49. Fragile Egos & Chilli Heatwave Doritos

Fun(ish) fact.

Did you know that (according to Google) we make around 35,000 decisions a day?

Whether that figure is true or not (I’ll let you make a decision on that hehe), it’s fairly safe to say that we make a lot of them.

And when it comes to making a decision, I've found that there's often a tension between what 'Now Us' wants, and what 'Future Us' wants.

‘Now Us’ basically wants to lie on the sofa, eat chilli heatwave Doritos, and bin off doing anything of any use.

‘Future Us’ wants us to do the exact opposite.

Talk about one of life’s classic battles.

To be fair (promise this isn’t just me trying to justify my slothful impulses), this tension does actually make sense from an evolutionary point of view.

In order to try and help us survive, our brains are basically hard-wired to keep us safe, and therefore expend as little energy as possible until faced with a genuine survival threat.

Hence the very strong appeal of sofas, Doritos, and general comfort zones.

And not just historically, but if we think more currently as well.

There’s never been more stuff for our ‘Now Us’ to get their greedy little mitts on.

Food? Hello Deliveroo

Entertainment? Hello TikTok

Chat? Hello WhatsApp

Tunes? Hello Spotify

A wank? Hello 90% of the internet (apparently!)

We can have it, and we can have it now. (Though do please refrain from having a wank whilst reading this).

So although I imagine that the ‘Now Us’ vs. ‘Future Us’ battle has always been a difficult one, it’s possibly never been as challenging as it is now.

Despite the framing of that point, I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing. Who doesn’t like demolishing a full tub of Ben & Jerry’s every now and then, or getting lost down a YouTube rabbit hole, or hiding from the world and smashing back half of Netflix?

By thinking too much about ‘Future Us’, we can place too heavy a focus on delaying gratification. Which if we do constantly delay, we never get any gratification at all.

And where’s the fun in that?

However, there is the slight inconvenience that there’s often a mismatch between what’s good for us now, and what’s good for us in the future.

Basically, an overindulgence in the more instantly gratifying stuff can be at the longer term detriment to our future ambition, self-esteem, and overall sense of wellbeing.

Naturally I can only speak for myself, but too much pandering to our ‘Now Us’ - e.g. binning off every alarm we've set to stay in bed, doomscrolling through the Showbiz section of the Daily Mail, excessive lying on the sofa, and eating everything in sight - leaves me feeling like dog turd.

On this, and on a slightly deeper note, I read something recently that really resonated:

Somewhere in the future, our older selves are watching us through memories.

Whether it's with regret or nostalgia depends on what we do now.

Interesting.

It’s a similar sort of idea that Jimmy Carr discussed on his (surprisingly poor imo) episode of Joe Rogan: The 24-Hour-You.

In short, when faced with a decision, a good question to contemplate is “what would you tomorrow want you today to do?”

This outlook can help us take a longer-term view on things, and optimise for ‘Future Us’ - as opposed to constantly being seduced by the ever persuasive ‘Now Us’.

As I'm sure we can all relate to, it can be very easy in life to look back over the past weeks/months/years and wish we’d done that thing.

We wish we’d stuck to that diet, that exercise programme, that hobby, that side hustle, that whatever it is.

Though it’s much harder in the present to actually go and do it.

And I find that when it comes to making a decision, having a bit more empathy with our ‘Future Us’ can be quite beneficial.

They’re the ones who have to deal with our ‘Now Us’ decisions, and they’d probably appreciate us not throwing them under the bus every now and then.

Yours reluctantly,

Now Me