328. Understanding Time Discounting: Overcoming Procrastination and Achieving Goals (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 328 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about time discounting.

Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer. Hello.

Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about one of my favorite concepts, hyperbolic time discounting.

Or as I like to call it.

The I'll Start Monday effect. This is one of those concepts that makes so much sense once you learn.

About it, and it can be so.

Unbelievably helpful in getting things done once.

You are aware of it.

And it can really hold you back when you're not. Whether you want to be more productive at work, procrastinate less, make healthy eating choices, exercise more, save more money, or a whole host of other things, understanding time discounting is key to getting that done. And of course, in addition to understanding why this matters for you personally, it's also important to know how this impacts your team members and your customers. We will of course, get into all that in the episode. This episode originally aired in June of 2019, and because it's one of my very favorite concepts, I've been waiting for the perfect time to refresh it. So what's coming on Friday that made.

This the perfect refresh right now?

It is my conversation with Hal Hirschfeld.

About his new book, your Future Self.

Which is absolutely all about this concept of time discounting.

I really love this book, surprise Surprise.

And can't wait to share it with you. And what better way to get excited for that episode than to learn all about time discounting today? If you aren't yet subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now would be a great time to do that to ensure that you don't miss that one or any other episodes right when they come out. Before we jump into the episode, I want to be sure you know that there are links for everything in the show notes, including your free time discounting.

Worksheet, past episodes, books like your future.

Self, as well as articles and a full timestamp summary of the episode. It's all waiting for you in the show notes, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 328 all right, let's talk about time discounting.

So what is time discounting? And why do I love this concept so much? Well, I've alluded a few times to the general idea and why I call this the I'll start Monday effect. But for any of you who've not heard me mention it before, I'm going to start at the beginning. Have you ever said you would start your diet or exercise plan or quit smoking or be more organized or whatever it is on Monday? Ah, Magical Monday. You may even go through and plan out a whole month of your new exercise plan in advance, picking classes you'll go to or routes you'll run. Not saying I've done this about a million times. But then, as Sunday evening draws to a close, your willpower is feeling as strong as it could possibly be. You lay out your gym clothes. You set your alarm for 5am and slip into bed, eagerly awaiting the new you. In what feels like mere minutes, you're jarred from your slumber by that obnoxious beeping noise.

Five o'. Clock.

