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Hyperbolic Discounting: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices
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Overcoming hyperbolic discounting
- Empathize with your future self: You put things off to future you because it’s easy to assume that future you has boundless energy and motivation. Unfortunately, that perfect vision is not real.
- Pre-commitment: You increase your chance of success by removing a temptation future you may try and weasel out of.
- Break down big goals into small manageable chunks: Big goals take a long time to achieve and so are susceptible to the far-off reward curse of hyperbolic discounting.
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Hyperbolic discounting
It's a cognitive bias, where people choose smaller, immediate rewards rather than larger, later rewards.
For example, if there’s an important deadline looming (the pressure is on, all ...
Cognitive biases
They are mental shortcuts we use, which generally help us make quick decisions, but don’t always work out for the best.
Our brains were never wired to be truly rational because there is way too much information in the world for us to process. We evolved instead to make decisions quickly.
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Distinction bias
Is the tendency to over-value the effect of small quantitative differences when comparing options.
For example: we think a 1,200 square foot home will make us happier than a 1,000 squa...
Overcome distinction bias
- Don’t compare options side by side: In comparison mode, we end up spending too much time playing “spot the difference.” Instead, evaluate each choice individually and on their own merit.
- Know your “Must-Haves” before you look for something to buy: that way, you won't get suckered into features you don’t really need.
- Optimize for things you can’t get used to: your happiness will adjust back to anything that is stable and certain like your income, the size of your house, or the quality of your TV.
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Confirmation bias
Is the human tendency to seek, interpret and remember information that confirms pre-existing beliefs.
It affects every choice you make and it all happens in the background withou...
Confirmation bias affects you in 3 ways:
- How you seek information - how you look at the world around you
- How you interpret the information in front of you - the information you process tends to favour your beliefs
- How you remember things - you interpret and possibly even change memories and facts in your head based on your beliefs
Being wrong and self-image
You seek evidence that confirms your beliefs because being wrong feels unpleasant.
Being wrong means you’re not as smart as you thought. So you end up seeking information that confirms what you already know.