It’s tempting to take a reward that is available right now, but the cognitive bias can harm your future self. For example:<ul><li>You may work hard to get a place on a law degree course, but then give in to the present bias and spend most of your time socialising at the expense of your exams.</li><li>Being offered a higher salary can cause us to forget about our long-term career goals.</li><li>The desire for instant gratification can lead to reckless spending rather than putting money into a long-term investment.</li><li>Procrastination can prevent you from making progress on a project well before the deadline.</li></ul>

How the present bias impacts your success

The classic experiment to show if the present bias is at play is to ask, "would you prefer $100 today or $110 in one week?" The desire for instant reward will cause many to take the $100 now rather than waiting for the reward. A study showed stronger activation in reward-related areas of the brain when participants were asked to make decisions that would lead to an immediate reward. However, with delayed gratification, there was far less activation within the brain's reward centres.

Illustrating the present bias

Managing the present bias consists in staying mindful of your long-term goals.<ul><li>Write down your long-term goals. Create a list of what you want to achieve this year or over the next few years. Then, when you're faced with a choice between different rewards, refer back to your list to ensure you're on track.</li><li>Delay new purchases until tomorrow. The extra time will lower your impulsivity level and allow you to make an informed decision.</li><li>Follow the ten-minute rule. If you procrastinate on a task, tell yourself to start right now for just ten minutes. You may find yourself continuing.</li></ul>

Strategies to manage the present bias

Grabbing short-term opportunities can lead you to settle for a small present reward rather than wait for a larger future reward. This tendency is known as the present bias. While it may feel good at the time, it can negatively impact long-term planning and decision-making.

Seizing short-term opportunities

The present bias is our tendency to seize short-term opportunities, settling for a small present reward rather than waiting for a larger future reward.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Problem Solving

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Leadership & Management

Present bias: how instant gratification impacts your long-term goals

There’s no question that April Fools’ Day is one of the most widely recognized non-religious holidays in the Western world. Children prank parents, coworkers prank coworkers, and yes, national news outlets still prank their readers.What is the origin of April Fools’ Day, and how did it become an international phenomenon? The totally legit, not-pulling-your-leg answer to the origin of April Fools’ Day is: Nobody really knows.

The Origin of April Fools’ Day

While April Fools’ Day is technically considered a national holiday, many countries have adopted the idea of playing pranks on or around April 1st.For example, France celebrates April Fools’ Day on April first by sticking a paper fish onto the backs of as many people as possible, while yelling “Poisson d’Avril!” This tends to be something children partake in more than adults.In Greece, successfully tricking someone on this day is said to bring the prankster good luck for the entire year. In some parts of the country, rainfall on April 1st is said to have healing abilities.

A Worldwide Celebration

April Fools’ Day is an annual holiday that consists of practical jokes, pranks, and hoaxes. Pranksters often unmask their joke by yelling a loud and proud, “April Fools’!” at their victim. This custom has been observed for hundreds of years, but more on that later.

A Primer On April Fools Day

April Fools’ Day always occurs on the first of April. In 1561, a Flemish poet wrote some comical verse about a nobleman who sends his servant back and forth on ludicrous errands in preparation for a wedding feast (the poem’s title roughly translates to “Refrain on errand-day / which is the first of April”). The first mention of April Fools’ Day in Britain was in 1686, when biographer John Aubrey described April 1st as a “Fooles holy day.”

The Big Prankster Day

The origin of April Fools’ Day is debated, but its history covers centuries of <a href="https://www.rd.com/article/april-fools-pranks/">April Fools’ pranks</a>, from family high jinks (like <a href="https://www.rd.com/list/april-fools-jokes-to-play-on-parents/">pranks to play on your parents</a> or your <a href="https://www.rd.com/list/april-fools-jokes-to-play-on-your-kids/">kids</a>) to <a href="https://www.rd.com/list/april-fools-office-pranks/">office pranks</a> and <a href="https://www.rd.com/article/amusing-april-fools-humor/">April Fools’ jokes</a> at everyone’s expense. Your pranking ambitions might be a little more modest, but what gave rise to those ambitions in the first place? Let’s look into the origin of April Fools’ Day.

