Tom Frieden

So how then...

Do we break the Cassandra curse?

For each of the six drivers, I go through a way to break it.

In terms of the short-changing the future, the hyperbolic discounting, it's cool.

You can do two things.

One, you can use emotion and rationality to think of something far in the future as tomorrow.

Two, you can reward yourself or society with short-term gains that compensate for that longer term.

To give you one example of each,

in the time management field, if I get a request for something, go to a meeting, give a talk, I used to show up at these talks and think, why did I agree to this?

And I realized, well, I agreed to it six or 12 months ago when it seemed like it was never going to happen.

So now when I get an invitation, I say, if it were tomorrow, would I do it?

And if the answer is yes, then I do it like this wonderful podcast.

But

Often, the answer is no.

If it were tomorrow, I wouldn't want to do it, but I would have said yes if I hadn't asked myself that question.

The same is true for health.

If we can use our rational brains or use our emotions to think of something as right here before us.

On a public policy, to give you an example of this, Philadelphia got a soda tax passed by –

including the revenue going for early childhood education.

So you give a short-term benefit in addition to the long-term benefit.