Page 115 - Hard Goals

106 HARD Goals

landmarks by very much. And their estimate of future free time
is pretty much moot (again, the future is only two weeks).
The same researchers also looked at how future discount-
ing affects gift certifi cate use. In one study, gift certifi cates to
a gourmet French pastry café with either a three-week or two-
month expiration date were given to study participants. Not
surprisingly (given what we’ve just learned), the people who
got the two-month expiration were much more likely to believe
they wouldn’t have any trouble using the gift certifi cate before it
expired. In fact, 68 percent of the two-month expiration recipi-
ents expected they would use it compared to only 50 percent
of the three-week expiration group. But when it came to actual
usage, 31 percent of the three-week recipients actually redeemed
their gift certifi cates, while a paltry 6 percent of the two-month
crowd actually redeemed their certifi cates.
Remember, people generally overestimate their future free
time, so they postpone things (even good things) until that
future time. There’s simply no sense of urgency, and this trans-
lates directly into our goals. Our future time is so heavily dis-
counted (relative to the payoffs we could be getting right this
very minute) that we simply don’t see the future payoffs as really
being worth that much.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS?

So the big question becomes, what can we do about this? Well,
let’s remember something. While there are exceptions, challeng-
ing goals often follow a very basic form: exert some effort now
and get some benefi t in the future. So forgo desert tonight, be