April Fools!

One likely predecessor to the origin of April Fools’ day is the Roman tradition of Hilaria, a spring festival held around March 25 in honour of the “first day of the year longer than the night” (to us, the vernal equinox, which typically falls on March 20). Festivities included games, processions, and masquerades, during which disguised commoners could imitate nobility to devious ends.It’s hard to say whether this ancient revelry’s similarities to modern April Fools’ Day are legit or coincidence, as the first recorded mentions of the holiday didn’t appear until several hundred years later.

The History Of April Fools

The origins of the prank lovers' favourite holiday are murky. In fact, it's possible that the entire concept of April Fools' Day is itself a prank. Or is it?

The origins of April Fools' Day are murky, but it's clear that humans have been pulling one over on each other for centuries.

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Personal Development

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Entertainment

April Fools’ Day: How Did It Start, and Why Is It April 1?

Can you imagine a pink elephant? Is it big or small? Hot pink or pastel pink Give your pink elephant as much detail as you can. Now that you have got your pink elephant clear in your head, it is time to stop thinking about it. Think about any other topic for 30 seconds, and observe where your thoughts take you.How long did you last without the pink elephant creeping back into your mind? For most of us, that pink elephant will appear back in our thoughts within seconds. The same is true of unwanted and intrusive thoughts: the more you try to suppress them, the more they will bother you. T

The Pink Elephant Paradox

<ul><li>Propagation of persistent negative emotions. Intrusive or unwanted thoughts are associated with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. However, individuals who are otherwise healthy can also develop intrusive thoughts that are comparable to a clinical obsession. </li><li>Increased distractibility. The more an individual struggles with intrusive thoughts, the more distractible they tend to be. </li><li>Poor decision-making. Rather than being able to make rational judgments, you may instead be swayed by persistent thoughts that lead you to make the wrong decision.</li></ul>

The Impact of the Pink Elephant Paradox

<ul><li>Becoming more aware and accepting of negative thoughts or feelings can help to reduce the frequency of intrusive thoughts, as well as making them feel less distressing.</li><li>Engage in constructive distractions. When an intrusive thought arises, finding a constructive distraction is healthier than ruminating on it. Find something that requires almost all of your attention, such as reading, chatting to a friend, going for a run, painting or watching a film.</li><li>If you find yourself ruminating on negative thoughts, try to replace them with positive ones.</li></ul>

How to Manage The Pink Elephant Paradox

The more you try to suppress unwanted and intrusive thoughts, the more they will bother you. This is called the Pink Elephant Paradox.

The impact of the Pink Elephant Paradox on our emotions and decisions

<ul><li>Not Setting Realistic Expectations. If you don’t have a concrete understanding of what you want your system to do, it’s likely you’ll be overwhelmed by applications that you don’t need.</li><li>Not Considering Complexity. Accounting for the complexity of the new system will help your IT team to avoid unnecessary delays in rolling out your multi-cloud strategy.</li><li>Not Investing in Talent. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is not investing time and money in finding the right talent. IT is becoming more of a specialized field every day, so finding the right people to implement your strategy is the key to a smooth transition. </li><li>Not Considering Security Concerns. You will need to know any external data collection and storage legislation that might be affected by using a public cloud. </li></ul>

Multi-Cloud Strategy Mistakes To Avoid

You will need to check who can access the cloud system. Data breaches and loss are some of the biggest causes of lost revenue to companies, so you will want to avoid this. Finding security problems before they become a problem is the best way to avoid any security issues that might come with using a public cloud.

What Might a Security Review Look Like?

