Balancing Immediate and Long-Term Pleasure

[Kirby]

In many facets of life, there seems to be a tradeoff between investment for the future and simply living life in the present.

For example, it might be more fun in the immediate future to indulge a bit in some extra calories, but in the long run, it might lead to future consequences. Similarly, it might be hard work to study go intensively, but it might pay off in the future when you get the pleasure of accomplishment and being stronger.

Sometimes preparing for the future, working hard, and the like are not fun NOW, but have future payoff.

However, I feel if you always look to the future, it's hard to ever live in the present.

How do you balance the NOW and the future?

[phillip1882]

me? i pay it forward.

[jts]

It seems simplest to lean a bit against the wind. If your circle of friends and family seem to be fat, skip dessert; if they seem to be improvident, save more; if they have horrible relations with their children, try to sneak off work early to squeeze in quality time. Simple rules work best.

It's important, IMHO, to separate the psychological phenomenon of hyberbolic discounting (where immediate rewards are emotionally intense, others less so) from deferring benefits in general. For you, the lure of eating pizza with friends may be very great; but maybe I get a thrill of pleasure when I deposit money at my bank. The friendships you are building may be more valuable than my years and years of petty savings. It's very hard to use an understanding of biases to get outside them; its always easier to use them to preen than to actually make serious changes in one's attitudes towards life.

[Joaz Banbeck]

...
How do you balance the NOW and the future?

Play go. It teaches you the consequences of not planning for the future.

[EdLee]

How do you balance the NOW and the future?

The future is now. And now. And now. And now...

[bleep]

Interesting study done on this a while back...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_m ... experiment

I tend to try and eat the next guy's marshmallow as well as mine.

[hyperpape]

I don't have much of this problem. Mostly, I find myself fighting the temptation to do things that are neither pleasurable now nor lead to pleasure in the future. At the end of the day, I am happier if I have been working than if I have been dicking around on the Internet. But some days, it is a struggle to maintain focus.

I'm not saying that no one ever faces a genuine tradeoff. That would be silly. But I do worry about a frame in which we're constantly setting ourselves up for this sort of unpleasant trade.

[SpongeBob]

How do you balance the NOW and the future?

I suppose everybody - also you - does it the same way:

You weigh the positive aspects of reaching your goal against the negative aspects that are required for getting you there.

That simple, no?

[ProtoJazz]

I don't know if there's really a rush to get better in go. Unless you have some special reason you have your whole life to get better. Just keep playing and you will keep improving.


On the other hand if it was something you were making a job of (as I'm doing with compsci) You have to achieve some level of mastery fairly quickly. And the sooner you can the longer you get the benefits(in this case money) however it is something that gets boring and stressful after a while so I find its important to have projects that's use the skills but have no time frame, and are just for fun. To this extent I build games in my free time. Almost all of it is relevant to what I'm learning but it's more fun.

So maybe an example of this for go might be life and death problems, or maybe playing a teaching game with someone. Possibly playing a few rengo games. Something that's fun, and not serious

[Kanin]

I think it's a mistake to always view it as a trade-off. Many times it's possible to put yourself in a mind-set which allows you to enjoy the hard work leading to the future reward. Like when studying go, maybe you feel doing life and death problems is tedious, but you could also try to enjoy the actual process of doing them. In the process of hard-work, depending on how you look at it while doing it, you can find many little rewards. That way getting both immediate pleasure and the pay-off further down the road is possible.

Also, recurring tasks or hard work can lead to happier feelings as it gives a sense of stability and familiarity in your every-day life. Like if you decide to do one hour of go study at a specific time every day, with a specific order to things, it might just become a cherished ritual.

It's not for everybody and it doesn't work all the time, but changing your mind-set can take you a long way sometimes

[snorri]

It's later than you think...

[Insane]

Try to do what is proper in each instant.

--
"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."