The Skill We Need in 2021 Is Mental Time Travel
A psychology researcher explains how to let your future self guide you through a rocky present
Humans have always been pretty terrible at predicting our own futures. Again and again, research has shown just how little we grasp about who we’ll be down the road: Our beliefs about what will make us happy often miss the mark. We (incorrectly) cast our future selves in an unrealistic, positive light. We struggle to draw a line from our present actions and decisions to their downstream impacts.
All this would be true even without Covid. But for most of us, living through a pandemic has made the future feel even murkier and difficult to imagine, full of questions big (What’s going to happen to my job?) and small (When will I go back to pants that button?). At the same time, understanding the link between our present and future selves — the consequences of the choices we make and the risks we take — is now more critical than ever. Once-simple decisions, like whether to have a group of friends over, can now carry life-or-death stakes. Connecting with our future selves is what keeps them, and those around us, safe. It’s what gives us a sense of control.
