsure when to stop pouring, as they cannot perceive the movement of the fluid rising. Some such afflicted are able to see stationary objects, which then disappear when they move, only to reappear again when they are still. Others find crossing the street a harrowing experience as they can see cars but not their motion—is that truck stopped and waiting for pedestrians to cross or barreling though the intersection without heed?

Knowing about this condition doesn’t allow me to truly understand what these few unfortunates are subjected to. I can’t imagine it in perfect fidelity. I’m still limited to picturing still scenes, but now with objects and people appearing and disappearing, popping from one place to another. But perfect fidelity isn’t the point. The point is to crack the door and give me a glimpse. It’s a glimpse of something that I can never fully understand, but it’s also something I wouldn’t otherwise consider. I won’t ever experience what they do, but knowing about Akinetopsia gives me a hint of of a way of experiencing the world that my brain is simply incapable of.

The relevance of all this, bee vision and motion blindness, is how they illustrate constraints on our intuitive understanding of the world. We can only experientially know the things that we are built perceive (we can’t imagine colors we can’t see). And our experience is dictated by how our brains process sensory inputs (lacking a specific brain lesion you necessarily see motion—and can’t really imagine its absence). We are constructed to understand the world in very specific ways. It’s part of what makes us the very specific thing that we are—human.

Recognizing this opens the door to considering different ways in which the world could be experienced. Like trying to picture a new color, we can’t exactly see them or truly feel them with our minds. But while the details of these alternative perceptions may be out of our grasp, perhaps we can get a feel for the negative space they occupy. So that we might at least recognize certain deficits in our experience, perception, and cognition.

This brings me back, full circle, to the title of this post. You are a time traveler. We’re all time travelers. We just aren’t very good at it—we stink at it because we have no control over our journey. We can affect neither the direction nor the speed of our travel. We go in one direction, at one velocity. But we don’t really notice the trip. We realize time has passed in hindsight. We look back and realize we are not where we were and in some regards we aren’t even the same person anymore. We are like an unfortunate with motion blindness who looks out of the train window and sees that they are in one place, and then another, but without any sensation of movement between the two locales. We are time blind.

If I wanted to give this a Greek derived scientific name, I’d call it Achronotopsia. Though I prefer “time blindness”. It’s more visceral and textured than a sterile scientific-y name. Which is important, since we’re trying to get to a gut-level understanding of something we can’t fully know. We are aware of time, but mostly we recognize its passage in retrospect. We’re terrible at gauging the passage of time in realtime (no pun intended). Just ask anyone who’s lost track of time and ended up late for something.

We’re like the motion blind person who intellectually knows they are moving, but doesn’t feel it. We know we move through time—we look around and everything is different from how it was—but we can’t feel it either. Is it any wonder that we do such a poor job navigating our way through time? The akinetopsic person overflows their cup because they cannot perceive that the coffee is rising to fill it. The time blind make choices today which lead to harmful, and sometimes ruinous, results in the future. The disconnect between the choices we make and how we feel their future consequences is responsible for a great swath of human misery. Would anyone light up. that next cigarette if they could feel themselves hurtling towards lung cancer and chemotherapy? If the the dread of fumbling with an oxygen tank and gasping for air was as palpable as the fear caused by racing down a highway at reckless speeds would more people apply the breaks to their behavior to avoid that fate? Would more people step away from the cliff edge of a poor diet if they more vividly anticipated the prize of type 2 diabetes—insulin injections, dialysis, and amputated toes and feet?

I think they would. I think our blindness to our futures, our inability to see how every day the choices we make creates those futures, prevents us from choosing a path through time that gets us where we actually want to be. We can’t select the direction or speed we travel through time, but we can pick the road we follow. There are countless possible future versions of ourselves. Who we are now is the result of the choices made by our past selves and who we will be is constantly being determined by the choices we make now. The greatest challenge in how you live your life is making choices that create the future you want, rather than the future that’s the result of the easiest and most immediately satisfying choices.

