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Beyond Willpower: How to Follow Through on Your Intentions with UCLA’s Hal Hershfield — Part 2 · Time Billionaires: Mindset and Time Management for Work & Life

• 0:00
  Speaker A: There's like also benefit to the spontaneity, there's benefit to the not knowing everything. We have more opportunities now to spend time making optimal decisions and I think that has its drawbacks too. Same could be true for the time we spend researching, the time we spend planning.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: You know, hey there, billionaire. Yep, I'm talking to you. If you expect to live another 31 years, you're already a billionaire. Not in money, but in the real measure of wealth, time. That's because 31 years is roughly a billion seconds. But most of us waste time in ways we'd never waste money. The currency of time billionaires is micro moments. The 90 second to 15 minute gaps hidden between the structured parts of your day. This podcast is about reclaiming them with quick research backed ideas to help you feel more creative, productive and alive. Welcome to Time Billionaires. Let's make your next micro moment count. This is a two part episode. If you want to check out the first part, listen to the previous episode of Time Billionaires.
• 1:09
  Speaker A: And I think as a result of all that, we end up in a situation where it's both message to us to be present and also easier not to be present. And I mean that's a, that's a tough combination.
• 1:26
  Speaker B: It is. And so many things that feel like a good use of time to not be present as an investment for doing more research on everything has diminishing returns. But it can feel reckless not to do it for your kid, especially in an age of misinformation and conflicting information.
• 1:48
  Speaker A: Absolutely. I think that's exactly right. And we have, you know, it's like in the same way that there's that many more opportunities to spend in frictionless ways, there's that many more opportunities now. You're absolutely right. There's that many more opportunities now to spend time making, quote, unquote, the optimal decision, you know, and I think, I mean, and that has its drawbacks too. You know, there's, there's like these asymptotes of perfection we think about when it comes to just any sort of task. But I think the same could be true for the time we spend researching, the time we spend planning. You know, and it's like, it's interesting. One thing that I didn't talk about in my, in my book, and I really wish I had now is that there's like also benefit to the spontaneity, there's benefit to the not knowing everything. You know, there's benefit to the, like, I mean, I would never do. It's funny, I was Talking to a friend recently or was actually my haircutter. And she, she said she, she just got a trip. She has family in Paris. She and her sister went to Paris, so they're in their 50s. And I said, oh, where'd you stay? And she said, we're not the type of people that like to plan that out. So we get there, we plan it out. And I was like, oh my God. Like, I like the, like, imagine going now they don't. Neither has kids. So like, that may have made things easier in a way. But the idea of traveling like, you know, all the way to Europe or anywhere and not knowing where you're going to stay but using some of your precious time to do it sounds outlandish to me. And yet I think both of them got some like, you know, utility of sorts of like the spontaneity and like, let's see where things take us. And like there's some, there's gotta be some values there too.
• 3:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. And the benefit of saying, I don't know which neighborhood I'll feel like being in, but let me go see. Yeah, you're right. Like they're optimizing for not wasting pre planning time before the trip, stressing out, putting energy in places they may not want it. Whereas you or I might say, I want to not waste time in Paris on these questions or shrink my options. If I could have booked somewhere I wanted in advance and then now it's not an option because it sold out or anything.
• 4:04
  Speaker A: Exactly. I think that's exactly right.
• 4:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, you've. I think this is a good example. But even the being present as parents example, the pre commitment comes up a lot on this show of once you have two minutes between tasks, it's too late to decide what you want to do with those two minutes because it's up. But the pre commitment to being present at your son's friend's birthday party or deciding I do this every Friday, what do I want more of? Is a question I ask. And those become my micro moment categories for the week. And then just write down like the week of whatever for me it was this week is physical movement. So it's just 10 pushups, 90 second plank, 3 minute Shavasana. So if I have 90 seconds, that's it. That's just get up and do a 90 second plank or whatever it is. But the pre commitment in advance, it can help with the decision making. You talk about hot and cold states. So if we're in a hot state, like stress between meetings, it's too late you, you can't then just make the same rational decision as you could in a cold state.
