The Psychological Trap That’s Keeping You From Making Smart Career Choices
By understanding ‘temporal discounting,’ you can learn to make better decisions
Would you rather have one apple today or two apples tomorrow?
When faced with this choice, you’d likely have to think a bit. You’d start pondering how much you like apples, how hungry you are right now, and what your current refrigerator situation is looking like. But what if I offered you this choice: Would you rather have one apple in a year, or two apples in a year and one day? Now that one is obvious.
The premise is identical: Wait one additional day, and get twice as many apples. So why is it that one of these choices feels difficult, while the other feels easy? The answer lies in a psychological concept called temporal discounting, which, when you really understand it, can have a great impact on your career — and your entire life.
Our judgment is skewed by time
Temporal discounting means that when you weigh the value of different rewards, you take into account the matter of time. We’re willing to take a discount on a future reward if we can receive it earlier. But it becomes a problem when we let the discount derail what we really want.
