Your Future Self

Have you ever wondered why you keep making choices today that seem to betray your own long-term interests? Why do you stay up late even though tomorrow morning you’ll regret it, or spend money that your future self will need? In Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today, psychologist Hal Hershfield explores one deceptively simple idea: we live our lives as a chain of selves through time, often disconnected from each other. This disconnection fuels procrastination, impulsivity, and short-sighted decisions. But if we could learn to see our future selves as real people—people we care about—we’d transform how we live today.

Hershfield, a behavioral psychologist at UCLA, argues that the distance between who we are today and who we will become is the mind’s most persistent barrier. The future self often feels like a stranger, someone we plan for but never meet. Yet modern neuroscience and social psychology reveal that imagining our future self more vividly—whether through letters, aged photos, or deliberate time reflections—can produce measurable changes in health, happiness, and financial well‑being.

The Science of Mental Time Travel

Our ability to mentally time travel, to leap forward or backward, is what Hershfield calls a defining human strength. Drawing on research about the brain’s “default network,” he explains that when we’re resting, our minds naturally wander through past and future moments. This spontaneous time travel helps us plan, worry, and imagine—but it also divides us. You think of tomorrow’s you as different from today’s you, even though you’re the same person wearing different clothes across time. The first part of the book explores this psychological puzzle, asking whether we remain the same over time or become distinct selves. Hershfield shows through stories like Pedro Rodrigues Filho—Brazil’s notorious serial killer turned repentant counselor—that radical transformation across time is possible, but continuity depends on moral and emotional identity, not memories or physical form.

Philosophers from Locke to Parfit have debated this for centuries. Hershfield brings their abstract questions down to earth through neuroscience and everyday examples. You are not just a single, immutable self in time, he argues; you are a collection of connected selves—past, present, and future—linked by habits, stories, and empathy. When those links weaken, our decisions suffer.

Seeing the Stranger Inside

In one fascinating experiment, participants viewed digitally aged images of themselves. Those who saw their wrinkled, gray-haired avatars immediately increased their savings for retirement. Why? Because the visualization made their future self tangible. Hershfield’s studies show that the brain registers future selves similarly to how it registers other people—quite literally viewing tomorrow’s you as an “other.” This means we discount the future self’s needs as if they were someone else’s problem. Understanding this mental bias reframes personal responsibility: just as empathy motivates charity, empathy for your future self can inspire wiser health, financial, and moral choices.

Why It Matters

The implications ripple across life. Recognizing future selves as vivid and connected motivates saving, exercising, and acting ethically. Ignoring them creates regret and instability. The book’s journey progresses through three acts: “The Journey Ahead” explores who we are through time; “Turbulence” reveals the mistakes we make traveling from now to later—missing flights, planning poorly, and packing the wrong clothes; and “The Landing” offers strategies to close the gap. Hershfield connects science to stories—from cryonics enthusiasts freezing their bodies to letter-writers on FutureMe—all chasing contact with their eventual selves. The result is not cold theory but pragmatic compassion: your future self is not a stranger but someone waiting for your help.

The Promise of Connection

Underlying all of Hershfield’s research is a simple moral insight: life improves when we act as guardians of our future selves. This perspective makes self-discipline feel less like deprivation and more like care. Instead of living for instant gratification or extreme sacrifice, the goal is harmony across time—a partnership between present and future. By strengthening this relationship, Hershfield contends, we don’t just create smarter plans or healthier bodies; we cultivate meaning itself. Because when you learn to see your future self clearly, you learn to see your whole life as one continuous, evolving you.

Hershfield opens his first chapter with a jarring question: can someone who changes drastically across time still be the same person? He uses the dramatic story of Pedro Rodrigues Filho, once known as “Killer Petey,” who murdered dozens, including his own father. Decades later, he became a quiet man preaching nonviolence and helping ex-convicts reform. In interviews, he insisted, “I’m disgusted by who I once was—I’m a new person now.” This transformation raises Hershfield’s central concern: how much of us can change before we become someone else entirely?

