Mastering Present Bias: Unlock Long-Term Success

This is episode 303 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Welcome. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. I am here with you from way, way, way up north, north of Minnesota, north of most places in North America, between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg in Canada, and on a beautiful, beautiful lake. And today's topic is all about the present bias and the way it plays into where I am right now. This topic is that this is a long term gain that I'm getting massive, massive fulfillment from. But the only way that I could have had this long term gain with all this fulfillment and all this joy is if I had gotten over those short term rewards, those now rewards that were really tempting in the moment that I had to actually set aside in order to get the long term gains. Gains. I imagine you've heard of the marshmallow test, the research that was done with little kids and they put the marshmallow in front of them and they said if you can wait, you can get two more or you can eat this marshmallow now, but you won't get the other marshmallows later. It's that kind of thing. So we're going to dive into the present bias today and how you can overcome the present bias in order to get the long term gains you're really, really looking for. And that's what I'm getting to experience right now in this project that I've been working on. So present bias, what is this? What is this present bias I think, I speak of and I think of and that lures us all of the time? Present bias is the tendency to give stronger weight to immediate rewards at the expense of long term intentions. It's a cognitive bias that can lead to procrastination and short term thinking. Hello. I am pretty sure that you've experienced this because you're human and humans want that reward right now. And I've been very susceptible to that in certain areas of my life and really exercise the skill of delayed gratification in other areas of my life. So I'll give a couple of examples. First, a business example that's very different in my business now than it used to be in my brick and mortar business years ago. So when I was running a high performance training facility, it was a brick and mortar and it was a gym, it was a studio. And in this space, what happened because we worked with so many teams who worked On a seasonal schedule, we would get paid for the work we were going to do with these teams. Whether it was contracted with a national team, whether it was a club team, a local team, we would get paid for working with these teams in usually a one time payment or a two or a three payments system. Now when this happened, that meant it was always getting paid ahead of time, but that meant we had to fulfill on the work over the course of the next quarter or the next half a year, or even over the course of nine months. So if a group paid a larger sum for multiple people in the beginning for the entirety of nine months, that meant that we weren't getting that income coming in over the nine months. That meant as a business, I'm looking at a lot of revenue coming in at, let's say, October, but very little revenue coming in in December or January or April. And so that meant from a business standpoint, it was so tempting in October when we've got all this extra revenue in and year end is coming, it was very tempting to spend more, especially to maybe decrease a tax burden or get new equipment or it was very tempting to spend more. But I had to consider that in February or March or April, we'd still need cash flow to operate the business, to pay the employees, to make sure the doors stay open and all the bills are paid. So that was an example where I had to really start to learn about this temptation of the now reward to spend the money now in the business versus really have that delayed gratification of being able to have cash flow in the business when we really need it, keep operations going when we really need it. That was a really big example that taught me so much about not using that money in business right at that moment. Now that's a business example, but a life example. One that's so easy for most of us to succumb to is social media or for instance for me, Netflix. If I am at home with my family and there's a Netflix show that interests me, chances are before bed I might watch 30 minutes of it tops and then go to bed. But what I find that when I'm not with my family or I'm alone or I've really worked hard and, and I'm tired, then I might watch a show longer and then it go, it creeps into the time that I wanted to start getting ready for bed or go to sleep or read a book or journal, write about my day or week in the journal. And I find that that now reward of that show that I'm interested in or that thing that's just kind of lulling me into this, this trance from watching television. And that reward becomes so much more weighty than the reward of writing my gratitude in my journal or getting ready for bed and getting to sleep earlier or reading the novel that I'm interested in that really helps me unwind and go to sleep easily. So there's this now reward of Netflix that's going, oh, watch me, see me, consume me. Because it's this immediate reward that I'm enjoying in the time. So that's an example of present bias. I'm going to remind you of that definition, the tendency to give stronger weight to immediate rewards at the expense of long term intention. So what happened there is that the immediate reward of feeling kind of lulled into this numb state was feeling so good that, oh well, I'm not going to go to bed right yet, or read my book or journal, write yet or. And then I'm going into the next day feeling groggier, not feeling as fresh, not feeling as prepared for my next day, especially if it cut into time that I would have prepared my clothes or my food or things like that. So that's exam. Those are examples of present bias. But what I really want to serve you with today in this podcast is the tools, the ways that you can overcome present bias so that you're getting those long term rewards. And typically those long term