Your homework has been sitting on your desk gathering dust for days. The big deadline is tomorrow. Sighing, you grasp your pen, settle down in your desk chair and get ready to focus.

Suddenly, your phone screen lights up. Absent-mindedly, you reach for it to find that your best friend has invited you over for a film night or to see your favourite band. Hesitating, you cast a glance over the untouched paper. Can't you just say that you were too ill to do the homework? Or too busy?

Certainly, for the current version of you, a fun evening with friends will sound a lot more appealing than scribbling away dutifullyDoing everything you are expected to do. all night. But the future version of you may disagree. It could be the you of next week who has to take a test in a subject they don't understand - but it could also be you at 70 years old, wishing they had taken advantage of the gift of education.

We battle with conflictingThings that are different or in opposition to each other. demands and expectations constantly. Those of our parents, our friends, our teachers, our communities. But we do not often think about what our future selves might want from us in the present.

This is a fundamentalKey. mistake, claims Hal Hershfield, a psychologist who has written a book about how we relate to our future selves. After all, we are our own best friends, the only constant presence throughout our lives. So why is it so easy for us to treat ourselves badly?

Hershfield says that we fail in our obligationsThings that you must, or have a duty, to do. to our future selves because we picture them as separate to us. When we imagine our future, it is like imagining a different person. If we were to come face to face with our own features a few years down the line, he says, the reality would hit us hard.¹

One study headed by Hershfield seemed to confirm this theory. In the study, customers were shown aged-up photos of themselves with a message encouraging them to save for their retirement. These customers were 16% more likely to make a retirement contribution than people who were not shown the images.²

This contributes to something called Instant GratificationBeing pleased or satisfied. Bias. In short, it means that when we have to choose between a long-term benefit and a short-term benefit, we will usually go for the latter. We do not want to have to wait for something pleasurable to happen: we want it to happen to the version of us that is here right now.

This suggests that if it were possible for us to meet a future version of ourselves, we would live happier lives. We would make better decisions, live more carefully, take better care of our health.

It all sounds a bit sci-fiScience fiction. . But we may be closer to this reality than you think. After all, AI already generates your recommended watching on streaming services; maybe you listen to AI-generated playlists tailor-made for you on Spotify or Apple Music. Does it know you well enough to generate a computerised projection of your future self for you to converse with?³

And furthermore, is this something we should want? Our older selves could warn us against mistakes. But sometimes our greatest joys come from our mistakes. And even if we do regret our choices, they force us to develop and become more resilientTough or able to cope with difficulty. , more human. Constant success could easily become a curse.

Yes: If we lived our lives without making any mistakes, we would miss out on the rich tapestry of emotions that come with failing, building resilience and trying again. We grow as people when we allow ourselves to not always get everything right.

No: Plenty of people fail to ever live up to their potential because they lack self-confidence or mentorship. If we could talk to our future selves, they could encourage us to fulfil our dreams before it is too late.

Or... In general, there needs to be more intergenerational dialogue. You do not have to talk to an older version of yourself in order to learn more about fulfilling your potential; you could get that from anyone older than you.