Already your foggy brain wonders, and your thoughts are filled with oh man, I obviously didn't sleep as well last night if I'm this groggy. And is that a hint of a sore throat? Maybe today isn't the best day to start exercising after all. I mean, I want to be safe while I'm out there. It looks like it might be raining if I let myself sleep in now. I'll definitely get up tomorrow and run. And that will be day one. A great day one. Yeah, that's a better idea. Before you know it, you're all snuggled back under your comfy blanket and back in dreamland. And of course, things don't look any better when you wake up Tuesday morning. So what happened? Why do you feel like a completely different person when the alarm goes off than the person who set the alarm the night before? Because in many cases, you are. Let me explain. When we think about ourselves, a certain part of the brain lights up, and it does this differently when we're thinking about ourselves versus thinking about someone else. For any of the students listening and supplementing their learning. As I know there are many of you, this is the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, or vmpfc. So when I'm thinking and talking about myself, the brain will light up more actively than if I'm thinking or talking about my husband, Aaron. Let's say if I said I'm running, it will light up more than if I said Aaron is running. But for most of us, and especially for particularly impatient people, when we talk about our future selves. The brain lights up as if it is talking about a completely different person. So on Sunday night, when I'm committing Future Molina to get up at 5am and run, my brain finds that really easy to do because I'm thinking and talking about someone else as far as it's concerned. But who wakes up when the alarm goes off? That's right, me. Present Melina. And my brain thinks, wait, you mean I have to do that stuff? Hmm, I bet I'll be ready tomorrow. But again, that's recommitting Future Melina, who I'm guessing is super awesome. She has a six pack and eats only healthy food and climbs mountains. So you can see the problem of time discounting and how it impacts us all every single day. As you know from the episode on past versus Future biases, we have a hard time judging the difference between what we want today and what's best for us tomorrow. And we tend to value benefits closer to the present day or time as bigger than those in the future. Even though we know we want to eat healthy. People don't always make the right decision in the moment. For example, as I mentioned in episode 49, when planning meals for the coming week, 74% of people chose fruit. When the food was for the current day, 70% chose chocolate. This combines with status quo bias. People like things the way they are and don't want to put in effort to change, and it keeps them from saving money, signing up for retirement plans, and all sorts of other stuff. If you've ever heard about the experiment where a child was given a marshmallow and told they could either eat the marshmallow now or wait a minute or however long to have two marshmallows. That's essentially testing this concept in action. And while there are some people who are more likely to be impacted by impatience than others, those who live in the moment and don't consider the consequences and want all their benefits now. For the most part, we aren't either exclusively good at this or bad at it. It's more like we're great at this in some situations, but terrible in others. Someone could be great at saving money and terrible at going to the gym. Another could be great at counting calories, but doesn't know the first thing about their finances. When looking at this from your business perspective and in understanding more about yourself, which we'll talk about both later on in the episode, try to think about the concept in general and how it could apply to you, your peers, and current or potential customers. When I've talked about this in the past, you may have heard me use the term hyperbolic time discounting and why I tried to refrain from using terms like that when I'm working with clients, speaking or on the podcast. It just throws out big words that are more confusing than they are helpful for most of us, and that's why I came up with the I'll start Monday effect. It's easy to understand and remember. The term hyperbolic time discounting shows us that the way we discount is not consistent over time, and studies have found it does not occur at a rate that is either constant or or linear. To show you how we would test something like this, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. Okay? First, would you rather receive $100 today or $120 one month from today? Got your answer? Okay, next question. Would you rather receive $100 a year from today or $120 a year and one month from today? If you're like most people, you're happier to wait the extra month for the bigger reward when it's all further out in the future. So you are more likely to choose $100 today over getting $120 in a month. But you are more likely to choose the $120 in 13 months over $100 in 12 months. Why? The amounts are the same and the time distances between the amounts are the same of one month. So why does your preference change? It's sort of like if you already have to wait a while, you might as well wait a little longer. But if the difference is between basically now and waiting a while, our brain sort of shuts off the logic it would need to realize the benefit of waiting. In a logical world, we would ask, what percentage would my hundred dollars now earn for me over the next month? And how does that compare to the 20% growth it would see? If I were to be patient, what would I buy today with that $100 that would generate more than an extra $20 in value? And how would I feel if this was all taking place a year from now? Unfortunately, our lazy brains, which is the topic of an upcoming episode on biases, don't take the time to do all this logical thinking and the subconscious wins out with its present focused mentality. I'm guessing that at this point you can see at least one time that you've been a victim to time discounting, be it with a diet, exercise, money saving, marshmallow treats, whatever. If not, take a minute to pause here and think of some of the ways this has impacted you, because I guarantee it's come up at least once or a hundred times. This happens to everyone, and that's the first thing to learn about time discounting. You shouldn't feel bad about having given in to these sorts of temptations and your brain's future bias in the past all humans are made this way. It's part of our genetic wiring. If you've found it hard to change behaviors in the past, it's because it truly is hard. It goes against our nature in many ways, but that doesn't mean it can't be done or that you can't make changes in the future, even if you've struggled in the past. And while I'm not going to dig into it too deep here, if you've not yet listened to episodes 21 and 22 on habits, I would definitely recommend you revisit those after this one. There are links in the show notes for you, but again, Those are episodes 21 and 