rewards are the ones that are the most fulfilling, the ones that really have you. Feel true joy in your life, true contribution, and feel like, this is the life I wanted to live. I'm pretty sure that spending all the money now, eating all the food now, watching all the things now is not the life that you're planning for yourself or at least the best life that you're planning for yourself. So let's dive in to how we can overcome the present bias. There's some key things that will really help you. Number one, how to overcome is really using delayed gratification as a practice. And what I mean by that is really flexing that muscle. Delayed gratification, we know is the, the, the spice, the ingredient, the thing that really bakes the most amazing outcome for your life. Delaying the thing instead of giving yourself the thing right now. Now I'm not saying do not celebrate. I've just spent a month going through leaning on structure so that we can create our best future. And one of the most key structures is planning our rewards, planning our celebration. Reward structures are key to keep us going. If we don't have Reward structures, then we're usually going to find that we dip in energy, we dip in our focus, and we dip in the ability to persevere. However, when we have those rewards built in now, that's not the same as having this now reward that we weren't planning on. Having a reward built in is a pre planned reward that keeps you going. Suddenly, binging on Netflix is not the kind of reward that helps you go for the long term fulfillment. So I want to be clear on that because sometimes people mistake that, oh, I'm having the Netflix now. That's my reward. It's not your reward unless you planned that to be your reward after you fulfilled on the thing that you wanted to do. That's the kind of reward that keeps you going is when you plan, oh, I'm going to watch 30 minutes of Netflix after I've gone for a walk or after I've worked the long day, or if you've pre planned that and fulfilled on that, that's the reward. But if you end up rewarding, quote unquote yourself with three shows of Netflix that you weren't intending on doing, it's not a reward. That's actually you falling into the present bias and binge watching Netflix, let's say, thinking that that's going to be a reward, when in truth, you know that the most fulfillment comes from the small reward and continuing those small rewards as you go along. So delayed gratification as a practice is something that is really, really important to overcome the emotional urge to do the thing right now. And so this practice is literally having yourself wait maybe a minute. Just wait. When you have the urge to eat the cookie, when you have the urge to check the social media, when you have the urge to call the person you know isn't a great person to talk to, then pause and just go, you know what, I'm going to wait for a minute on that. I'm going to wait for a minute and then see if I still want to do it. If I still want to do it. Maybe I'll wait another minute, I don't know, we'll see. So it's waiting a minute or a few minutes before indulging on the urge. And what it does is amazing. It builds the muscle of self control over time. Now this podcast is all about self mastery for leaders. This is the thing we're literally overcoming. We're, we're overcoming a physical urge, we're overcoming an emotional urge, and we're overcoming some former habits. That is an urge to keep doing that. Might not be a habit we want anymore. So when we do this delayed gratification practice, it becomes something that gets easier and easier and it overlaps into other areas. So if you find that you had this urge to eat a cookie every morning and you don't want to eat a cookie every morning, but you overcome that, you find that you start to have an easier time overcoming a different urge in a different context. Maybe it's spending on a something you weren't anticipating, so spending on extra treats at the grocery store. Then you just pause and go, wait, I overcame going for that cookie every morning. Maybe I'll just not buy the cookies this time, but I can buy the cookies next time if I want to, but let's just see if I can go without buying them this time. And that's the delayed gratification practice. So that's number one. Number two is future self connection. This one's so interesting to me and I love it because we're just about to do this, we're doing this in our coaching topic of this month and it's really all about remembering your future self. So one of the exercises we're doing is connecting with our future self and we are writing a letter from our future self. So doing a practice like this is very, very powerful because then you are realizing that, okay, who I'm being now, what I'm being, doing now, what, how I'm showing up right now is contributing to whatever that future self of me wants, desires, doesn't want, or however they're going to become. It all depends on the actions that are happening right now. So what happens is that by strengthening the emotional connection to your future self, this is what happens. Research shows that when people feel more connected to their future self, they make better long term decisions. What? That's right. They make better long term decisions. So things like visualization exercises and future self dialogues can enhance this connection. Or, or the exercise I just mentioned, which we do in our coaching call, which is a letter, a letter from my future self to my now self. What does that look like? Really connecting with who you are becoming. Because you're not going to be the same person in six months or a year as you are right now. And you're really not going to be depending on what you do right now. All right, so that's number two. And then number three is reward substitution. So if you fall into the fallacy of believing, believing that binge watching Netflix is your reward, but it's really not because you didn't pre plan that reward in A way that still honored your future self. So if you're falling into that false belief system, then do this. Replace that immediate reward with something that's still enjoyable