Most of us are, to some extent in the various dimensions of our lives, the result of the path of least resistance. But it’s not just that we’re too lazy to do something harder now that will benefit us more in the future. Often the thing that’s better for us over a longer time horizon is only marginally more difficult or less immediately satisfying than what, to our detriment, we actually choose. They’re not so onerous—an apple and a walk isn’t insurmountably harder than cupcake and sofa. The problem is the necessary outcomes of our behaviors, good and bad, aren’t felt at the time of choice. They not only aren’t felt, because of our time blindness, they can’t be felt. Without that gut level feel for what our choices lead to, it can be difficult to choose something just a little harder now, even if takes you to a far better future.

So where does that leave us? Hopeless resignation? Evening plans for a box of wine, bucket of fried chicken, and pack of Marlboro Reds?

Not so fast! Even though we’re blind to the passage of time as it occurs, there are things we can do to select the futures we want and increase our ability to steer towards them. You can’t intuitively navigate time, but you can use tools to get where we want to be. They’re the same sort of tools you’d use for any journey. In the next edition we’ll take a look at making the map you’ll need for your trip.

-TheTimeDoc

-Almost anyone who’s ever been to a party.

Most of us who enjoy a drink or two from time-to-time have, on occasion, found ourselves more than just one or two deep—sometimes considerably more—to great regret the following morning. Finding oneself in that unfortunate condition, trembling hands massaging clammy forehead, most have muttered, “I’ll never drink again.” Usually these utterances are not quit audible, just shy of a whisper. Which is a good thing, as it leaves no witness to hold them to account on the next occasion that ‘just a few more’ seems like a great idea. And usually there is a next time.

This happens to people who drink frequently and to those who rarely imbibe. Nearly everyone who enjoys alcohol, from the hardcore alcoholic to the truly “social” drinker, understands that at some point in the future circumstances will be such that they will overindulge and wake up uncomfortable. And perhaps most notably, they will be racked with regret over their choices the prior night. This is extraordinary because they’ve experienced this same regret previously. The script has played out before. The night-time version of you prioritized the fun of the moment over the morning version’s comfort.

In general these sorts of trade offs are perfectly normal. All decisions have consequences, and when deciding between courses of action the value of the different outcomes are weighed against each other. We can’t have it all. A luxurious and delicious dinner may be packed with more calories than you might otherwise find acceptable if not balanced against the particular delight of the meal. An expensive vacation, while not in line with long-term financial goals, may be judged ‘worth it’ because of the memories made with loved ones.

But the example of a night of uninhibited drinking and next-day repercussions seems different from most trade-offs we make. If I choose a financially ill-advised trip, after I return I can at least bask in the recollection of good times while dealing with the fall-out. But if I drink to excess I might not even remember the fun I had the night before. The night-me made the decision, and reaps the benefits, while the next-morning-me exclusively suffers the consequences.

And those consequences can be significant (I’ve seen them—remember, I’ve worked in an ER for over ten years). They can range from ‘just’ a hangover to significant legal, financial, health, and relationship problems stemming from alcohol-induced poor decision making. Witnessing the regret of a newly sober patient over the damage done by their intoxicated self the night before can be heartbreaking. Sometimes they’ve done damage that permanently alters the course of their life. All because of decisions they often don’t even remember making. Facing ramifications (even if just a headache) of decisions that aren’t even recalled gallingly highlights the power imbalance between the past and present versions of oneself. It’s hard not to feel like being subject to the whims of another person entirely.

In a way it’s surprising this ever happens more than once. First time night-you may be ignorant of what the morning brings. But the next time the same decision is made, some-other-night-you has the full knowledge of what next-morning-you will suffer—because they suffered it. What gives? I know what you’re thinking. It’s the obvious answer. And, I think, the correct one. Gonna-have-fun-tonight-you doesn’t set out planning to drink too much and do dumb stuff. But after the disinhibiting effects of the first drink or two kicks in, they’re much less concerned with how did-I-do-that-again-last-night-you will feel in the morning. All of a sudden the knowledge that hangovers suck doesn’t seem so important.

So, if there’s such a straightforward explanation (the effects of alcohol on the brain), why bother discuss it? My first point is to evoke the vividness of personal experience. Most adults have had at least one morning steeped in misery because of the sauce.

