Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

by Annie Duke

For all the scientific research on the battle between our immediate desires and long-term goals, a particularly succinct explanation comes from Jerry Seinfeld, on why he doesn’t get enough sleep: “I stay up late at night because I’m Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late. ‘What about getting up after five hours of sleep?’ ‘That’s Morning Guy’s problem. That’s not my problem. I’m Night Guy. I stay up as late as I want.’ So you get up in the morning: you’re exhausted, you’re groggy. ‘Oooh, I hate that Night Guy.’ See, Night Guy always screws Morning Guy.” That’s a good example of how we struggle in the present to take care of our future-self. Night Jerry is always going to want to stay up late and, if Morning Jerry has no say in the decision, Night Jerry will get his way regardless of what’s in Jerry’s longer-term best interest. When we make in-the-moment decisions (and don’t ponder the past or future), we are more likely to be irrational and impulsive.* This tendency we all have to favor our present-self at the expense of our future-self is called temporal discounting.*