Emily Falk

It happens with decisions where there's some kind of payoff that's far off in the future.

Maybe we want to do something because we know that it'll make us healthier, happier later.

It happens with the people that we care about and making time to spend time with them when they're available and when we still can.

So that's just a small set of examples.

There are so many times where we make these kinds of choices, and then later we wonder why we made them.

Yeah, I've heard this.

Everybody that I know experiences this.

One example that comes to mind is my grandma, Bev, every time I see her regrets that she hasn't been reading books.

And I ask her, you know, why haven't you been reading books?

She loves reading books.

And she says, well, there's just so many things that I need to do.

And I ask her about what those things are.

And it's usually things that have to do with basic, you know, cleaning up her apartment or doing errands, things that that take some time.

And I say, well, why don't you just carve out some time and read some books?

And she's like, I'll do it tomorrow.

Or, you know, my kids are extremely interested in a wide range of things that they would like to be doing.

And then sometimes on the weekend when they're allowed to have screen time, they end up playing a ton of Minecraft.

And then later they feel frustrated that they didn't do all those other things that they had in their plan for the weekend.

Those are two small examples that come to mind.

I mean, this also happens all the time with my team at work, like when people are doing research and we meet and we discuss all of the ambitions that we have for the things that we're going to do.