My second objective with the drinking example, thanks to alcohol’s ability to cloud memory, is to highlight the curious way that time affects how we make choices. Our decisions are largely based on when we will feel the consequences of our actions, not on the real value of those consequences—positive or negative. We treat our future selves, who will experience the consequences of our actions, as if they were someone else entirely (someone we may not even like given how miserable we are willing to make them). In the case of alcohol, where the future morning-you may not even remember what last-night-you did, that feels intuitively true. Alcohol, when overindulged in, functions like liquid Severance.

For those not in the know, Severance is a pretty great show made by Apple. The main plot device is that the characters have undergone a surgical procedure called ‘Severance’ which renders them unable to remember any of their outside life while at work. The reverse is also true, at home they have no idea what their work involves.

The ability of booze to separate us from an earlier version of ourselves (at least for a few hours) in both awareness and identity is unique to the chemical properties of ETOH. But it highlights something fundamental about how our brains work. It’s the chemical exception that proves the rule. Because it turns out our brains do something like this all the time. Which explains some of why we find it so hard to make those choices where the positive results are only realized in the future.

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The brain, as 3 pound wads of jelly go, is pretty self-involved. This is no big surprise, let’s be honest, most people are pretty self-involved. But the brain takes it to a whole other level. Now I’m not criticizing the brain here. It’s got a big job, driving a human around and calling the shots to get that person through their day intact is no joke. This responsibility obviously requires pretty serious self-focus. The brain’s habit of paying close attention to oneself makes even more sense when you consider that the modern human brain hasn’t changed for tens of thousands of years. It evolved in a time when every day was a struggle for survival. Bad choices had more significant consequences than a miserable morning. In fact, bad choices tended to prevent you from making any choices ever again. So it makes sense that the brain, which developed in a much less forgiving world than we live in now, is all about itself. It was literally made to ensure our moment-to-moment survival. But everything in life is a tradeoff. And while the brain’s relentless focus on the self in the present served us well during our evolutionary history, it presents us with some difficulties and surprises today.

The brain always knows who it is, but it loses sight of who it was and is partly blind to who it will be. Past and future may not matter much in a prehistoric world of daily and immediate threats. In that setting surviving is thriving. But in the modern world (at least in the developed world) our daily survival is all but guaranteed, and how we thrive is the result of actions taken, and not taken, over years. In the current environment a strong concept of the future-self is important for making choices that culminate over years. Unfortunately, to the brain the future-self is a stranger.

Functional magnetic resonance imagine (fMRI) allows researchers to examine which parts of the brain are more active during certain cognitive processes by tracking blood flow. Translation: We can scan your head while you’re thinking about certain things and looking to see where all the work is being done.

Certain areas of the brain, collectively referred to as cortical midline structures (CMS), activate when research subjects think about both themselves and other people.

But they don’t light up equally. They turn on more powerfully and in different patterns when thinking about oneself than someone else. This is not surprising. As we’ve discussed, the brain’s job involves paying close attention to what you’re doing to make sure you don’t screw anything up. It wouldn’t do to step into traffic or make a grievous faux pas at work. It’s thought that the neural circuits in the CMS serve to locate information on a spectrum of connection and importance to the self. Studies show CMS activity is directly related to self-relevance. Its activity increases linearly with increasing relation to the self.

OK, nothing too crazy so far… Here’s the curveball.

When you think about yourself in the past, the brain looks like you’re thinking about a stranger. The pattern of CMS activation, the brain circuitry that’s turned on, treats your past-self as a different person from who you are today. You may ask—so what? After all, don’t we frequently use the language of change about ourselves? I’m sure you’ve heard someone express the notion that, “I’m not the person I was.” This study suggests it’s more than a turn of phrase, it implies that the the physical process of thinking involves Severance between past and present. You may ‘know’ that you are the same person you were a year ago, but at the hardware level your brain treats them as different. There is you, who exists now, and there was… someone else.

If that’s where it stopped, I might shrug my shoulders. The past is, after all, past. And your prior-self is actually gone forever, living on only in how its actions and experiences helped mold your current-self. Perhaps there’s no significance to this feature of how our brains process our past, and it’s just how the mental filing cabinet works. I can even image a just-so explanation. For instance, thinking about our past in the same way we think about our present could subject us to excessive rumination and regret. In this case, placing the past-self in the mental category of ‘other’ may keep us focused on the present, where we take the actions that create our futures.

