Temporal Discounting: It Lies & Steals From Everyone

Sunday night you has a master plan. Tuesday afternoon you is tired, stressed, and suddenly a donut, a scroll session, or an impulse buy feels like the only sane option. If that cycle makes you question your self-worth or your self-discipline, I want you to hear this clearly: you’re not defective. You’re dealing with a predictable brain bias called temporal discounting, and once you can see it, you can beat it.

I break down what temporal discounting is and why instant gratification so often overrides long-term goals in health, money, relationships, and personal development. We talk about the real neuroscience behind it, including the tug of war between the limbic system (your emotional, impulsive wiring) and the prefrontal cortex (your planning brain). I also share a personal story about stress, cravings, and making the same short-term choice two days in a row, not to normalize quitting, but to replace shame with clarity. Shame feels productive, but it usually demotivates and keeps the pattern running.

Then we get practical. I walk you through three systems you can start using immediately: episodic future thinking to make your future self feel vivid and emotionally real, a Ulysses pact style precommitment to lock in better choices before temptation hits, and temptation bundling (from behavioral economics researcher Katie Milkman) to pair hard tasks with a small reward that keeps you moving. If you’ve been relying on willpower and wondering why it runs out by midweek, these tools help you design your environment so follow-through becomes more automatic.

If this helped you, subscribe so you don’t miss future Sage advice, share it with a friend who’s stuck in the same loop, and leave a quick review so more people can find the show. What’s the biggest “right now” temptation you want to stop trading your future for?

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The Sage Solutions Podcast and content posted by David Sage is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. No coaching client relationship is formed by listening to this podcast. No Legal, Medical or Financial advice is being given. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice, diagnosis, or treatment of a psychotherapist, physician, professional coach, Lawyer or other qualified professional. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. The opinions of guests are their own and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of the podcast.

