Some of my students have asked me for advice on how to achieve, and as someone who almost failed out of college, then went on to finish a Ph.D., I suppose I’m in a position to provide some advice on the matter. I tried to boil it down for one of them, and the three most important things that I came to were:
- Making active decisions about how you spend your time.
- Setting long-term goals.
- Driving your discount rate down.
The third one is the least straight-forward, and the first one is the hardest to do in practice, and I was thinking about what stands in the way. Time inconsistency of preferences is closely related to the interface between spending time wisely and your discount rate, and it can throw the whole thing off, though, and so I wanted to talk a little about it.
Filed under: Uncategorized, cognitive behavioral therapy, discipline, discounting, dual model of mind, dynamic inconsistency, economics, exercise, impulse control, indulgence, Jonathan Haidt, meditation, not actually about training elephants, preferences, procrastination, psychology, rational plans, running, self-help, self-management
Think Economically 