Using time-travel to make better decisions

 Temporal discounting 

• People would like to have $100 now than $110 a month later. This tendency to favor present-self at the expense of future-self is called temporal discounting
• We can use mental time travel to make sure we don't discount our future so much. 
• Think about how a decision you make now will feel in 10 mins, 10 months and 10 years later to trigger this time travel to see the impact of the decisions. 
• Move regret in front of a decisions helps you avoid that regret and also prepares you about how to handle it if it comes to pass. 

Ticker tape vs zoom lens

• If you see the ticker tape of any stock, you will see many highs and lows. But if you zoom out for the same stock you can see that all these daily ups and downs smooth out. 
  
• Our happiness is also like that. If you stress our daily up and downs you'll not be able to get the right perspective. Happiness is a long term game. 
• If you're blowing something out of proportion, your learning pod can ask questions about whether this thing matters in the future to snap you out of it.

Path dependence of happiness 

• Happiness is path-dependent. If you win some money and lose it all, you'll be bitter compared to when you start by losing some money and then making it back. 
• Time travel helps you see that both outcomes are identical and one shouldn't be better or worse than the other.

Ulysses Contracts

• You can use pre-commitments or Ulysses contracts to prevent you from irrational behavior due to too much present focus. 
• You can use either limit access to things that aren't good for you or you can increase access to things you want to do more. 

Decision swear jar 

• Based on your or language of the people around you, you can identify if anyone is not being truth seeking. 
• These are generally overconfidence, being all knowing, blowing things out of proportion, generalizing, shooting the message, leading the witness, being overgenerous in editing our story, moaning or complaining, lack of self-compassion etc. 
• Being aware of this, you can shift yourself to be more truth-seeking. 

Mapping the future 

While planning it is important to identify the full range of futures, the probability of each. By making our decision making process explicit, we will have a more realistic view of the world and we can also prepare our response for each kind of future so we are better prepared. 

Backcasting

• Thinking backward from a goal and think about the steps, events that need to happen to reach that goal. 
• It helps us identify low probability events and work to improve them so that they are more likely to happen 
• It also helps us adapt the plan to the unfolding future as we know what we are expecting to happen at each time. 
• It also helps to identify inflection points for reevaluating the decisions.  
• Company can plan pre-committments for anything that we identified during the plan. 

Premortems

• In a premortem we start by asking what will cause this decision to fail. 
• This will help us to identify all the risks to the decision
• It will give voice to any person who is doubtful of the decision but doesn't want to come out and say it. 
• Research also found that my imagining a negative future we are likely to work to avoid that. 

Hindsight Bias

• Backcasting and premortems are complementary as they help us see the full space of the future. 
• If we don't see the full future space, we are likely to think that the outcome was bound to happen. 
• It becomes impossible to realistically evaluate the decisions and probabilities after.