Philosophers and the Ship of Theseus

To explain identity’s paradox, Hershfield revisits Plutarch’s ancient puzzle about the Ship of Theseus. If every plank of a boat is replaced over time, is it the same ship? So too with selfhood: we replace memories, cells, and ideas—yet still claim “I am me.” Studies like Project Talent show that personality traits such as conscientiousness or agreeableness stay partly stable while others change. Roughly 40% of adults show meaningful changes in major traits across ten years. We evolve, but a moral and emotional core persists.

The Body, Memory, and Moral Self

Philosophers have alternately argued that identity lies in the body (your physical continuity), the mind (your memories), or your consciousness. Hershfield integrates modern psychology with these traditions. Through Nina Strohminger’s work on patients with neurodegenerative diseases, he shows that neither memory nor body alone define identity. Instead, moral traits—kindness, empathy, honesty—are the deepest anchors of who we are. When those vanish, people perceive the younger and older selves as entirely different individuals. If moral continuity holds, change becomes transformation rather than extinction.

Why Continuity Matters

This insight reshapes everyday decisions. If you feel connected to your future self, you’ll treat that version of you as worth investing in—just as you care for loved ones. When the thread breaks, you act carelessly toward tomorrow’s you. Identity continuity, then, is not just metaphysical; it’s motivational. The more tightly you feel stitched across time, the more effort you’ll put into becoming someone your present self will respect.

In Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, Hershfield recalls hearing philosopher Laurie Paul’s provocative lecture: what if becoming a parent is like becoming a vampire? Both are irreversible transformations—you can’t know the outcome until you become your future self. This analogy captures Hershfield’s unsettling truth: our future selves are fundamentally unknowable. They’re not just older versions of us; they may feel, think, and value differently.

Separate Selves Over Time

Borrowing from David Hume and Derek Parfit, Hershfield explains that “you are a we.” Each period of life holds a distinct self—morning self, student self, parent self—and together they form an overlapping series rather than a single individual. Neuroscience supports this: brain scans show the medial prefrontal cortex lights up differently when people think about themselves versus others. Strikingly, when people think about their future selves, the brain treats them like it treats strangers. We literally see our future selves as other people.

The Psychology of Distance

This mental distance explains why we often betray tomorrow for today. In Princeton psychologist Emily Pronin’s study, students were willing to drink a disgusting ketchup-soy-sauce concoction in the future, but far less today—identical to how they’d treat another person. Hershfield’s own fMRI research showed that the more a person's brain differentiated between current and future selves, the less money they were willing to save. Physiologically, we favor the present “me” because tomorrow’s “me” feels like an outsider.

Closing the Gap

The takeaway is radical yet hopeful: we can act as if our future selves are loved ones we want to protect. If we view future-me as a stranger, sacrifice feels irrational. But if future-me is family, taking care of them becomes natural. Hershfield proposes empathy-based self-care—cultivating emotional closeness through visualization, journaling, or reflection—to collapse the psychological distance between who you are now and who you’re becoming. Only then can you make choices your future self will thank you for.

Our connection to future selves is not abstract—it’s measurable. Hershfield builds on psychologist Arthur Aron’s research about interpersonal closeness, where overlapping circles represent emotional connection. He asks: what if you drew your relationship with your future self the same way? The more your circles overlap, the stronger your connection, and the more you care for that future version.

Why Similarity Predicts Better Choices

In Hershfield’s studies, undergraduates who felt more similar to their future selves were more patient in financial decisions—preferring larger, delayed rewards. Among everyday adults, this sense of similarity correlated with greater assets, more savings, and better well-being even when controlling for income or age. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau later confirmed these trends in a national survey of 6,000 Americans. Emotional similarity predicts not just abstract values but concrete wealth and health outcomes.

Future Self as a Loved One

Hershfield finds striking parallels between relationships with partners and those with our future selves. Like loving someone else, caring for your later self blends empathy with accountability. When you imagine that future vividly—what they’ll look like, value, and struggle with—decisions align naturally. People who invest effort imagining their later selves are less likely to cheat, procrastinate, or neglect long-term goals.

The Comfort of Connection

Ultimately, connecting across time isn’t about becoming someone different; it’s about feeling continuous enough to act. Hershfield shows that similarity breeds purpose: when you sense future-you as familiar, satisfaction rises, stress decreases, and patience grows. For anyone feeling lost or impulsive, strengthening that relationship may be the single most practical step toward stability and meaning.

