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Comment by nothis | Hacker News Reader

There was an article about procrastination that really stuck with me and it argued something similar: One of the reasons we put off work is because we don't look at our "future selfs" as the same person or even as someone you feel sorry for. Basically, we think "I don't give a damn, let my future self deal with the consequences!". By thinking of your future self compassionately, you can much better motivate your current self to do work you'll depend on being finished at a later date.

This might sound weird but I try this sometimes. "Thanks, past self, for having done this on time, now I can enjoy the weekend because I'm done with this tedious work!" You don't have to literally talk to yourself or anything, but it's IMO a healthy state of mind. It's also the only way I've found to directly tackle the underlying problem of procrastination instead of just telling yourself to "not be lazy, stupid!".

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> we don't look at our "future selfs" as the same person

I often think of this geeky comic when the subject comes up: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/13

hilarious comic, new to me, thanks for the link! :)

I think there's economic theory that relates to this idea: discounted future utility.

e.g. $10 is most useful right now, slightly less useful a day from now, and much less useful a year from now. This is for real reasons -- inflation -- and psychological reasons -- I'm more excited about getting that $10 now than in a year.

There are equations for this stuff but it's been a long time since college.

You can replace $10 with other "goods" like time, sleep, relaxation, etc.

There's one more component of self-compassion helping with procastination. Procrastination is mostly caused by the fear of failure, - once we feel how serious the situation is, the monkey in us can't stand the tension and escapes into dark playground of denial and guilty pleasures. TFA mentions how self compassion decreases fear of failure, thus removing the main trigger of procrastination cycle.

My wife made the observation a few years back that anytime she thought, "fuck it" while procrastinating or avoiding responsibilities that you could replace it with, "fuck you, future self"

That phrasing helps immensely. Sometimes it's worth it to push out the pain, but usually it isn't.

I often do this. Both forward and back. But I also have a slightly warped sense of Self and what consciousness is.

I often will consider my past and future as a separate entity or person than myself today in the present. And acknowledge things theyve done good or bad. Or to be kind to your future self as if you are doing a favor for a close friend.

Your viewpoint doesn't seemed warped but rather uncomfortably accurate. Only the present really exists.

I maintain an open dialog with my past and future selves. Now how grateful I will be to myself in the future is definitely a motivating factor when there are things I want to accomplish that require doing things I don't want to do. And I do it out loud.

I have a bad habit of staying up too late at night. What has been helping me is instead of from thinking about the last time I did so and was tired the next day I try to imagine tomorrow's me, and think of how much better I will feel if I make sure to get a good night's rest. So this is somewhat of the reverse of what you describe. It's explicitly trying to develop empathy for my future self so that I behave in ways that are beneficial today.

Also seen in the Jerry Seinfeld bit about night guy and morning guy.

Anyway you could try to dig up the article and link to it? Sounds like a great read and I would appreciate it.

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