And that’s what it’s all about, right? The future. The only action we can ever take is now, in the present, but the impact of that action spreads across our futures. It seems natural that our mental focus and sense of self should reside where our actions matter and their impact felt, now and into the future.

Only it doesn’t…

Like the reveler with a few drinks under their belt who loses sight of how they’ll feel in the morning, your future-self is a stranger to you. We’ve talked about delayed discounting before, the way in which people value things less the farther away in time they are. This phenomenon underscores why it’s so hard to make decisions and take (sometimes difficult) actions that benefit you only in the future. But it’s not just a behavioral pattern observed by psychologists. Your brain, as reflected in CMS activation patterns, treats thinking about yourself in the future the same way it treats thinking about yourself in the past. Like someone else. A brain that treats the future-self as an ‘other’ seems poorly equipped to make choices in your future’s best interests.

In pursuit of living a long, healthy, vibrant, and financially secure life this appears to be a debilitating deficit—though from an evolutionary point of view, given the importance of attention to the immediate for our ancestors, an understandable one. It certainly plagues many who would like to live their lives differently, yet find themselves unable. But like all things human, it varies. And the variance may show a way out of the trap.

Everyone engages in some degree of delay discounting. We all value things now more than in the future. But not everyone does it to the same degree. That should be obvious. We all know people who save scrupulously for the future at the expense of current pleasures, while on the other hand we’ve encountered those who can’t seem to think a day ahead and seem to spend every dollar they have. This behavioral variation isn’t random. The degree to which someone devalues things in their future is directly related to how strongly that person feels connected to their future-self. That seems intuitive, if I’m more connected to my future-self I’m more likely to take that person into consideration with my choices.

But it’s not just a matter of how you feel, it’s how the brain works. Research subjects with lower rates of discounting (devaluing) future outcomes have stronger self-identification with their future-selves. AND under fMRI scanning their brains look similar when thinking about both their future and current-selves. While the brains of research subjects who don’t feel connected to their future-selves and who devalue the future more strongly look like they are thinking about someone else when thinking about their own future.

I started this project to explore the science around why we don’t make good choices that benefit us over time and what we can do to make better choices. This explains some of the why and opens the door to how we can do better for ourselves. People who are connected to their future-self have brains that work differently, they process the future-self more like the right-now-self. Not surprisingly, these people act in ways that takes the well-being of their future-self into consideration.

This is what we should all want for ourselves. Who we are and our current circumstances are the result of the choices we made in the past. Our choices today make our futures. We have all looked back and regretted certain choices. We would have less occasion for regret if  we made decisions with greater consideration for who we want to be in the future and what we want our lives to look like.

To move things in this direction, the lever to push on appears to be the connection to ones future-self. Building a stronger connection and a deeper sense of identification with the person you will become could be a powerful tool in helping you change your direction, navigate your future, and cultivating the life that you want.

- TheTimeDoc

I’m not saying you’re always sad. Or even that you’re mostly sad. But I am willing to bet that there are certain things you wish were different. Behaviors that you do, but wish you didn’t (smoking, drinking too much, procrastination, fast-food on the regular, leaving your clothes on the floor).  And behaviors you don’t do that you wish you did (consistently eating well, exercising regularly, cultivating productive work habits, calling your mom every Sunday). Thinking about these things makes you sad. Maybe a little bit sad for a moment or two, and maybe a lot bit sad most of the time. And beyond your feelings about these behaviors is the whole other layer of what you think would be materially different about your life if you did/didn’t do the behaviors in question (look great in your underwear, better dating/marriage, less lonely, more energy, better career/higher pay, your dog loves you more). You get the idea.

Feelings of guilt and regret about such things can have a real impact on our wellbeing and how we feel about ourselves. But maybe they should? Or at least maybe some of them should? I wouldn’t recommend anguishing over leaving some dirty dishes in the sink (unless you live in some roach infested flophouse—then you should feel bad about not cleaning up). Guilt about that kind of thing is a trap. In the absence of a real negative impact, it just makes you feel bad. And feeling bad, even about something trivial, makes it harder to do other things that require some effort but which will make you feel better.