Transcript

A Real Example Of Derailing

Why Shame Backfires

Temporal Discounting Defined

The Brain Tug Of War

Balance Between Now And Later

Build Systems Not Willpower

Make Future You Feel Real

Precommitment With A Ulysses Pact

Temptation Bundling For Follow Through

Recap And Final Reminder

Subscribe And Legal Note

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Sage Solutions Podcast, where we talk about all things personal growth, personal development, and becoming your best self. My name is David Sage, and I am a self-worth and confidence coach with Sage Coaching Solutions. I'm really glad you're here today. Because we're going to spend the next chunk of time untangling a mental knot that every single one of us wrestles with. I want to start by setting a scene. I want you to think back to a Sunday night. But not just any Sunday night. The house is quiet, your weekend is winding down, and you're looking at the week ahead. In that moment, you get a burst of inspiration. You say, you know what? It's a new week. No more. You become the visionary. You set massive, exciting goals for yourself. You tell yourself, this week, I'm locking in my finances, or I'm starting that diet. Or I'm gonna pick up that hobby I've always wanted to start, or habit, or whatever else it might have been. This week, I am putting my head down and doing the hard work. Because you know it will pay off in the long term. Sunday night you, the visionary, has endless discipline and a flawless master plan. We've all been there. But then Tuesday afternoon rolls around, and you're exhausted. Your day did not go as planned. And before you know it, you're eating a donut and scrolling on your phone for two hours, and then buying a bunch of things that you don't need. Or whatever version actually happened to you, grabbing whatever is easiest and the most comforting sounding thing that's immediately available to you. And it just sounds like the greatest idea in the world in that moment. You just want it so bad. Poof. You're visionary, gone. Replaced by this totally different person. Someone who just wants to feel good right now. Once again, it's not just you. It's literally all of us. At least some of the time. I know this cycle intimately. I've lived it. I can't even tell you how many times. Especially being in the thick of personal development, there are so many opportunities to do the perfect morning routine or implement so many different health or mindfulness or insert thing here hacks that there's it's physically impossible for me to have done all of them. There are so many technically good for you things that pop up that I get this feeling of inspiration to do. Just because I'm a coach and I work with people, and just because I'm passionate about this, by no means at all does that mean that I don't struggle with what we're talking about today, with valuing the immediate over the long term, with temporal discounting. But before we get into it, our goal with this podcast is to share free, helpful tools with you and anyone you know who is looking to improve their life. So take action. Subscribe and share this podcast with them. So if I'm being honest, I might actually be worse than the average person at this in some ways. When you combine the fact that I do have pretty severe ADHD, and therefore my brain is very wired towards seeking out stimulation, and truly detests boredom. In fact, I think there's been some studies that show that an ADHD brain experiences boredom partially the same as pain. But we're not doing an episode on ADHD today. I'm just saying I feel this because in some ways I'm extra wired to make this trade-off even beyond the normal. And then you throw on top the fact that a huge portion of my interests are about some form of self-betterment, whether it's like health, fitness, and longevity, or personal growth, development, self-help, or financial intelligence, passive income, like different bettering different areas of my life. So I'm constantly being exposed to things that I could be doing to make my life better in the long term by making a short-term concession. It makes for an interestingly weird situation where I am probably thinking about having to make these trade-off decisions both more often than the average person, and more predisposed to make the wrong choice than the average person. Now none of these things are excuses. It's just me being honest with myself. So let me give you an example. In the last month, I decided I was gonna put some extra emphasis on my health. Uh, because health is easily one of the areas that comes with the biggest long-term payoff for shirt for some short-term pain. And I've been doing a lot of thinking about this exact topic, about temporal discounting. And in general, I feel like I've been doing a pretty good job, if I'm being honest with myself. However, about two weeks ago, I was on a pretty good track, and then I had a pretty stressful long day. I worked a double shift, and even though I knew we had plenty of feeling tasty enough, and healthier food at home, I wanted what I wanted in the moment. And I suggested to my wife that we should get Taco Bell. And she usually is more the voice of reason when this specific craving pops up for me. And, you know, it had been a long day, so she was like, yeah, you know what? Sure. She tried to talk me out of it for a little bit, but not super long. And she's usually much better about what she gets there than I am. I tend to go pretty ham when I get there. I can eat a lot of food. Um, and so it can be decently derailing when I uh like go way off track because I can fit quite a lot. And um even though I knew it was not a good trade-off, that it was not helping me achieve what I was going to do, and it was going to put me behind. I chose to do it anyways. Now, there is nothing wrong with this necessarily, because a lot of people, when they are looking to get healthier, they build in like cheap meals, and this can help add to sustainability. So this story would be kind of blah if it just ended there. However, the next day, I had an incredibly stressful day. And I'm not gonna get into the whole story surrounding it, but it was a very, very crazy day. In the heat of that moment, at the end of that crazy day, I made the decision that I was gonna get Taco Bell for a second day in a row. Even though I knew that was a terrible decision, and that eating crap, you know, after all of multiple stressful days was actually not doing me any any favors for my like mental emotional health. But I did it anyways. Because in that moment, I sure as shit was not the visionary. I was like, I want Taco Bell right now and to hell with the future, and we are all in that position sometimes. Now I'm not sure whether that specific story is gonna resonate with you or not, but I think we all have our own personal version of that. Like I said, we have all been there. And usually when this happens, what do we do? We beat ourselves up, we call ourselves lazy. It's so easy to immediately start shaming ourselves. We label ourselves as unmotivated or even lacking willpower. And this is still probably one of the areas where I am most likely to have really pretty negative self-talk towards myself. I can get pretty frustrated when I feel like I failed myself. And this is one of the few times that some of my old habits of the way that I treat myself can come out. But as we've discussed in previous