About this episode

Hal Hershfield discusses how our connection to our future selves influences our choices and offers practical tools to improve decision-making.

Why do we procrastinate, overspend, or neglect habits we know matter? In this episode, UCLA professor Hal Hershfield reveals how our connection (or lack of connection) to our future selves shapes everything from health and finances to ethics and life satisfaction. Drawing on decades of research, Hal introduces practical tools—including reverse time travel, temptation bundling, and vivid imagination exercises—that help close the gap between intention and action. This conversation is equal parts science, story, and strategy for anyone who wants to live with more agency and hope. Memorable Quotes “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.” “People 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.” “It may be scary at first to recognize that my life could look different in 10 years…

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