• 5:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's, that's a great, you know, that's, that's really interesting. I've never thought about applying pre commitment and the sort of hot cold states to this sort of like time planning. But you're so right about that. And it's, you know, the idea there about the hot states and cold states is like it, there's a, there's a disconnect. It's, it's, you know, it's current and future selves and my current, you know, my current self right now could be in a cold state and it might make it easier to plan for a hot state and to say, well, when I'm in that stressful moment, I'm going to do a plank and 10, and 10 pushups or sit ups or whatever. But at the same time there can be another disconnect which is that my cold self can say, oh, I'm going to do these things. And when I'm stressed I'm like, why did that guy make this plan? Who was that guy? Right. And that is one of the reasons why commitment devices that really try to constrain your behavior can be so effective. Right? So I mean, we know that, you know, if I attach some sort of punishment and I put that in quotes because I'm, you know, I'm not saying I need to, you know, like bring my, bring myself into law enforcement, but I mean, if I, you know, if I owe my friend a hundred dollars at the end of the week, if I haven't stayed true to my word, like that might be the type of thing that just puts me over the edge to say, okay, maybe I will do this thing that I said I was going to do. I have a line of research now with one of my students, Megan Weber. And what we're doing is looking at the fact that commitment devices are really effective. It turns out that they're really effective at getting people to do the things that they say that they want to do or not do the things that they say that they don't want to do. The problem is people don't adopt them that often. So like, you know, like there's, you know, one of the most effective treatments for alcoholism I is, you know, this pill called ant abuse. I'm sure you've heard about it. I think I even, and it's like I wrote about it and it's like, you know, makes you sick if you drink and lasts in your bloodstream for four days. Not that many people sign up for it. Because this idea. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
• 7:20
  Speaker B: No, but the thing that I loved about that, that I highlighted and pulled out was that the reason people do try it for any length of time was because it's easier to make one decision a day than 25 decisions a day. So if you have this one decision, I will take this pill. I'm not going to decide 25 times a day not to scroll. Social media is the equivalent, I thought, with time of if you can decide. I'm not the kind of person who's going to spend five minutes. I think there's a parallel with time there from a commitment device, but also with the, the anchoring of a dollar amount. You talked about with a Groupon going into an expensive suit shop and deciding you were only there for the Groupon deal. The salesperson talks to you about an $18,000 suit, you're like, I'd never spend $18,000 on a suit. Aren't I so responsible? Walking out. Was it with twice what you planned to spend or something like that? I think that happened with time too. Of. Oh, I mean, yeah, it's not so bad to, I didn't waste two hours scrolling Reddit. So just five minutes is fine. It just feels like a smaller anchor of, well, what was I going to do with those five minutes? You could have called your grandparents, done 10 pushups, stepped outside, any number of things. But it doesn't feel like we could have done anything else with those micro moments.
• 8:30
  Speaker A: I, I love that example. I'd never thought about this, you know, this, the concept of anchoring within our own, you know, basically what you're talking about is like this like self anchor, you know, where you're like, well, I could, I could have been on for two hours. I could have spent, I mean, I actually couldn't have spent, but I could have spent $18,000, but I only spent 300 or whatever it is. And you're like, it's your, our ways of tricking ourselves with these almost irrelevant anchor points of, of sorts. Right. But, but I, I, I do think you're, you're right that that's part of the problem. There is it's like easy to wash away any of the other, you know, the little behaviors. Oh, well, it wasn't two hours, but what if I added it up over the course of the week and now it's two hours staring at me? Right? That's, that's problematic. And I think, you know, this just to come back to it. This idea of the commitment device is interesting because sometimes people don't do them because they don't want to end up in a situation where they have to punish themselves. But sometimes we don't adopt them because we say, I don't need that. I can handle it. It's like I can the extreme. If I want to quit, I'll quit. But what's interesting here, so what my student Megan and I are doing is we're basically taking it away from the self we're saying, and it's not about you, whether you can or can't do it. It's that there's going to be obstacles and barriers in your way. And have you, you know, we'll ask people, have you ever tried to quit social media before? Yeah. What got in the way from stop? What made it hard to quit? It's like, well, my friends are talking about there's all these things and turn on my phone and it's there. That's not about you. You're not lazy, you don't have poor self control. You're not bad. There's these obstacles out there and they make it hard for you. So if you think you're going to face obstacles in the future and you probably will, then it may make sense to adopt some sort of commitment device. And that, you know, what we're finding is that that sort of framing is the type of thing that gets people say, oh, you know, you're right, maybe I should check myself. Maybe I should put some plan into place because it's not me, it's just that there's other things out there that are going to pull my attention away.