Using a multi-cloud system involves using a combination of multiple cloud-based operating systems to access useful applications for your team. Multi-cloud systems are incredibly useful to businesses operating over more than one location. Or, in the pandemic age, operating completely remotely. The benefits of this system are wide-ranging. Introducing technology that promotes team cohesion can improve workplace productivity and save on hardware costs.

What is Multi-Cloud?

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Technology & The Future

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Artificial Intelligence

4 Deadly Multi-Cloud Strategy Mistakes to Avoid - The European Business Review

Let’s start with some venture math assumptions: <ul><li>An early-stage venture fund is going to invest in 20 companies </li><li>The fund aims to get a 3x gross return </li><li>The expected distribution of outcomes is: 1/3 losses, 1/3 money-back, 1/3 successes </li><li>The expected distribution of the successful outcomes is: 1 home-run (a company returning the entire fund) + 5 meaningful exits (companies returning the amount required up to 3x gross fund return.)</li></ul>A meaningful exit can be defined as a company about to return 1/3 of the fund.

Defining a meaningful exit

Before we can determine the revenue targets, again, we need some more assumptions: <ul><li>A SaaS company with 75% gross margin can be sold for 5x ARR </li><li>A marketplace company with 15% take rate can be sold for 1x the last twelve months gross merchandise value  </li><li>An e-commerce company with 30% gross margin can be sold for 2x the LTM revenues </li><li>In all cases, Net Debt at the time of exit equals zero, so Enterprise Value = Equity Value </li><li>In all cases, the same growth rate is assumed </li></ul>

Determining the Revenue Targets for Meaningful Exits

The purpose is to help find the size in terms of revenues that a company has to reach in a 5-7 years time window to be considered attractive for VC investment.This will be done for different fund sizes (micro, traditional and mega VC funds) and other startup business models (SaaS, marketplaces, e-commerce). This could also help the company and its investors to plan revenue targets and required growth rates from first investment to exit.

Attractive VC exits

The bigger the fund, the bigger the exit required to be considered meaningful. Assuming that the VC is going to construct a 20% ownership in a successful company over time, we can calculate how much a company must be sold to be considered a meaningful exit.

The size of a meaningful exit

The purpose of this post is to derive the size in terms of revenues that a company has to achieve in a 5–7 years time window to be regarded as attractive for VC investment. We will do that for different fund sizes (Micro $50Mm- $100Mm, traditional $350Mm and MEGA $1b VC funds) and different startup business models (Saas, Marketplaces, E-Commerce) this might also be helpful for the company and its investors to plan revenue targets and required growth rates for the years ..

Deriving the size of revenue by companies

<ul><li> Not every company can grow quickly enough to generate Venture-Scale returns. A VC should only invest in the companies with that potential.</li><li>The fund size determines what a meaningful exit is. </li><li>Some investors aim only at potential home-run exits. Others don’t. Both strategies have been proven successful over time. </li><li>Use your gross margin and growth rate to determine the multiple you get in an exit.</li><li>Compare the growth rates required to hit that target given your current level. Compare those rates to those of the most successful companies.</li></ul>

Final Remarks

The purpose of this post is, with the help of some venture math and a bunch of frequently made assumptions, to derive the size in term of revenues that a company has to achieve in a 5–7 years time…

Present bias: how instant gratification impacts your long-term goals

April Fools’ Day: How Did It Start, and Why Is It April 1?

The impact of the Pink Elephant Paradox on our emotions and decisions

It's time to
Read like a Pro.

4 Deadly Multi-Cloud Strategy Mistakes to Avoid - The European Business Review

CURATED BY

Present bias: how instant gratification impacts your long-term goals

April Fools’ Day: How Did It Start, and Why Is It April 1?

The impact of the Pink Elephant Paradox on our emotions and decisions

It's time to Read like a Pro.

4 Deadly Multi-Cloud Strategy Mistakes to Avoid - The European Business Review

CURATED BY

It's time to
Read like a Pro.