but still serves your future self. So that might look like something like instead of binge watching the tv, take a walk or read a book related to the current goals. So if it's related to the current goals, then you're feeling like a, you're connected to your future self. But B, you still have a reward. Instead of feeling like you're deprived or you've had something taken away from you, still give yourself something. Just replace the reward with something that's going to honor where you're going and who you're becoming. Number four, that was number three, reward substitution. Number four. Commitment devices. These are really interesting because I've seen it work so well for some people as long as they get it put in place. And it worked really, really well for me. The commitment device for me years and years ago was an automatic payment to an resp for my daughter's coming university. And that automatic payment had it so that I just knew that money was gone. I had to make sure there was enough money to go out for that automatic payment. And there it went, it was gone. And it just happened every month. I didn't have to think about it, I didn't have to plan it. It was just going to happen. So that is a commitment device. It's using this sort of device to limit the ability to act on the present bias. The present bias would be to forget about the payment and spend the money now versus having that automatically going out. So setting up automatic savings plans, like I just mentioned, using an app to block distracting websites. One of the things that Paul does, my husband, he loves to go on Instagram. Occasionally we have a family chat, messaging chat on Instagram. But he doesn't want to get sucked in to looking at all the reels for 30 minutes at a time. So he has it set up so that he can only do 10 minutes of Instagram in any given sitting setting. And then he's. He's kicked out of it. Now, I don't know what app he's using or if it's a setting on Instagram, but I know he does that. And this would be a perfect example of a commitment device. Another one is using other people because they're so powerful in influencing us. So if we publicly commit to a goal or we have an accountability buddy, those are also forms of commitment devices so that we can keep honoring what we want for our Future instead of succumbing to something that's very, very tempting in the moment. Another one here is incremental progress tracking. Now this one is tracking your progress in small increments so that you could graph it so you can see it, so you can put a sticker on a chart, stickers on charts, graphs, something that shows that you're making the growth that stimulates our dopamine feedback system. And it really helps us to want to keep going. It helps us giving, it helps to give us the hormonal response to keep us on that path. We're almost there, we're doing great, we're making progress. Those are wonderful, wonderful things. So these are allowing you to celebrate micro achievements. So even though we didn't get to the milestone yet, we put a star on it because we've made progress or we do the high fives with the partner in the gym because we've completed two sets and we just have one more set to go on this one. Those are the micro achievements that we're doing and we're doing these incremental progress celebrations along the way. So this provides this a sense of immediate reward and that's the thing we're often succumbing to, but it gives us that immediate reward while still working towards the long term goal. And that's what we really want. All right, and then lastly, and this is number, number six, I believe. Yes, it's the pre commitment strategies. So this is the thing that has us pre committed to the thing we want in the future. So for instance for a family vacation, we've bought the plane tickets, we're pre committed. I've booked the time off of my schedule or notified my clients or another pre commitment would be signing up for a course with someone or even a loan. But you've pre signed up or prepaid doing a deadline or penalty for non completion. So you've got this pre commitment that you owe money for the course or to someone else or you have a deadline that someone else knows about so that you're more likely to complete it. Okay, so I'm just going to review those really quickly. Number one, delayed gratification. Practicing that. Number two, future self connection. So connecting to your future self in various ways that could be letters. Number three, reward substitution. So instead of rewarding with your yourself with a thing that's not working for what you want in future, reward yourself with something that's still enjoyable but does work for your future commitment devices. So these are the ways that you are supporting yourself to make it easier other people, apps, programs that do it for you or make it easier for you. Incremental progress tracking. So making sure you're celebrating the progress along the way, that'll keep you going. And then pre commitment strategies that hold you accountable for whatever you've agreed to. So those are ways you can keep that going. Now, the last thing I want to share is something that just happened recently because I'm so present to how much I want certain things right now and how much not having them is actually helping me. And it's. I'm. I tell you stories about this graves disease journey all the time, but one of the things that one of the many foods that have been restricted from me for the last 18 months has been dairy. And what happened recently is family members were in town, we're about 40 minutes, 30 or 40 minutes away from a Dairy Queen and somebody was like, oh, let's all get in the car, let's all go for a blizzard. Not really realizing that I couldn't have the blizzard. Now in that moment, I have a number of choices. It seems like there's only one choice or two choices, but there's many, many choices. And some of the choices are that I could have the blizzard, even though that's been restricted for quite some time. I could not have the blizzard. I could stay behind. I could go with them. But I'm going to tell you what I chose to do because