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What Your Future Self Needs You to Do Right Now
Use the ‘bento’ framework to think beyond the present moment, even in a crisis
Gas is cheap but nobody’s filling up. Houses are full but streets are empty. Businesses are falling like dominos. This is our new normal.
It happened so quickly and drastically that we even talk about time in a different way, saying things like “Quarantine Day 15” to acknowledge life before and after the coronavirus pandemic hit.
In a crisis, reality changes. The normal ways of functioning stop working. We must match the strangeness of the situation with changes of our own.
We all move through life with a passive awareness of the world. Our instinctual mode — what psychologist Daniel Kahneman has coined System 1 thinking — allows us to respond to our needs on a moment-to-moment basis. But to be able to see the bigger picture, think conceptually about future events, and consider the needs of others, we need what I call an active awareness.
By this, I mean consciously operating within a broader arena than the here and now, creating a larger perimeter of self-interest. Think about it like this: While everybody runs in an alien invasion, most people run from the aliens. A much smaller number run toward something. But the ones with a plan they’re trying to execute are able to connect with what’s important and use their energy more purposefully.
To grow my own active awareness, I use the “bento” framework, an acronym for BEyond Near Term Orientation. It’s a simple two by two chart — or bento box, the Japanese packed meal — that breaks life into four dimensions, each representing a different space of my self-interest.
“Now Me” is what I want and need right now. “Now Us” is what the people closest to me want and need right now. “Future Me” is what the older, wiser version of myself wants me to do. (I call this my inner Obi-Wan Kenobi.) “Future Us” is the world that the people I love and care about — kids, especially — will inherit.