22. Like I said, I do have good news for you though. Just because it's hardwired in our brains to think this way doesn't mean you can't change your behavior. On the contrary, understanding how this concept works and how it's genetically conditioned in your brain brain allows you to set up a sort of brain hack so you can work with your brain to change and accomplish your goals. And yes, there are several studies that have started to prove this and you can also use this in working with your customers brains natural tendencies to help them to make better choices and to work more with your own business. I went into detail on this coming piece in episode 20 on defaults, and in this on choice architecture and nudges. But when left to their own devices, most people will stick with the status quo even if it's not in their best interest. Inertia is real and it's very powerful. And the motivation to do something, anything is often not enough to overcome the present brain's desire to not tackle big tasks or projects or change things too much. For example, everyone should put enough money into retirement to be able to sustain them when they stop working working someday. Everyone would likely agree that they would like to finish working eventually and be able to enjoy a retirement where they can live better than they did as a poor college student. But does everyone put enough money away? Of course not. One big influencer of this is time. Discounting along with that power of defaults, one study found that 86% of people who said they were planning to change their retirement allocations in the next few months had done nothing four months later. One reason is because their future self is too disconnected from their present decision making. Let's say you're on the executive team or working in an HR department at a company and you know 86% of your employees have said they want to contribute more and that they intend to make a change, but most of them have not taken the action. Do you think they would appreciate a thoughtful structure to help them take the action and not lose out on contributions anymore? Yeah, they probably would. If a client came to me with this problem, the first thing I would do is recommend we dig into the current plans. What are they offering? How do they present it to employees? When do they receive this information, what are the options, how difficult is it? And things like that. Then I would remind them that just because a plan has always been set up certain way, the way they opt in or whatever it is doesn't mean it's the right way or that it has to stay that way. Yes, I know there are regulations and laws in some cases that only allow for changes at certain times of the year, like for health insurance, but we're speaking in generics here and that would definitely be part of the conversation with the client before implementation. Most companies do something like this. In your new hire welcome packet, you're told you have access to a retirement plan and if there's a match or something and you're told about it along with about a million other new things you're learning at once, revisit episode 32 on the Overwhelmed brain to understand why this is a terrible time to expect people to make good choices. So you give them all the info and leave them to make their choice. I mean, they're adults, right? They got the job so they can handle this task. Maybe you give them a reminder after 30 days or throw this into a mandatory annual training where people have to re opt in to all sorts of stuff, but that's about it. Just because that's the way most companies do it, does that mean it's how your company has to do it? Of course not. And we've talked about that in the episode on Hurting. One other question to consider when thinking about the power of time Discounting is opting in versus opting out. Forcing people to choose more often and consciously think of what they're doing does not always encourage them to make better decisions, and often it encourages them to make worse decisions. Remember, in the past versus future biases episode, I talked about the hot cold empathy gap in the Case of Retirement Allocation when being asked or forced to make a change, someone could be in a hot state. Maybe they have a new gadget they would really like to buy, or they're starting to think of all the things they might want today instead of the money they may want or need 40 years from now. You've seen me show just how quickly the subconscious can convince today you to make a decision that is not in the best interest of your future self. So more frequent choices are not better in this case. What if instead, you gave people the ability to opt into a program where every year when they get a raise, a portion of that raise will be automatically put toward retirement? The default is they will be increasing their contribution and unless they choose to do otherwise. Richard Thaler, the Nobel Laureate, did a study called Save more Tomorrow in 2001 which did exactly that. Have people agree when they're in a cold state to commit some of their future earnings to retirement. This is an easy commitment for the brain to make because it's so far in the future. Sure, I'd like that. And I bet I'll be training for my marathon by then too. And because of status quo bias and this becoming the default, people are less likely to opt out than they would be to opt in, even though they know it's in their best interest to do so and that they could afford to do so. This integrates loss aversion as well. Once they can see, feel and touch that raise and start to think about what they can do with it, once the brain takes perceived ownership over each and every dollar, it's really hard to overcome the status quo and give away money it wants today. If you've not yet listened to episode nine on loss aversion, there's a link in the show notes. So just how impactful was Save more tomorrow? Incredibly, 78% of people opted to use the program when it was offered to them. 98% of those people were still in the program after two pay raises, and 80% were still in after three pay raises. The average savings rates for participants increased from 3.5% to 11.6% in just 28 months. Amazing. Do you think those people will be happy with their choice as time goes on? Will they be happy? This offering existed when they get ready to retire and appreciate the company who understood their brain's natural tendencies well enough to help them make a choice they would feel good about instead of regret? I'm guessing yes. And as you see, people have the option to opt out at any time if they wanted to this is a really creative solution that could be applied in many other areas to help people have better lives doing all the things they know they should do and that they really want to do, but have a really hard time living due to time discounting. One other way to make the future self of yourself and your customers to be more visible in the present is to look at renderings. For example, one study found that when individuals were shown a rendering of what they would look like a few decades from now, they were much more likely to save for retirement than those who were not shown