podcasts, shame is a terrible long-term motivator. It's a weak short-term motivator. In fact, shame's primary function is to demotivate you. It's to take an action and make you never want to do it again. It can prevent you from doing certain things, especially social shame. But internal, personal shame usually just makes you feel like crap. And when you feel like crap, you default to making that trade more and more and more. So today you and I are gonna stop shaming ourselves because we actually want to improve. So I'm gonna let you off the hook. Because what you are fighting in those moments is not a character flaw. It's a scientifically documented glitch in our human psychology. This glitch was once evolutionarily advantageous, but now it's just a cognitive bias. And this one is called temporal discounting. We're dragging this invisible thief into the light and making him give back what he's regularly stealing. So let's break down the concept. Temporal refers to time. Discounting means reducing the value of something. You put them together, and temporal discounting is our brain's hardwired tendency to devalue a reward the further away it is in the future. And it's been proven time and time again. Here's a classic psychological example. If I were sitting across from you right now and I put a crisp$100 bill on the table and said, you can take this right now. Or if you wait exactly one year, I will give you$120. What would you do? There have been so many studies that show that most people will take that$100 right then. Now, you know what I'm doing here, so you might be telling yourself, oh, I would take the later one. Because logically, mathematically, a 20% guaranteed return on investment in one year with no risk is incredible. Any financial advisor would beg you to wait. But your brain, your brain inherently hates that idea. If I say, I'm gonna give you$120 in a year, or I'll give you a hundred bucks right now, you're gonna want that hundred bucks right now because you can use it right now. You can get that dopamine spike, that immediate gratification. Your brain is screaming, take the hundred bucks today. The delay makes the future reward feel less real and therefore less valuable. Even though your brain also knows that 120 bucks is more than a hundred bucks. The now is heavy. The now is tangible, the future is just a concept. Think about the difference between grabbing a hyper-processed fast food burger because you're starving right now and it sounds so good, versus taking the time to properly prep, season, and slow roast a beautiful complex meal. The fast food hits the dopamine receptors instantly. But the thoughtfully prepared meal is actually going to taste much better and be deeply more satisfying. But the fact that it's going to take time and effort is why so many people don't make that trade. This is why our brains are wired to scream for that drive-thru. We do this with our health, with our relationships, with our careers, and with every aspect of our lives. But is the impact really that big? Yes. To understand why this happens, we have to look backward. We evolved in environments where tomorrow was never guaranteed. For our ancient ancestors, consuming calories or taking advantage of a resource immediately was a survival mechanism. If you found food, you ate it. You didn't invest for retirement. Prioritizing the immediate present kept humanity alive. But in our modern world, this evolutionary trait has become a massive liability. It is the invisible force behind many failed habits, empty savings accounts, and unfulfilled potential. Our environment has been weaponized against our biology. To understand how deep this goes, we have to look inside the brain itself. In a landmark 2004 study published in the journal Science, researchers Samuel McClure, David Labson, George Lowenstein, and Jonathan Cohen put participants in an fMRI machine to see exactly what happens when we make these choices. They discovered a literal tug of war happening inside our heads. When we are offered an immediate reward, the brain's limbic system, our ancient emotional impulsive center, lights up like a Christmas tree. It's the inner toddler throwing a tantrum for that immediate gratification. But when we consider delaying rewards, the prefrontal cortex, the modern, rational, planning part of our brain, takes over. It's the adult in the room. Temporal discounting happens when our emotional brain simply overpowers our rational brain. When the pull of the present is so strong that the adult gets locked out of the room. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Zig Ziglar. He perfectly summarized this scientific phenomenon decades ago when he said the chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now. Is it super profound? No. Is it incredibly to the point? Yes. Trading what you want most for what you want right now. Temporal discounting, if not directly the cause, plays at least a role in almost every major failure that we have. It plays a major role in procrastination. It is one of the primary antagonists of discipline. And I challenge you to find an area of your life that it doesn't have an effect. There are very few cognitive biases that are this sweeping, this common, and apply to this many different areas of our lives. But I want to stop and give a couple shades of gray here. I don't want to make it sound like you always need to make the long-term trade-off. There are simply too many things that you could be doing to better yourself in the long term. In fact, more than you could possibly ever do. I am constantly confronted with this fact because of what a bunch of my interests are, like we talked about earlier. I literally could not do all of the things that could better my life, even if I had infinite motivation and energy. There is just not enough time in the day, and I would also never spend any time enjoying myself. There is going to have to be a balance here. And also, even though we are not at constant risk of dying all the time like our ancestors, tomorrow is guaranteed for no one. Which is why there is a grain of truth to temporal discounting. For instance, if I said I'll give you$100 now or$100 in a year, for multiple reasons,$100 is actually worth more right now. The first reason is there is technically a chance that you won't be alive in a year, and therefore would not receive$100. Whereas you are guaranteed to be here and receive it right now. Also, if you receive it now, you could invest it and have it become more money. So therefore, there is, especially when it comes to money, there is some extra value to money right now. Which is why I specifically chose an amount of money that was an unreasonably good guaranteed investment return so that it would obviously be better. And I could make that even more extreme by saying$100 right now or$200 in the future. And there are still people that would take the$100 right now. So I'm not trying to say you should never do things for the present. You do need to enjoy your life. It's just the YOLO, or you only live once mentality takes what I'm saying right now way too far. It's basically the exact opposite. It's throwing yourself headfirst into temporal discounting and completely ignoring the future. It's a terrible idea. But doing the literal opposite would probably be pretty bad as well. You're gonna have to find some balance. And not all things that you enjoy in the present come with