But some of the things we stress about are legit harmful. I don’t self-identify as a moralistic scold, but maybe we should feel bad about those things. Perhaps negative feelings about them, while not pleasant to experience, are the appropriate response to self-damage. In my own experience, while I don’t like feeling bad, I don’t feel bad about feeling bad about the things I do that are bad for me. I’ve gotten over guilt and shame about things that don’t matter much (like the quality of the previous sentence—yuck). But I can’t bring myself to take a positive stance on things that are empirically negative.

Now, just to clarify, this isn’t some pop-psych morsel where I now dispense some tips on how you can avoid feeling bad about these things. And I won’t pretend this doesn’t amount to something of a Catch-22. When you feel bad about yourself, even justifiably, taking difficult action is harder. And changing significant things about how you live your life certainly constitutes difficult.

The point I’m trying to make is that many of our dissatisfactions are rooted in real things that we should be dissatisfied with—because they’re harming us. Some of them are killing us. I’m an ER doctor. I’ve seen the devastation caused by behaviors of both omission and of commission. It doesn’t take a ‘scientician’ or a ‘medicalogist’ to recognize  that the things putting us in the ground are overwhelmingly driven by behavior. Americans are dying because of the things we do and don’t do. Our choices are killing us.

This isn’t a ‘Don’t they know what they’re doing is bad for them?!?!’ rant. Of course they know that, they’re not stupid. And I’m not here to wag my finger and tut-tut. As satisfying as taking a position of smug moral superiority can be, I’m more interested in understanding, and perhaps solutions. Why it is so hard to stop doing things that are manifestly bad for us and to start doing things that are good for us? I’d like some insight into how we can be better to ourselves. That sounds straightforward. But if you consider the difficulty of losing weight (as one example), making change appears to border on the impossible. Despite what Nike has told us, we can’t ‘Just Do It’.

I recognize that not everyone is suffering the ravages of metabolic syndrome or the like. But even if they fall short of the sort of slow motion suicide I see play out in the ER, we all have things about ourselves that we wish were different. And while many of those things are in our control, we have failed to control them.

Now, just to clarify, I’m not some relentless quantified self, productivity focused, tech dude-bro obsessed with “optimizing” my life. Nor am I some woo-woo-weirdo promoting pseudo-spiritual “best-life” manifestation. But I do believe we all deserve to live the lives we want. We should be able to execute on the choices we want to make, and select the actions that lead to the outcomes we desire.

None of us deserve to be unhappy with the results of our own choices. We should be content with the consequences of what we pick—Because it’s what we picked! Instead we struggle with discontent created by our own actions.

Time is the frame through which I’m examining the ways we make, and fail to make decisions. It’s a neglected lens, and because our minds do a uniquely bad job at making choices where the desired outcome is in the future, a critical one. If we want to arrive in a future we’re happy with and become the version of ourselves we want to be, we need to develop the correct tools for navigating time.

The first step in any journey is knowing where you’re going. Otherwise you’re just wandering. So of course you need a map. A map marked with your destination, the vision of the future you want. But a map with just a destination is worthless. To be a useful navigational tool you need to know both where you are and where you want to be. With those two pieces of information you can chart a course from how you are now to who you want to be in the future.

Where to start with this? I’d suggest the best place to start is where you’re unhappy. Particularly those things you are unhappy with because they’re objectively unacceptable. Look at the gap between the way things are now and the way they would need to be to become acceptable. These are two points on your map. Your starting point, and your “X marks the spot”.

Once these points are plotted you can fill in the rest of the map to plot the best course through the most favorable terrain to reach your goal. But the first step is selecting your goals. And minding the gap around the things you are and should be unhappy with is a great place to start.

- The TimeDoc

You see, I’m an Emergency Physician. I’ve been practicing in a mid-sized hospital on the rural/suburban cusp in the midwest since completing my residency at an urban Level 1 Trauma Center. It’s been over ten years now and every single shift the overwhelming majority of my patients are people who are the principle cause and architect of whatever issue (from mild to life threatening) is troubling them.