I've learned how to do this along the way. I chose to go with them for the blizzard. I chose to help my daughter order. I chose to participate and have fun with five of us in a vehicle, all going to get blizzards. And I chose not to have the blizzard. Now, I chose not to have the blizzard because I'm already committed to reintroducing a different category of foods right now. So if I reintroduce two of them at one time, I won't be able to tell which one is successful, if they're both successful, if one is failing or not. So I know that it would confound what my future goal is. My future goal is to be able to reintroduce all the foods that have been restricted and do so in a way that I'm still healing and healthy and they're not setting me back. And that's been very, very fulfilling because I'm so much healthier because I've made all the changes that I have and I want to reintegrate things in a way that are going to be healthy. So if I want to reintegrate Dairy. To reintegrate it with a blizzard as the first go is probably one of the hardest things on my body to do. So if I want that future success, I'm going to likely reintroduce with something like goat milk or bison milk or something like that. But likely not a highly modified milk product that is full of sugar and all of those things, even though it's a party in my mouth. And man, I miss blizzards. I haven't had a blizzard for two summers now. But I know what my long term goal is. So here's what I did. So I delayed the gratification. I basically did almost all of these steps. I delayed the gratification by not having it. I didn't succumb to the urge of, of having it. And then I connected with my future self. How I connected with my future self by understanding that I would eventually have dairy back in. It's just not quite yet and that's okay. And I know what my future self looks like. My future self looks, looks so healthy and is thriving and vital and energetic. And I reward substituted. So the reward for me became going with everybody. I didn't stay behind, but I could have stayed behind and gone kayaking or I could have stayed behind and done something different as a reward. But I made sure that I was doing something enjoyable and not making myself and everybody else miserable because I couldn't have the thing that I wanted. So the reward substitution was going with them. I even sniffed a couple people's blizzards. They loved the flavors that they were choosing and I wanted that little smell experience. And I had fun. I was with everyone. We joked, we laughed. So I didn't make it about the blizzard. I still made the reward about the people and having the experience and doing the thing that way. I didn't have a commitment device in this one other than there were people around me who knew what I was committed to and there was nobody who was going to do anything but support me in my decision. There wasn't like, oh, you know, you should really have some. You're missing out. There's none of that. So I was, I did have a commitment device in some format by other people's support and then progress tracking. In terms of my progress tracking, I get the high five because there are about five food groups that have been reintroduced already. So I know I'm on the right track and I know that I'm celebrating along the way, getting the reward along the way, even though it's not in that particular category called milk products. And a Blizzard or DQ Treat. And then lastly the pre commitment strategies. I wish I would know how long it would have taken, but I didn't. So I didn't have a pre commitment strategy to say that by this deadline of one year, by this deadline of six months, I will be able to have dairy again. I didn't have that. But what I do have is a pre commitment strategy of going incrementally along the way. And that commitment strategy makes it easier for me to know, oh, it's not Dari's time right now and that's okay. So I give this as an example because it's a lifetime thing I'm going through and it's still applicable to anything that's going on with your life personally. Could be in a relationship, it could be your business goals like the examples I gave for the money and spending. But the present bias is something that can suck us in and hold us back. And I'm not suggesting that we're not present present in the moment. What I am suggesting is that you're allowing your present moment to be one of your choosing so that it works not only for your now and the rewards that you want to have now, and it works for the future that you want as well. And that's the way to really be present in the moment and be able to enjoy the growth towards your future and give yourself what you want for your future. If you are continually indulging in something that seems like a reward right now, that seems like it'll be amazing, that's where you can find yourself caught in scenarios where you're not fulfilling on what you really want for your future. So on that note, go forth, use the techniques that I have given you, and step into giving yourself your most amazing future by not allowing yourself to indulge in something that's not what you really want right now. It's something that's holding you back and that's the present bias. So by all means, be present, be focused, be aware of your future and be who you really intend to be. And I believe that that's your most empowered self. Keep being that for yourself and others. Keep taking that major action that you know is going to commit to the bigger picture that you want for your life. Keep being you have a great rest of your day. I will talk to you next week. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team is our group coaching and accountability program where we provide the tools, skills and community for you to grow your self mastery as a leader and optimize your results. Along with other leaders, the Empowered Team runs year round. To learn more about our Leadership Consulting for Business and our Empowered Team Group coaching, head to www.theempowered.ca empowered learn more. That's www.theempowered.ca empower empowered-learn-more. We can't wait for you to join us. Let's go.