a rendering. Keep in mind, this is not just seeing any older person, but making it really personalized to the individual, which is a little more difficult to do. Say taking a photograph and putting it into a computer program which will age them and then helping them to think about retirement. This used to be a lot more difficult to do, but now with apps like Oldify or Change My Face, this could be accomplished relatively affordably and might be worth doing. Think about your business and what problem you're trying to help people solve. Do your customers or employees have future problems that might be overlooked by their present choices? If so, consider how you could help them make tomorrow more real today with the help of technology like this. Or maybe something that doesn't exist yet, it could help you overcome time discounting for them, which is fantastic. However, it is important to know that this doesn't always work as well as you think it should. There's that word again. Should. It would stand to reason that if you work in health and fitness, showing someone a rendering of themselves as having lost the weight or or putting on the muscle or whatever they're trying to accomplish, they'd be more motivated to work today. A study by the Texas A and M Human Behavior Lab found that worked to a certain extent. Their study was looking at how this influenced willpower and found that if someone is close to their goal, showing them a picture of what they would look like if they lost 20 pounds was a lot more motivating than showing someone who had a lot more weight to lose what they would look like if they lost the weight. This totally makes sense. I mean, think about it. If you have £75 or £100 to get to your goal weight and you're shown a picture of what you would look like if you lost 20 pounds, you might not look that different. So it isn't very motivating. It might feel like it's such an uphill battle, it isn't worth even getting started or being shown what you would look like if you lost a hundred pounds still feels like a huge undertaking. So there's less willpower. The AM study showed people the renderings and then asked them to pick a snack. Those who were closer to their goal weight were more likely to pick the healthier snacks than those who were further away. So the rendering might have helped the healthier folks stay on track and maybe it even boosted their ability to see their future self today. But it did not do enough to make those who were further from their goal to motivated to overcome the desires of their present selves and in all reality may have even diminished some of their willpower. So the lesson here, as with every concept, is that this isn't a one size fits all. You can't expect that every person will react exactly the same to a rendering or whatever it is that you're putting out there. You really want to think about your customers or your employees, about where they are when you're trying to implement something like this. What what is it about them that would make it so that they're the same as other people? How are they different from other people? And you want to cater your message to those groups differently. As you saw on the Save More Tomorrow program, because you had a group of like individuals. They were employees who had access to the savings program and retirement program, and they'd been there for a certain period of time. Whatever it is, they were all eligible to contribute more and more. You really can look at sort of a blanket option. But when you're thinking about customers, it's just important to pause, take a second, and think about all the different Personas, everybody you might be talking to, and how they might be impacted by time discounting and some of these other concepts differently before you choose your messaging and campaigns. All right, now that I've told you about what time discounting is and given some examples of studies and things that have helped to overcome this in the lab job, let's talk about a few examples of how you can use this in your business. I'm going to start off with employees, and then I'm going to talk about customers. We've already talked about helping people increase retirement allocations with Save More Tomorrow program, but time discounting applies in all sorts of other areas for employees. I know many companies struggle with getting managers to fill out annual reviews in a timely manner. This can cause all sorts of issues for the employees who are not having their reviews completed, including delayed compensation increases, and it just doesn't feel professional on a lot of levels. As with Saving more for retirement or eating better. Getting reviews done on time is probably something every manager would say they would like to have done. They aren't holding out on doing reviews to be malicious or anything. They just take time and it's easier to procrastinate and put it off until tomorrow or next week. And there can always be an excuse for why it's too much to take on today. So what can you do to help combat the time discounting? The first thing to note is that the negative impact isn't really hitting the manager in most cases. There's no detriment if they do not complete on time and there's no benefit if they do so it's easy to put off. I once worked for a company that changed the review process for managers so that every manager's ability to get their full raise potential was dependent upon having their reviews done in a timely manner. Say, if you didn't have all your reviews done on or before their due date and turned into HR and all that, you would automatically lose a portion of your potential raise if the average was 3% with a max of 5% of your total salary as your increase. Let's say not turning in reviews on time, you can only get as high as a 4% where everybody else is eligible for five. And if you were average you'd be looking at a 2% raise instead instead of a 3% raise. That can be a pretty big motivator by making it hit them instead of just the employee. This is proper use of incentives in addition to time discounting and I talked about that in episode 36. Making it relevant at all can help it so that time discounting is less of an issue. Trying to make it a habit can also help, say by making a note about each employee every day or ranking them on a scale of 1 to 5 each day and averaging them all outcome review time I also used to encourage my employees to keep lists of all their accomplishments throughout the year and would reach out to them a month before their review to let me know what they were especially proud of and or how they had done on their goals. So by letting the employee take the first step, it helped relieve some of the burden from me and would make it so I could see what was important to them and what they focused on when it was my time to do the review. Also, having the employees complete their portion in a timely manner makes it feel easier for the manager to do the same and starting with one small task to kick off review season can help make it easier to do the next tasks along the way I would also recommend for companies to not stack reviews so they're all needing to be completed at once.