In the section titled “Turbulence,” Hershfield examines why so many of us “miss our flight”—we get stuck in the now, ignoring the consequences that await us later. Through humorous and vivid examples, such as his own overspending spree on fancy shirts after being shown $18,000 gold-thread suits, he shows how we anchor too much on the present and discount the future.

Why Immediate Rewards Win

Humans, pigeons, and even rats show the same bias: we prefer a small immediate reward to a larger delayed one. Psychologically, the present feels more certain and vivid. Emotionally, it’s under a magnifying glass—today’s feelings overshadow tomorrow’s logic. Neurologically, the dopamine system urges quick gratification while the prefrontal cortex pleads for patience. When we’re distracted or hungry, short-term impulses win.

Why Time Feels Uneven

We also distort time. Studies show that future periods feel compressed—three years feeling barely longer than one. This warped perception makes waiting feel longer in the short term than planning over distant horizons. Like caterpillars unaware they become butterflies, we fail to see how today’s self will literally form tomorrow’s. The bigger “the present” feels in our minds, the smaller our concern for the future.

Escaping Present Bias

Hershfield’s conclusion: overvaluing now is natural but not inevitable. By reframing time—seeing each moment as part of a longer story—you can stop missing flights. The antidote lies in conscious awareness: remembering that today’s comforts are paid for by tomorrow’s costs. Once you recognize how the mind magnifies the present, you can balance it with empathy for your future self.

If missing your flight is about ignoring the future, “poor trip planning” is about thinking ahead only superficially. Hershfield describes chronic procrastination—the universal tendency to delay tasks we know we’ll regret later. Like Mozart’s last-minute Don Giovanni overture or writer Tim Urban’s yearlong thesis written in two nights, procrastination reveals how present comfort trumps future pain.

Why We Delay

Procrastination, he explains, is emotional regulation. We avoid tasks to escape bad feelings now, irrationally expecting the future self to handle them. Psychologist Tim Pychyl’s studies show that students with vivid images of their future selves procrastinate less—and that forgiving a past procrastinating self reduces guilt and increases motivation. Self-forgiveness, when genuine, breaks the avoidance cycle and turns shame into empathy across time.

The Yes/Damn Effect

Another mistake is overcommitting. We say yes to things months ahead because future time looks abundant. Hershfield cites Gal Zauberman’s research showing people think they’ll have more time next month than today, leading to what he calls the “Yes/Damn” effect—first yes, then regret when reality hits. Saying yes keeps doors open, but too many yeses trap you in obligations your future self resents.

Planning That Respects Reality

The cure is awareness and balance. Plan deeply, empathize with future-you’s limited time, and remember that tomorrow’s you won’t feel magically motivated. Whether forgiving delay or curbing overcommitment, Hershfield urges planning anchored in self-compassion, not fantasy. That’s how both today’s and tomorrow’s versions of you can coexist in peace.

In Hershfield’s travel metaphor, “packing the wrong clothes” means projecting your current emotions and preferences too far into the future. You pack sweaters for Miami because you’re cold in Chicago. This bias leads to choices you later regret—from tattoos to careers to end-of-life plans.

Projection Bias: Future Feelings Misread

Economist George Loewenstein calls this projection bias: we assume future emotions will match present ones. Hungry shoppers buy junk food, and car buyers splurge on convertibles during warm weather. Hershfield cites studies showing college majors chosen during early morning fatigue lead students to misjudge interest; divorce rates fall after mandatory “cooling-off” periods because emotions subside. We are poor forecasters of how we’ll feel later.

The End-of-History Illusion

Jordi Quoidbach and Daniel Gilbert found that people acknowledge past change but expect stasis ahead—believing they’ve “become the person they’ll remain.” This “end-of-history illusion” blinds us to continued growth. We resist imagining change because we fear losing who we are now. Yet in truth, our personalities, passions, and values continue evolving throughout life.

A Mature View of Change

Hershfield’s interviews with palliative care doctor B. J. Miller encapsulate this mature understanding. The best deaths, Miller says, come to those who see their identity as fluid and plan knowing feelings will shift. Like Greg Tietz, who tattooed a burrito shop logo and years later viewed it as a symbol of youthful joy, we thrive when we treat every self as a patch in one ongoing quilt. Accepting your future self’s difference isn’t betrayal—it’s growth.

