rst, because we are putting of action until the future, we get the reward that we discussed with giving in to feel good. We feel good now that the intention is for future action. At the very least, we feel relief that we are not on the hook to act now.
Second, we are imagining ourselves engaged in some future action that we perceive will make us happy. This is pleasant in and of itself. Health behaviors are good examples here. If we intend to go for a run tomorrow, we feel good about ourselves for making such a proactive health-related intention. Good for us!Our current affective state is positive, and we incorrectly forecast that our afective state tomorrow at the intended time of the run will be the same.
There is nothing like a righteous intention now for action later to make us feel good."I'll run tomorrow.""I'll do that assignment tomorrow.""I'll write that report later."Happiness now, pay later (or not, as the case may be) . Unless we can get better at"mental time traveling, "where we can set intentions with clearer knowledge about how we will feel about taking action in the future, we will continue to be predictably irrational with our procrastination.
STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE
We need a two-pronged approach to increase the likelihood that we will act on our intentions. One strategy is"time travel."The other is to expect to be wrong and deal with it.
Strategy#1-Time travel
As numerous psychologists who study affective forecasting have advocated, we need to use mental images of the future more often and more accurately. We need to represent the future as though it were happening in the present. For example, a person who is procrastinating on saving for retirement might imagine as vividly as possible living on his or her potential retirement savings. To make a future image like this more concrete and accurate, it may be important to set out some numbers for a budget and take into account the reality of the need for, and increasing expense of, health care in old age
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