Months.

I know some places do it so they're all done at the end of the calendar year or in October or whenever instead of on anniversary dates. Higher dates for someone with one or two employees, it isn't that big of a deal. What about someone with 40 employees? That's a huge burden that can lead to hurried reviews that are more likely to be procrastinated on. You're really setting them up to fail in that case. Personally, I've never been late in turning in reviews for my employees. It was really something that was very important to me to do that for them, and I felt like it was honestly the only thing I was really required to do for them every year. And I have a whole year to think about it. So where was the excuse if I couldn't get one document done for them in an entire year? It didn't feel like I was doing my job fully. And this was before the company had it. As part of the incentive structure, it could be helpful to explain the importance of reviews in this way and for HR to send regular reminders that emphasize the importance of thorough, timely reviews. If it matters enough to be considered important, it warrants more communication than just after it's late. Thinking back to the series on choice architecture, if you expect error that people will forget or be lazy, what can you do in advance to help them do better? How can you help them to think about it a little bit differently, to see the importance differently, and to value it today instead of putting it off until tomorrow? This also comes into play for things like blood drives. Many companies put on blood drives and they encourage employees to participate, but they still put it off and don't go on the day even if they wanted to. In the book Simpler, Cass Sunstein explains about how he and his co workers were all encouraged to get the flu shot while he worked at the White House. Here's a little excerpt from the book. To protect ourselves and our co workers, we were advised to get a flu vaccine and were repeatedly informed that we could do so. On the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The vaccine was free. I was working on the H1N1 issue at the time and I was focused especially on how to ensure that people got vaccinated. But of course, when it came to getting my own vaccination, I delayed. Where exactly was the office that would give me the shot? How would I find it? Anyway, shots hurt and most days I was busy. What would be the harm of waiting until tomorrow or next week? The delay got longer and longer. One day I ran into my friend Dan Meltzer, the deputy White House counsel, on the first floor of the Eisenhower Building, and I asked him where he was going. He told me that he was going to get a flu shot. He knew exactly where to go, so I followed him and got vaccinated. That's just an anecdote. Here's some research Suppose that you were informed of the benefits of a vaccine. If so, you're more likely to get vaccinated. Fortunately, and no surprise there. But if you were also given a map describing exactly where to go, you're a lot more likely to get vaccinated. The map specifying the path makes a big difference. The broader lesson is that when people are informed of the benefits or risks of engaging in certain actions, they're far more likely to respond to that information if they're simultaneously provided with clear, explicit information about how to do so. In many domains, the identification of a specific, clear, unambiguous path or plan has an important effect on our decisions. Vagueness can produce inaction even when people are informed about risks and potential improvements. What appears to be skepticism, intransigence, or recalcitrants may just be a response to ambiguity. People might not be thinking that's a bad idea. Their real reaction might be I'm not sure what I'm being asked to do, so I'll just forget about it. It saying it was in the Eisenhower building wasn't enough to combat his time discounting even though he wanted to be vaccinated and was working on a vaccination project, providing a map or having a buddy to take him over was enough. What can you provide to your staff to help them find the blood drive or voting booth or get their flu shot? Instead of sending a simple email or a basic pamphlet, perhaps steps or a map or more explicit directions can help. Consider pre assigning people to a day and time to go get their flu shot or donate blood with an assumed opt in as the default, but they're not obligated to go. Say your time slot to donate Blood is Monday, June 10th at 10:15am Drink plenty of water the night before and that morning at 10am, grab your ID, leave your desk and follow this map to arrive at the donation center. Give them your name and ID badge Once you're done, enjoy your free cookie and an extra 15 minute break, making the experience real and actionable. You can picture that today, that experience, grabbing your id, leaving your desk. Even if your day or time slot is not for a week or so, it makes it more real. This also activates mirror neurons so it feels like you've taken the action before, making it easier to do when the time comes. I have of course linked to the episode on mirror neurons in the show notes all of this is helpful and again the employee is not required to attend, but their herding brain will also be triggered to make them think everyone's doing it, so they should too now that I've given a couple of business examples with employees, let's talk about working with customers and helping them to overcome time discounting. While there are some obvious fields where time discounting would be a problem and really useful to work through, think nutritionists, personal trainers, financial planners. They're