Why talking to your future self matters and how to do it

Was this the future? I thought so. What happens when you jump on a plane from the UK to the US and then take the next flight back, all for the sake of a Laptop. Would it be worth it? I was about to find out.

In June 1999, I’d read about a new Apple Powerbook G3 in which you could edit video. Trouble was its UK price was a little steep at £2700. But in the US it was way less and the dollar was weak compared to the pound. So I jumped on a plane to the US, bought the laptop, had a pizza and came back.

Yes it was worth it, not least the money saved, but the experience that followed. Anything media related was now possible. I told my future self how mind boggling this would be. Six years later I received an award from the US’s knight Batten Awards for innovation in journalism.

That conversation with my future self mattered according to social scientist and neuroscience, which I shared at our StoryLab programme.

Thinking about yourself in the near future creates an awareness. Think of Bob Sleigh Olympian’s closing their eyes to imagine the track; its turns and bumps. Neuroimaging illustrates brain activity that encodes this relationship you have. But for long term thinking, brain activity isn’t so animated. Experts go further to say it’s as if you’re thinking about a stranger. But what if you could find a way to think in the future with near brain activity — a closer connection to what you want to do?

In Hal Hershfield’s paper “Future self-continuity: How conceptions of the future self transform intertemporal”, published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, October 2011, the author says the following:

“The more continuity a person shares with his future self — that is, the more that future self feels like a direct extension of who he is now — the more motivated he will be to act in ways that will benefit himself in the future. Conversely, the more the future self feels like a stranger — that is, the more disconnected a person is from his future self — the less motivated he will be to plan for the future. In the domain of financial decision making, for example, if the future self is lacking in continuity with the current self, a given individual may be inclined to spend in the present rather than save for the future”.

So whilst the future may be far off, there’s some reasoning that thinking about the future, or actually being there can motivate actions you’ll take to realise this. How do we do this in the StoryLab?

A particular Science Fiction cinematic narrative and fact writing where you live in that moment. The cohorts we’re with have immersed themselves in the programme and provided some extraordinary visions.

The approach is both artistic, something I developed whist an artist in residence at London’s prestigious Southbank Centre and pedagogical.