such a terrible long-term trade-off. So I want to be clear that it's not about not enjoying your life. It's just there are many, many situations in our lives where if we settle for some short-term discomfort, we will actually have much more long-term happiness, joy, pleasure, comfort, and a better life. When you look at what you're trading, the trade-off is obvious. It just makes sense that you would do that. But then you're there in the moment, and temporal discounting comes in. Because it's in the future, because current you right now will not experience that reward, you discount it. And the further away it is, the more you discount it. So how do we win this tug of war? How do we stop relying on willpower? Which we know usually runs out by like Tuesday afternoon. We build systems. So here are three powerful, actionable strategies that we can start using today. Number one, introduce yourself to your future self. Alright, stay with me here. I understand that this first strategy sounds kind of weird, but the science is pretty fascinating. Brain imaging shows that when we think about our future selves, the brain regions that activate are the same ones that light up when we think about a complete stranger. Subconsciously, we feel like we're giving our pleasure and resources away to someone we don't even know. The fix is a psychological practice called episodic future thinking. So take a second here with me. If you're not driving, and you're in a space where you can, I want you to close your eyes and visualize something with me. And even if you're not in a place where you can do those things, I still want you to try to visualize this. I want you to picture yourself, and we can do this for any time period, but I want you to picture yourself in one year. What are you wearing? What do you look like? What's different? Put yourself in that body. How do you feel? What does your life look like? What things are you seeing? What things are going on in your life? And then go back to thinking about how those things make you feel. When you make your future emotional, real and vivid, your limbic system actually starts to care about it. Another technique is to have a mock conversation with your future self in your head and treat them like a trusted family member. Somebody that you truly care about and want the best for. This way you can take advantage of circumventing the Solomon paradox and give advice to yourself as a third-party observer. And lastly, my favorite, because it's the quickest, it is the immediate reminder that I give myself. Think about how you feel right now, right? You're in the moment. You have desires, you have wants. You are the consciousness experiencing your life. All of the sensations, all of the feelings, all of the desires. Now remind yourself that yesterday you had those things too. And guess what? Tomorrow you're going to experience and be in the now. You will be the you, the consciousness, experiencing present you in a year. It's going to be just as real, just as pressing, and you're going to feel all of the pain that you could cause for yourself as well. You will be there. Future you is just present you later on. You will feel that same amount of pain or pleasure. So remember, future you is not different. Future you will be the same consciousness, experiencing just a later part of your life. So don't screw future you over. They're not separate. They're you. And by simulating the future pain or pleasure and reminding yourself that you will be that you, it is a powerful reframe that snaps you out of that detachment and helps you calculate much more realistically. It makes you much less likely to discount. You can also create a Ulysses pact. In Greek mythology, Ulysses knew he wouldn't be able to resist the hypnotic song of the sirens. So he didn't rely on willpower. He had his crew tie him tightly to the mast of the ship before they even sailed near the island. And then when they passed the sirens, no matter how much he begged and screamed to go over because of the hypnotic song, he couldn't. And therefore he got through it unscathed. A Ulysses pact is a pre-commitment. You lock in a choice now while your rational brain is in charge, so that your emotional brain can't sabotage you later. Does this sound familiar? It's making a choice, a decision. It's tapping in to why, to your resolve, so that you can use your muscle of discipline. And then finally the third system is to use temptation bundling. This term was coined by behavioral economist Katie Milkman. Temptation bundling is for when the long-term reward is just too far away to motivate you. You can hack the system by pairing a difficult long-term task with an immediate reward that you only get to enjoy while doing the hard task. If you love a certain podcast, then you only get to listen to it while working out. If you love a specific fancy coffee, then you only get to drink it while doing your taxes or budgeting. You are bringing the reward into the present moment to satisfy your limbic system, allowing your prefrontal cortex to get the work done. And these three strategies aren't mutually exclusive. You can do all three. And that's not even getting into all of the other things that we've talked about surrounding action and courage and failing forward and avoidance and grit or building habits so that they're automatic. So to review the three systems for dealing with temporal discounting, you familiarize yourself with future you. Either by putting yourself in future you's place with visualization and making them real, or by having a conversation with future you to make them feel more real. And finally by reminding yourself that future you is present you, just later, that you will be that person experiencing it and it will feel just like now. The second system is by making a decision, by burning your boats, by taking away the other options, by tapping into your why, your resolve, and your discipline, by increasing the friction for the thing you shouldn't be doing and decreasing the friction for the thing you should be doing. And the third strategy is by pairing short-term rewards with the hard things that you need to do. This way, the only way for you to get the other thing you really want is by doing the hard thing with temptation bundling. Temporal discounting is a part of being human. We all feel the pull of the present. But once you realize that this invisible thief is operating in the background and lying to you about how important things are, you take your power back. You can stop relying on willpower and start designing better systems. Picture your future self. Remember that they are you. Tie yourself to that mast. Remove the obstacles and commit and bundle those temptations. You are the architect of your future. Don't let the temptations of today steal the life that you want to build for tomorrow. And remember, you are enough, and you deserve to fill up your inner cup with happiness, true confidence, and resilience. Thank you for listening to the Sage Solutions podcast. Your time is valuable, and I'm so glad you choose to learn and grow here with me. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on more Sage advice. One last thing. The Legal Language. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. No coaching client relationship is formed. It is not intended as a substitute for the personalized advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.