not the only ones who deal with time discounting in their customers. Every customer who has not signed up for a recurring plan with you of some kind is having to take on some sort of action and give up their precious money to do business with you. Meaning you're triggering loss aversion and status quo bias so people will be likely to procrastinate before making a purchase in many cases. I want to revisit an example from the loss aversion episode, which is applicable for many businesses. Buying a wedding dress is something a lot of people delay making decisions on for a long time. They want to try on a lot of dresses, as many as possible weigh their options and they can get stuck in analysis paralysis, putting way too much pressure on themselves to have the day be be perfect. When I was shopping for my wedding dress, the store had a policy that if I bought my dress at the first appointment before leaving the store, I would get a 10% discount, which is significant savings. I had found a dress I really loved and without that nudge, I would have likely become victim to time discounting, thinking I can wait and see and make the decision tomorrow or next week when I have more information. Maybe try on some more more dresses. I mean, this is just one store and this is the most important day of my life. Instead, I chose to buy then because I really loved the dress and I was so thankful after the fact that this decision was done. Just one thing to check off the list. This policy wouldn't have made me buy a dress I hated. 10% off of an ugly or unflattering dress would not make me want to buy it. But for those who are waffling and wanting to put the decision off until another day when I think I might be more capable or prepared to make the choice. It can be really helpful and it saves the company money on follow ups. It's just a really good all the way around. If you have people delaying to buy for whatever reason, think about why they're putting off the decision. This is more likely to apply to big purchases, homes, cars, furniture and things like that, but the concept applies for all sorts of items. If people are putting off purchasing and wanting to wait until later, first consider if you're overwhelming them. There's a link to episode 32 on the Overwhelmed Brain in the show Notes, which will show you just how easy that is to do. Do what you can to make the choice as simple as possible and then look at how you can use the present bias of time discounting to your advantage to encourage the purchase today. Remember, the brain wants the benefit now, so make it as easy as possible for them to say yes today, especially when they're already on the fence. When they delay, they might never come back even if they really want the item. The next example is a little taste of what I did in my research project with the credit union in Oregon where we tested to see if we could get people to save more without matching funds by overcoming time discounting. The language in the letter that encouraged these members to save referenced their future self and the group with the the Behavioral Economics Nudges was given a refrigerator magnet to help them track their savings progress. It was round and divided into wedges like a pizza, with one for each week of the Savings Challenge. Participants could scratch a box at the edge of each wedge when they saved. It had lottery scratch card material on it to help bring a physical representation to the savings, and the constant reminder of the savings goal by having it on a refrigerator magnet meant it was much more real each day instead of being shoved in a drawer in the back of their mind somewhere, this simple tactic of a refrigerator magnet to help with tracking made it so they were constantly reminded of saving and it was more in their present thoughts. Remember, as you've heard me say, the subconscious brain is processing 11 million bits of information per second, filtering through all that. So constantly being reminded, even if it's not hitting your conscious brain, constant reminders of saving is keeping it on your brain. What could you do to put the task you're wanting your consumers to take to be more front and center if they're likely to put off their future and make a bad decision today, when did they do that? What would prompt them to go off the rails and abandon the benefits of their future self for their present benefit if you know when those errors might occur. You can put in notifications, emails, motivational texts, whatever to help them know they still have an ally and that they're on the right track. And how can you be constantly on their mind reminding them of what they want to do to be better? Maybe it's a refrigerator magnet, or maybe it's some other visual cue. What could you use? There will of course be more on my study in a future episode after the white paper goes live. One last suggestion before wrapping up this episode. I could go on and on for days, but I'm just going to do one more One thing many of us do is set far too many goals for ourselves. Due to our optimism bias, we think we can do a lot more than we really can. And one reason we have an optimism bias is because of time discounting. I'm committing future Melina to that giant to do list and she's superhuman so I know she can get there those 72 things done tomorrow if you're a business coach or do consulting, you likely have a lot of times where you're waiting on your clients to do something and you can't do anything until they get back to you, which can cause long delays and frustrated parties. Or they just don't accomplish all that they could have. When given a long list of tasks, it's easier to put them all off