• 10:45
  Speaker B: It's fascinating. I think that's such a good idea. It makes perfect sense as I think about my own life. And when I took your class, we talked about this after one of your lectures that I thought was awesome. But it's hard to cold turkey. I think especially for the current generation of students, they are missing out if they're not plugged in to the same things. But what I found and I've shared with some people who found it helpful is a similar motion of okay, I have the instinct to take my phone out and scroll. So I will take my phone out and scroll the photos on my own phone or goodreads for what my friends are reading because I have this motion that I need to break. And going cold turkey from I used to scroll in every moment to I never touch my phone is hard. That's a big deviation.
• 11:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's I love that. And you're absolutely right. It's a big deviation. It's not sustainable, but you're right. It's like I need something. I need a distraction of sorts. That's a positive distraction. I mean, it is funny because I look at my kids who don't have phones yet, and I'm like, man, you're like me 20 years ago. You just like, you just sit there and it's like. Also probably why they complain about being bored more. You know, their kids, they don't have control of their time.
• 11:58
  Speaker B: It's good for them though, because it's good for them.
• 12:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, part of me wishes like, I do feel like I'm like, I wish I could throw it away, put it down, you know, but swap. I like that idea. I like that swap. That's great.
• 12:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the same for the procrastination motion, at least for me. What breaks it is the same metric. Not I'll work out on the treadmill now because summer's coming, I want to be confident. How much will I enjoy this workout to how much will I enjoy indulging in chips on the couch? If it's the same metric of I can still put some common measurement of I actually will enjoy these pushups instead. When it's different of enjoyment in the future to pain now, my brain breaks there of it just isn't through line enough of my future self to my current self's emotions.
• 12:52
  Speaker A: That is, you know, first off, that, that's interesting that you are motivated by push ups now versus couch. Now to me, that would not be an easy one. But, but like part of what you're doing there. So you're putting things on the same metric, but you're also bringing the rewards to the present, you know, so, so, so you could. In other words, you could say, well, I'm gonna work out now because I'll feel more confident this summer, something that'll happen in however many months. Or I'm gonna work out now because as soon as I'm done with the workout, I'm gonna feel. I'm gonna feel like I've gotten out my excess energy. I'm going to feel good, I'm going to feel more relaxed, et cetera. Or even during it. I was joking. But maybe during it feels good. But what you've done there is brought the rewards to the present, which we know is a really strong way to motivate people to do something that also, by the way, has future benefits. So if I keep Doing that, then I will, as a side effect, feel more confident this summer, whatever it might be. But it's not the main effect, it's not the main driver.
• 14:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. And then that compounding, you set that rule for yourself, it becomes a common motion. You introduced me to this idea really recently of an AI digital twin, which I had never heard of. I think it has so much potential. Will you share what that is?
• 14:20
  Speaker A: Totally. So, I mean, so the concept, okay, so there's a couple ways to think about this, but like, the main way of thinking about this is an AI digital twin is essentially like an AI agent that is created off of a person's beliefs, personality, even demographics and so on. So, like, you know, a classic example of this, some researchers, basically, let's say they surveyed. I'll just make up some numbers. Imagine they took a thousand people and they gave them tons of questionnaires. You know, things like about their personality, their preferences, their value propositions, their, you know, their demographics, et cetera. And then they basically say, okay, so, you know, so like, let's say that you, Rebecca, did, you know, a series of questionnaires. And then they'll say, okay, we're going to use the answers that you gave to all these questionnaires to create now, like AI Rebecca, and this is your digital twin. And in theory, this should now behave and respond in the way that you do. And to validate this, what the researchers have done is they'll say, okay, now I'm going to give a new questionnaire to you, real Rebecca, and that same questionnaire to AI Rebecca. And what they found is that the correlation between the answers that, you know, the real person and the AI twin gave were like highly correlated. It's wild, right? And now, I mean, you can think about from a marketing perspective. Imagine if I, I'm, I'm trying to figure out, you know, what's the best way to position something for you. I don't have to go and find you. I can ask your digital twin. And now, I mean, like any. Let me just be really clear. Like anything in marketing, I think there's enormously positive consequences that could come from this as well as negative ones. Right. So, I mean, in the wrong hands, imagine like a political group using this to sway behavior in a way. I don't need to pull that thread too hard, but you know what I'm saying now my research team and I used the concept of digital twins, but not for AI Rebecca now, but future Rebecca. So we basically have you answer serious questions that creates. It's like the backstory that fills in for a future you. And then you can essentially have a conversation with that future you. Now, right now, we've primarily done this over like texting chats, but for some experimental reasons, like the group. This is a group I'm collaborating with at mit. They've created a version of this where imagine you go into a room and you sit there and you kind of stare back at like you stare at you aiu and you have a whole conversation like you were sitting in a room with your grandmother, but it's not your grandmother, it's you at age 75 or 80. And I mean, what's crazy power, right?