For most of that decade on the front lines of illness and injury, I was content to shrug my shoulders and dive into diagnosing and treating whatever vexed my patients. In the Emergency Department (it’s way more than just a room) we deal primarily with the ‘what next’ rather than the ‘why’. Of course thoughts of the ‘why’ always cross my mind. But they rarely cross my lips. At least not beyond a snide comment to a coworker or something muttered under my breath as I enter orders into the computer. You see, it’s rarely productive to discuss the ‘why’ with patients. They know. My saying something about their smoking, obesity, medication non-compliance, alcohol overindulgence, drug abuse, lack of exercise, reckless ladder use, careless discharge of firearms, etc. does nothing to help their situation. It only serves to undermine their belief that I want to help them. Judgement, while perhaps a natural human response, is from a practical point of view not useful.

Modern medicine is pretty amazing. It’s also amazingly limited. I can nudge things in a favorable direction. Nebulizers and steroids for COPD, maybe call respiratory therapy to put them on BIPAP. Heparin and aspirin for a myocardial infarct plus/minus a beta-blocker depending on when they’re scheduled for the cath lab. These interventions help. But by the time I administer those treatments the damage is largely done. It’s not quite just rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship, medical interventions do help. But mostly, the ship is going down. It’s just a matter of when. If I meet someone new (outside of work), and I’m feeling cynical, I answer the inevitable, “What do you do?” with, “I delay the inevitable” or, “I deal with bad decisions and their consequences.”

People find those responses either baffling or unprofessionally nihilistic. But they are honest and true. The inevitable outcome of everyone’s choices will come, because all decisions have consequences. Which brings us back to the ‘why’. Why do people insist on making decisions that inevitably shorten their lives and degrade the quality of the life they have?

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Recently this question, which had been smoldering in the back of my mind, moved to the front of my brain. During a rare slow night shift, for some reason I can’t recall, I decided to look into some of the literature around procrastination (no I wasn’t ignoring a looming deadline). What I found was fascinating. One of the main themes is that we differentially value rewards based on how close we are to those rewards in time. That is to say, a reward in the short term is prioritized more strongly than a long term reward. This is true even when the reward with the longer time horizon is bigger and more valuable, and when the more immediate indulgence undermines the longer term benefit. There is an obvious evolutionary argument for this tendency—we evolved in a world of scarcity, rather than the current overabundance of the developed world. Seeking immediate rewards was more likely to contribute to our ancestors’ survival than pursuing longer term benefits that would never be realized if they failed to live through the day.

This time biased tendency to prefer the immediate over the long term noted in procrastination (in the case of a student for example: enjoying video games now vs a good grade on a thoroughly prepared term-paper due at the end of the semester) applies to other poor behavioral decisions (enjoying a cigarette now vs the benefits of better health that come with quitting). It turns out that our relationship with time is one of the main determinants of how we make decisions that impact us across time.

While there is obviously a huge interest in human behavior amongst the public, particularly in how to control it—evidenced by the enormous size of the self-help industry and the flurry of books and articles about how to change behaviors and habits—I’ve found little attention to the connection between time and behavior in the lay press. I’m starting this newsletter as on outlet for my own curiosity and in the hope that others find this avenue of inquiry interesting. Even better if they benefit from what I learn.

I’ll be exploring the scientific and lay literature around behavior and habit with a particular focus on how they are impacted by our experience of time. Sometimes this will take the form of my take on a scientific paper or a book in the popular press. In other posts I may synthesize some of what I have learned. I might even include some wild-eyed speculation about what it all means.

I hope others find this interesting. My impression is that this niche of behavioral research is underexposed and has the potential to illuminate a great deal about what we do and why we do it. Perhaps it can even offer strategies for changing our behaviors that are not part of the standard playbook. I suspect there’s a lot that can be useful to people just hiding in plain sight. This area of knowledge is new to me, so we’ll be learning and exploring it together. I don’t claim any authority or special knowledge and I’m going to approach it with humility, respect for the people who did the actual work, and above all else—curiosity.

Changing direction isn’t easy. Making different choices and forming new habits is hard. I find framing these difficulties as a consequence of how we’re impacted by time to be clarifying. Because cultivating the life you want is really a matter of learning to navigate your future.

-TheTimeDoc

PS- Of course it goes without saying that none of what you read here constitutes medical advice. These posts represent an exploration of research and ideas I find interesting, but which falls outside my area of professional expertise or training. I am a doctor, but I don’t play one on the internet.

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