and say something like I'm never going to get all this done. I'll just wait and start them all tomorrow when I I'm fresh and having too many goals or tasks means you're more likely to be treading water than making real progress. Let's say you're a business coach or consultant and you have weekly calls with your clients. On each call, you ask them what they will have accomplished before the next call. They may rattle off a list of five things they absolutely have to get done by next week. But then next week rolls around and they haven't gotten any done. Or maybe they did one because their time discounting ran rampant. You didn't tell them to set five things they just did. For whatever reason, they felt like they had to list a lot to feel like they were going to be accomplished. But what if they only had one top priority that they had to get done? If it was just one thing and they had a week, they would probably be more likely to do it and they could put up a visual reminder of this is the one thing I have to do. That visual representation could be enough to help some people accomplish their tasks. But let's talk about how we could maybe incorporate loss aversion. And I have talked about this example before to help them overcome the time discounting and make it so they're definitely not going to put off their tasks. If you were to tell your clients that each week that they keep their commitment and do what they said they would, you're going to put $20 in a jar on your desk with their name on it at the end of the year or project or whatever. They get to keep all the money in the jar, but if they ever miss, you'll completely empty the jar and they have to start from zero. Do you think they'll be more motivated to set more realistic goals and keep them to think about their present self, what they will actually have time to do next week, how they're going to be working on this? Oh, am I going to be gone then? I guess I really only have 30 minutes to work on this task, so it should be something really small. A big reason this works is because it makes those future consequences of missing their deadlines or not upholding what they said they were going to do. It makes them more tangible today and helps them make a better choice tying back those pain points to something they can relate to. If you want more details on that example, you can check out the episode on loss aversion, which is linked in the show notes. As you can see, the concepts are always interrelated throughout behavioral economics. I've referenced quite a few of them and linked them in the show notes, but know that it's not just a time discounting, it's not a one and done. One thing I hope you've found in this episode is that when you're looking for ways to apply the solution to time discounting, it doesn't have to be directly related to the thing that's causing the delay. In the case of the money jar and setting too many goals, cash might not have come to mind for many people at first blush, but it works. And in business, not hitting goals or making progress on an important project does cost money, so it's a useful tie in. And with the refrigerator magnet, you can see it doesn't always have to be a significant monetary incentive. So try to be creative. You may have seen the Internet aflutter recently when someone was trying to show the comparison of the amount of sugar in a bottle of soda being the same as eating six donuts, and they were trying to say would you sit down and eat six donuts? And of course, you know, the Internet came back and said absolutely, I would Eat six donuts. And it sort of snowballed in this negative space. And. And what it actually caused people to realize or think or relate to was sort of this joke of, man, I'm not eating enough donuts. Which is definitely not what that person was trying to do with his infographic and showing how many donuts, how much sugar there was in all these different drinks. This obviously did not work. And time discounting is at play when it comes to drinking soda. You may think that you want to stop and you're done, and then in the moment your brain wants sugar, wants some sort of release, and so you go grab a soda. In the case of a study I've talked about on the show before, where they put up signs in the local sort of corner store where they had a lot of teens that were buying soda and sugary drinks when they it wasn't very good for their health. And so they put up these signs that said that drinking a soda was equal to running for 50 minutes. That can help combat time discounting and make the consequence that your future self might feel real today. In the same thing that the donut example was trying to do, it was being too close to the issue at hand. You're consuming too many grams of sugar. Look at how much you would have to eat in donuts to make up the difference. And the shock factor actually backfired in that case because it was too close and it showed people something delicious that they could be eating and where they really would love to be be able to eat six donuts in many cases. Most people don't like to run. It's pretty common. A lot of people would think, yuck, I don't want to do that. And it seems so easy to pick up and drink a soda. But when you relate it to, I would have to run for an hour almost to work this off. Maybe I'll have a soda water instead. Maybe I'll just drink regular water instead. It helps you to relate that future consequences to today. So again, look at different ways that you might be able to do this.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about time discounting today? For me, as you heard, I've always loved this concept and it was a lot of fun to listen back to.