• 17:26
  Speaker B: Like, if we're stuck on what will future me prefer or want at some inflection point that can be really stifling. And having a digital twin be huge.
• 17:35
  Speaker A: I think so. And like, to be clear, it's not a time travel machine. So I could say what would happen if I were to move to the Bay Area from LA and my AI twin could talk to me about his feelings and what he thinks. But it's just a projection, obviously. But I think what that does is it creates kind of an imagination aid, an imagination scaffolding of sorts, so that my present day decisions are less of the sort of like constant, you know, iteration on the same idea over and over and over again rumination of it, but rather like, well, let me actually play this out. Like it's like almost like cognitive behavioral therapy. Let's like not go to the most extreme end or, or go to the most extreme end, but let's just have a conversation about it rather than like cycling over and over and over again.
• 18:32
  Speaker B: Huge. Yeah. The cycling of what are the consequences? How will I feel? I think is where a lot of people get stuck without an AI digital twin, which most of us don't have right now, given our tendency to discount the future, et cetera. What's the smallest thing someone could do today in just a few minutes to make tomorrow better?
• 18:57
  Speaker A: I do, you know, at the risk of sounding too detailed, I do think that one exercise, at least that can be really valuable is pick a time point, whether it's five years in the future or 10 a year, and write a letter from that future self to who you are now. And I want to be clear, to emphasize, because I think, you know, the normal thing is write a letter to your future self. Problem with doing that is that you stay anchored in the present. You know, if I was to write a letter to myself in 10 years, it does get me Thinking about what will life be like in 10 years. But it gets me thinking about it really from the standpoint of right now. It's like, you know, connect with your date by telling them all about you. It's like, okay, but what if I write a letter and it's like, from my future self. Now, to be fair, I still have to jump ahead. I still have to mentally time travel. I still am. I still am living in today's world. But this, my suspicion is that it helps us think a little bit more deeply about, you know, who we want to be, how we want to spend our time, which could be the type of moment that, like, gets you to, like, try to change the way things are going right now in your life, whatever that means. Exactly. Or maybe you say, hey, things are actually going pretty well. The way that I think about it. Like, I'm going to stick with the status quo and be more grateful for it, you know, And I, you know, that even that exercise, I think, is enormously valuable because in everything we're talking about getting stuck in the present and so on, sometimes we can also get stuck in the present and only focus on the things that are problematic about right now and fail to step out and say, oh, my gosh, you know, all things being equal, it's pretty good, right? So in certain circumstances, I recognize we're at a hard point in history, but.
• 20:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Or how small will some of the things that I'm stressing about now feel from the perspective of myself reading this back 100. Yeah, I've loved this conversation. Is there anything you wanted to share? I didn't give you a chance to.
• 21:09
  Speaker A: No, I mean, I really think this is. This has been a great conversation, I guess. Okay, one thing would be, you know, this conversation is not meant to say, oh, you know, we should prioritize the future self or we should prioritize the current self. I think more than anything, it's like, how do you create? How do you sort of smooth out the satisfaction? You know, utility, whatever an economist might say, over time. And that, you know, that also doesn't mean, oh, balance everything. Because it may be that there's times when, like, you do have to, like, procrastinate and act hyperbolically and be very future focused and miss the present, you know, because ultimately that'll be good. Or there may be some times where it's like, yeah, I'm going to skip out on the things I was supposed to do because I'm really loving this moment with my kid right now or my spouse right now or whatever it is. The problem arises when you only do one of those versus the other, or if you have whiplash, you're constantly going back and forth. So I think it's really a matter of saying, how can I be intentional about this? How can I say, yeah, it makes sense now to spend the money on a family trip and I need to be okay with the fact that I've just taken money away from my future self, but I've given him some memories, et cetera. But if I do it out of inertia and then I get there and I'm like, oh, this was a bad idea. Maybe we should skip dinner, like, then you're not doing anybody a service. Right? So it's really about being intentional with how you spend your time, you know, between present and future selves.
• 22:45
  Speaker B: So true. And then not shaming yourself for whatever that decision was made. Brilliant.
• 22:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 22:57
  Speaker B: Thanks for spending this micro moment with me. If you found it valuable, share it with a fellow time billionaire and give us a rating to help others discover the power of micro moments. For more ways to reclaim your time, check out timebillionaires.org and follow me. Rebecca Shattucks on LinkedIn. See you next time.