HAL HERSHFIELD: Making Better Choices Feel Easier

25:56That's very natural. And so, you know, so part of the lesson there is like, what can we do to just kind of loosen the foothold of the present so that we can step out of it? So that's the first sort of time travel. I had some fun trying to think about this, the time travel mistake there. I love that. Okay. You also talk about poor trip planning, which I think you describe as essentially procrastination, but you talk about the idea that my future self isn't going to want to do this any more than my present self does, you know which I think makes so much sense because I think about that with working out it's like for me I had such a breakthrough with working out when I stopped feeling like it was a prerequisite that I wanted to do it you know what I mean and I don't hate it like I found something I enjoy and all that kind of stuff which I think to your earlier point about we should we should try to make this less torturous you know if you can but it's like what if I didn't need to want to do this, to do this thing that's good for me in the future.

26:54I just need to do it, you know? You know, and the sort of analogy here is like, it's almost like a step up from the being anchored in the present. It's like, I've thought about the future, but not that much. And so, you know, the poor trip planning is like, I booked my flight. Maybe I've booked the hotel. I'm guilty of this. I don't know if this has ever happened to you, where you're lucky enough to get away. you've gone through the exercise of booking a flight booking the hotel and then you get to the place and you're like and now you're spending your time there figuring out what to do now just to be clear sometimes that can be great if you're like truly spontaneous and you're like i'll just pop into this cafe i'll do this thing that's great if you can do that but more often than not at least with me and many people i know you get there and you're like i can't believe i'm wasting the time my precious time planning out what I'm supposed to do.

27:47I should have done this before. And so I think, you know, the analogy is when we've, we've thought a little bit about the future, but not in a really deep or meaningful way. And you brought up procrastination. I bring it up in the book. It's a perfect example. Procrastination occurs when we know, we know the future will exist. Nobody's like, I can't believe I have to pay that bill. You know, I have to do my taxes. It's just that we keep putting things off and we do so in a way where we recognize that we're harming ourselves. That's the irony of procrastination. It hurts while we're procrastinating.

28:18It hurts after we procrastinated too. And, you know, I had a conversation, there's a Canadian psychologist named Tim Pickle, and he's like doctor of procrastination, professor of procrastination. And he, he said to me, and it's like what you just said, Megan, like, I don't want to do it now. It's a good chance. I'm not going to want to do in the future. So I might as well just do it now and eliminate all the feeling of negativity along the way. Now that's easier said than done, but the concept has really resonated with me. You know, and it's like, it kind of also maps onto that productivity aphorism of, you know, don't do things twice.

28:56Right. You know what I mean? But it's like, you know, don't open the email, read it and think, oh, I don't want to handle this. Close it out and then have to do the whole thing again in two days. You've just doubled your work. It's going to suck just as much a second time. Exactly. Actually worse because you're going to feel bad about yourself that you're doing it a second time and you're going to have to do it a second time. Oh, man. Yeah. Don't ask me how I know. Okay. The third mistake is packing the wrong clothes. So talk about that one. So this one is the last step up. Now I've really thought about the future, but I haven't thought about it in a way that stays true to the actual future.

29:35And let me give you the example there. Another, I'm going on a trip. I've planned out the trip, but let's say, okay, imagine I live in Chicago. It's January. It is cold. I'm lucky enough to be able to take a trip to a warm weather place. And I think to myself, I know it'll be warmer there, but man, am I cold right now. I'm going to put in a couple light sweaters. I'm going to pack my bag so that, you know, I'm warm if I need to. And then you get there and you realize I haven't pulled out one of those things. And now is that really a problem? Okay, so I've taken up some extra space in my suitcase that I could have used for something else.

30:12Fine. But if I think about the actual analogy here, the analogy is, I've thought about the future. But when I think about the future, I use all of my present day feelings and thoughts, and in an unfair way, over project them onto my future self. I'll give you an example of this. I could be planning out my will. I could be planning out certain career path. I could be planning out lots of things that will have an impact on myself later on. And in doing so, I don't give space for the reality that my feelings might change in the future, that my future self is a different person. Now, it is fine to say, okay, the only thing I know is my present self.

30:59So I might as well pay attention to what I'm feeling right now. The problem arises when I almost say, let me just project that onto the future self and say, he'll feel the same way. I always point to tattoos as a great example of this and I'm not anti-tattoo. I want to be clear. Lots of people have them and lots of people get to enjoy them. You have a full sleeve under that sweater. You know, nobody would guess it. I will tell you that the surprise hit of Christmas this year was a tattoo pen, a washable tattoo pen with stencils. And my son, who's six, walked out and it was like this jarring moment where he was covered in tattoos on his face, his arms, his legs.

31:38I was like, he looks like a different person right now. That's awesome. The, you know, the sort of the tattoo example is I'm going to do this now and I'll always enjoy it. Now, there's another way to think about it, which is I'm going to do this now. It represents something from now. And I don't know how I'll feel about in the future. That's realistic. But where I say, always want this thing, that's where the problem arises. And the last thing I'll say about this time travel mistake is that I see it come up with career decisions a lot, where somebody makes a decision early on. They say, this is what I'm going to do.

32:12I'm going to become an ex, whatever the profession is. and at some point along the process this is more for younger people than middle-aged people but I would say some point along the process they realize this isn't for me but then they say I just got to keep doing it that's what I decided before that's what my future self wants and it's and you see this where they just keep going with something even though there's this realization that my future self may not actually want this and that becomes I think that can become problematic if we sort of stick it out for too long there. Yeah, then you really have a lot of regret when you do get to middle age, you know, if you stick it out that long.