To bridge the gap between today and tomorrow, Hershfield presents vivid psychological tools to make your future self more real. He compares this to the “identifiable victim effect” in charity—people donate more to a single vivid child than to abstract statistics. Likewise, a vivid future-you inspires care.

Virtual Reality and Visualization

In experiments using virtual reality, participants met digital avatars of their aged selves in a mirror. Those who confronted their future faces saved more for retirement. Across large studies, people shown aged images or prompted to imagine older selves committed more to saving, exercising, and ethical behavior. Visual vividness translates empathy into action.

Letters Across Time

Hershfield also highlights time‑capsule letters, from novelist Ann Napolitano’s decade-long exchanges with her future self to teacher Richard Palmgren’s students reading notes written six years prior. Writing “Dear Future Me” forces precise imagination—where you’ll live, whom you’ll love—and creates emotional continuity. Studies confirm that writing even one thoughtful letter increases exercise, reduces anxiety, and boosts saving intent.

Shrinking Psychological Distance

Other interventions: reframe years as days (10,950 days instead of 30 years to retirement) or imagine traveling backward from the future to now. Both make time feel shorter and motivation stronger. Whether through letters, mirrors, or mental journeys, the goal remains constant: give your future self a face, a story, and a heartbeat until they feel as real as someone sitting beside you.

Even when you feel connected to future-you, temptations can derail plans. Hershfield’s chapter on “commitment devices” shows how pre‑commitment helps your future self stay safe from your present self’s sabotage. He uses Antabuse—a drug that causes instant hangover symptoms when drinking—as a striking example. It transforms willpower into chemistry, forcing alignment through design.

Soft Commitments

Less extreme methods include psychological pledges, accountability partners, or automated savings plans like “Save More Tomorrow.” These soft commitments work by setting intentions and social expectations that keep you consistent. They help you honor promises to the future like you’d honor promises to a friend.

Hard Commitments

Stronger devices remove options—locking cookies in a “Kitchen Safe,” blocking apps, or using savings accounts you can’t access until goals are met. For the bold, adding penalties seals the deal: sites like Stickk.com let you pledge money that gets donated to causes you hate if you fail. The key is matching commitment strength to personal awareness of temptation.

Why It Works

Pre‑commitment externalizes discipline, recognizing we’re inconsistent creatures. When present bias wins battles, commitment devices secure victory for future-you. Hershfield’s message mirrors Nobel economist Thomas Schelling’s: successful self-control requires strategy, not sainthood. Choose barriers wisely, and they become bridges to the life you actually want.

In the final section, Hershfield asks: how do we make sacrifices today without misery? We often face tension between present comfort and future benefit—saving money, exercising, or confronting hard emotions. He offers three approaches to soften the pain: combine pleasure with effort, break big goals into smaller steps, and celebrate now instead of postponing joy.

Take the Good with the Bad

Research on cancer patients by psychiatrist David Spiegel showed that embracing mixed emotions—sadness alongside joy—extended both life and happiness. Hershfield applies this insight to everyday growth: pairing unpleasant tasks with small pleasures (like Katy Milkman’s “temptation bundling,” reading thrillers only at the gym) boosts compliance. Even subtle distractions—“tangential immersion” such as watching a nature clip while brushing teeth—extend persistence.

Make the Big Small

Reframing sacrifices as tiny daily actions—saving “five dollars a day” instead of “$150 a month”—multiplies success. Across experiments, this simple shift quadrupled adoption rates for savings plans. It’s psychological optics: small numbers feel doable, linking effort to familiar expenses like coffee rather than abstract totals.

Celebrate Today

Finally, Hershfield cautions against hyperopia—the trap of living only for tomorrow. Stories from the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement and writer Carl Richards’s kayaking trip illustrate that deferring all joy shrinks life. Sometimes, helping your future self means giving them beautiful memories. The happiest path lies not in ascetic discipline or reckless pleasure, but in thoughtful balance—spending wisely, working intentionally, and occasionally stopping to cheer for the chicken in the road.