This episode today to see how I.

Used to talk about a concept like this one that I share about all the time and that's been included now in my books and that I built talks around and just see how much my approach has grown over time. A lot of the fundamental stuff about how it works.

Of course I still talk about but.

These days I most often talk about time discounting and how it combines with three other concepts optimism, bias, planning, fallacy and bike shedding to keep you stuck in the status quo. Links to all those episodes are in the show notes for you. Of course, the keynote presentation I do around this is most often either to open and kick off a conference or as a closing keynote.

And the focus is on how you.

Can get the most out of the conference.

I mean, how often have you attended.

A conference or read a book, listened to a podcast, taken a course or watched a webinar and said something like this is awesome. I'm so inspired.

I can't wait to start this when.

I get back in the office. The problem, of course, as you know from listening to this episode on time discounting, is that all the other stuff.

Is going to get in the way.

And it's really easy to commit future.

You to do that. But when real you is back in.

The office, there are all those emails and touch bases and meetings and other status quo items that you're going to try to tackle first. But once you push this off enough, those notes and the inspiration that went along with them just sit collecting dust until you go to the next conference. Conference, but no more. The basics of the lesson in the talk, whether it's a keynote at a conference or if I'm doing a corporate training for a management team, is to focus on less. Pick one thing that really matters and just do a little at a time. There's more to that, of course, but I didn't want to totally leave you hanging. I wanted to give you at least something you can go out and work on. And of course, if you are interested in having me do this talk for your next conference or corporate training, I'd love to connect with you. Send an email to molina the brainy business.com or visit the brainybusiness.com speaking to learn more. There are of course links in the show notes for that to make it.

Easy as well as to related past.

Episodes, books, a timestamp summary of the episode, your free time discounting worksheet, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 328 and just like that, episode 328 on time discounting is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Hal Hirschfeld talking about his.

Book, your future self.

It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit the Brainy business dot com.