The answer to the question "When does the future begin?" matters because people tend to focus on the "right now" situation. This is not a disadvantage. Failure to focus on the opportunities and challenges of the moment can be dangerous. From an evolutionary point of view, all people around us descended from ancestors who focused on the present moment and, therefore, did not become food for predators that could meet on their way while they were making plans for the future.
At the same time, the future often figures in our thoughts. Much of everyday life makes sense in large part because the present carries with it an assumption of what it might become. Household chores make sense only as a step towards "future self", otherwise they would be perceived as daily work, which must be avoided. Getting good grades, maintaining health, or saving for retirement usually involves actions taken in the present that will continue into the distant future. The fact that we try to overcome adversity has more to do with how the “future I” will feel in the here-and-now situation than with the sensations of the “real I”, and this is what allows us to move on, despite the setbacks ...
Through a series of school experiments and short studies, my lab has proven that our sense of when the future begins can in fact be changed by including what we call “identity-based motivation”. It is in our power to make the future feel real, so that it can become part of the "real self". In fact, once activated, a sense of the future can provoke both immediate changes in behavior and changes that will last over time.
During the study, we initially worked with students from low-income families, dividing them into two groups: test and control. During the experiment, students took part in small group activities that involved analyzing and reviewing their academic-academic identities and strategies. These identities and strategies of the present moment were associated with those of the next year, as well as with the adult identity. The control group went to school as usual and experienced normal learning difficulties. They also had to think about their future, about when and who they would be, but without outside interference and purposeful structuring of these thoughts.
Before the experiment, the guys from these two groups did not differ on any of the criteria that we looked at: behavior, grades, attendance, and homework. However, after a 12-week experiment, students in the test group who learned to integrate thoughts of the future with the present improved their grades and attendance rates, spent more time on homework, and performed better on standardized tests. We found that students who mastered their adult “future self” and learned to associate it with the “present self” had a higher level of achievement. They learned to view difficulties not as impossible, but as important elements of achieving goals and were able to see school activities in terms of their progress in life.
Subsequent research with university students showed the same thing. Here, students were guided through visualization. Some of the subjects were asked to think of themselves in a learning context that would enable them to get the grades and results they desired; others were asked to think of a university that would bring them frustration and failure. Later, students were randomly asked to consider desirable or undesirable versions of themselves in the future. As expected, creating a connection between present circumstances and a possible future identity was of great importance. Students were more focused on the learning process and viewed difficulties in the classroom as an integral part of the path to success if they were guided to consider their best identity in the most favorable university environment.
Another group of studies involved college students who needed to envision their future identity over the next 4 years with educational and social events that went the way they could. Then we had to write down what the students represented on sheets of paper. Some of these sheets were pre-printed with a container image or a path pattern; the other sheets were completely white. We found that when students envisioned their desired student self in the future and wrote about it on the path page, they did better, seek help more often, and score higher on exams.
Drawing in the imagination a path from "self-present" to "self-future" evokes a sense of real travel. People walk along the road, as if performing a concrete action, while the concept of "future" is abstract, and its needs and requirements are unclear. When we had students who wrote about “future-selves” on path sheets, the positive effect of this imagery in terms of actual school success was very strong.
But why was there a positive impact on academic success only among participants who imagined themselves potential in the context of the path? We assumed this benefit came from what we know about travel and roads. Indeed, participants said they knew better how to travel than how to plan for their future.
We also found that fantasies, which included personalized representation, were a key factor. To arrive at this conclusion, we gave some of the students sheets of paper that showed a person walking down the road, and other sheets that showed a train on its way down. The Walkers produced good results, but there was no effect among those asked to imagine a passive experience on a college train.
Not so long ago we wondered the question of whether the combination of the image of the "I-future" with the "I-present" can affect even more distant goals, such as savings for retirement. First, we asked college students and adults to imagine themselves in each of three situations: preparing for a birthday, saving money for a wedding, and preparing for a presentation of their work (for students, for passing exams at the end of the semester) ... After each scenario was presented, participants were asked to write how much time was left before the alleged event. Half of the participants measured time in smaller units, and the other half in larger units of time. So, when asked about preparation for a birthday, half of the participants calculated in days, and half in months. For weddings, half of the subjects measured for months and the other for years.
These studies have shown that people feel the future, that they prepare for it more closely when they think about it in smaller units of time. We also studied the opposite situation: when the timing of future events is clear, but it is completely unclear when to start preparing for it. We tested three different scenarios: saving for your young child's education when he turns 18, saving for your own retirement at 30, or saving for retirement at 40. Again, we have found that “thinking for the day” helps people feel closer to their future and they are less likely to feel that their present and future identities are not connected. This feeling translates into a greater willingness to provide for the "future self."
People planned to start saving money for their child's higher education a year later, when the measurement went for years rather than days, and for their own retirement two to 2.5 years earlier when it came to days. On average, people started doing things four times faster when they thought for days rather than years.
This is important because while plans don't always work, people tend to underestimate the importance of complex interests. These additional years are important not only for how much money can be saved, but also for realizing the connection of times.
Thus, our research provides a clear answer: although the future begins later, the path to success that would connect the future and the present requires immediate and constant action.
