Tomorrow never comes.

I try and say yes a lot. Why, and this is where you insert the word sucker, because it feels good to help and if I can make a difference it gives me relevance whether that be work situations or external social situations. Having said that, saying yes gives me a full diary of future meetings, seminars, strategy sessions, BBQs, morning teas with my Mother and a sundry list of appointments too trivial to mention. Like that long distance appointment that seems such a good idea today and quite doable, come the time I find ways to not attend.

It's been pointed out to me, by people of higher intelligence, that this is just a hidden version of procrastination. The good news, is there is now a name for this and I'm not just being lazy not wanting to do the meetings and appointments. Seems the future is a good place to put things that we want to put off and ultimately not want to do at all. What happens in the future seems to have less bearing on our daily decisions as we under value the future and this thinking is called hyperbolic discounting.

Many studies have been done on hyperbolic discounting with monetary rewards, where a small amount of cash is offered today versus a larger one tomorrow. The obvious choice is to take tomorrow's cash but as the time difference increases, the importance put on the larger cash amount diminishes and people end up taking the today cash. So hyperbolic discounting affects our decision making and anything too far into the future loses relevance to today. This disregard of the future affects decisions needed today but if put off to a time to be determined, no decisions need to be made at all. One of the most obvious examples of this is retirement and the lack of preparation and planning done by most people because it is hard to focus that far ahead in your life and today gets in the way, every day.

It is also the reasoning behind a lot of short term business decisions and happiness today decisions because our hard wired brain knows that we may not be around later, dam those saber tooth tigers. So now I know why I commit to those long term meetings and schedule disasters taking over my valuable business hours, I don't have any intention of actually attending them. I'm feeling bad now but maybe if I push those meetings out even further, the feeling will pass?

Taking all of that into account I should be smart enough to figure out if I made the decision today, it's likely I won't have to attend all of those meetings and appointments in the future. Yet today I'm dealing with the meetings and appointments I made long ago in the past and I don't have time, so I best set up more meetings and appointments for the future.

Yes I'm under valuing the future and it's a fine line between carpe diem and where I'll be in 10 or 20 years. Do I think I'll die tomorrow, of course not but the future remains a fuzzy picture and until I get a clear vision it feels more comfortable to push that meeting I don't want to attend today to to tomorrow or at least the day after. Next month would be even better.