32:50Okay, so I'm thinking about the reality. You know, again, we're recording this kind of right around the new year. And we had a meeting yesterday where we were talking about some big financial goals we have for the business. And it's exciting and it's a little scary and we're not quite sure how we're going to do it. But, you know, we're going to like forge ahead anyway. And I was thinking last night and kind of this morning preparing for this interview, I was thinking, you know, the truth is, as the CEO of the company, in order for us to hit those goals, I have to be a different kind of leader.

33:21Like the leader that I am today, the human that I am today has gotten us to where we are. And if I want to get to a different place in the future, like there are things about me that are going to have to be different, that I'm going to have to show up differently. You know, you talk in the book about this kind of tip about instead of thinking forward from today, like two years from now, I want to be at this point with this goal to start in the future and mentally travel backwards to the present. So talk about the going home effect and why does that reverse mental time travel make the future feel closer?

33:54And like, in a case like mine, let's make it really practical. How can I use that to help me be the CEO that's going to get us to that goal two years from now? Okay. I'll be like, I'll sort of talk about the idea and then I'll get practical. So, I mean, And, you know, here's the, let me make it simple. Think about the last time that you went to like a new restaurant. Okay, there's the trip there and then there's the trip home. If I were to ask you, which one felt faster? The trip there or the trip home? What would you say? Coming home. Yeah, okay, great. Sometimes my in-classroom demonstrations are where, look, I feel this way all the time where it's like, the trip there, what happens is you're driving, you're driving, you're driving.

34:31You're not there until that's the restaurant. Okay, I see it. I parked in front. the trip home you're not there until you're home but you feel home and you there's there's always some marker that's nearby it's like okay here's the last traffic light home here's that house on the corner whatever it is where you're like okay now i'm home even if it's still another 10 minutes but it's like it just feels like you're home what we've found it's kind of a strange idea is that when when we think ahead to the future it's like kind of this like trip in our mind and there's this uncertain destination going to my future self.

35:05I don't know him. I don't know what the world is going to be like. When I go, let me start in the future and kind of travel backwards. It just feels like that distance feels shorter. And the reason is similar to the driving the restaurant. It's like, okay, I'm coming back to sort of a certain location. Now, practically speaking, what that means and what we can do with that is rather than like you said, Megan, rather than say, let me think ahead two years from now and how I want to get there. Let's just start two years from now. What's like, tell me the story about two years from now. And then I want you to walk backwards or travel backwards from two years from now to now.

35:42What are the things, you know, as you go that distance, what are the things that have happened? Where are the wins? Where are the things that you did right? Where are the losses? Where, where, oh man, that's a stumbling block. What are the obstacles that arose? And the reason why this is a powerful exercise is because it can more concretely highlight what things could have gone wrong, what things could go right. And then to like almost circle back to the beginning of our conversation, what you might be able to do about it right now. Yeah. In that exercise, if you realize, you know, I didn't anticipate how, for instance, you know, if you're in this type of business to how the addition of tariffs could impact my business.

36:22All right, well, is there anything I can do about that right now? Do I need to be more conservative in another space? Is there some way I can head or buffer? Whatever that means, the basic idea is let's go from that sort of like mental time travel trip to the concrete obstacles that that may arise and then again the things I can do about it now it's kind of like a consultant that we work with will often say when we're talking about the future if this fails why and if it succeeds why like why did it succeed and why did it fail as though you're already in the future. You're starting, like you said, two years in this case, into the future.

37:00And to me, that's helpful because I notice the pitfalls that I don't notice when I'm building a strategy. When I have to, that's, it's a different kind of strategy. It's a different kind of question that elicits a different answer than when I say, how could I get to the future? It's very different than why did I win or why did I fail? Like those are just very, I don't know, somehow it's, it puts me in the middle of it, the part of where it's agency and it's not theoretical and the world isn't perfect. And I'm like, oh yeah, cause I probably did that thing that I always do, you know? 100%. And research has called that a pre-mortem where I sort of think ahead to where this could have gone wrong.

37:38And I think both exercises together do this sort of reverse mental time travel and then do the pre-mortem. And I don't mean to sound like too, uh, like jargony. But I think these exercises together can be really powerful rather than just say, well, I hope it goes well. I hope we meet our goals. I hope I become the different leader. It's like, all right. And by the way, I do this whenever I have students, you know, I'm a researcher and my students and I run experiments and studies. And sometimes we're working with companies and we're doing like really time consuming and expensive work. And I say, it's two months from now and it didn't work out.

38:15What happened? And every time we do that, we realize, oh, we got to tweak this thing. And sometimes it still doesn't work, but we learn something. But at least when we get there, I can say, we did everything we could to do it right. And we can't control everything, but we can control some of it.

38:37Okay. I want to talk about my favorite topic, technology. Oh, good. And one of your more famous interventions where you show people digitally aged photos of themselves. I think you famously had Jane Fonda go through this, your VR studio. But talk about how you do it, how we can do it, and what we could expect from that experience. By the way, I love that you mentioned Jane Fonda, Michael, because that's one of those things where it's like, now when I teach my 28-year-old MBA students, I wouldn't say it because there are certain cultural references that land. this is you know some my early research that that's continued and the the basic idea here is if one of the things that really makes thinking about the future difficult is that the future is so abstract then one thing we could do is just try to make it as concrete as possible and one way to do that is visually i can show you an image of the future of your future self now i mean the funny thing is when we started this which was about 2026 now we started this about 17 years ago and you can imagine the technology wasn't as good then it did what we did is we you know we used age progression we worked with graphic artists there were some programs and we basically applied what's called an age filter and we you know we mimicked all the physiological things i'm sure you don't want me to talk about all the things that happen to our faces as we age but we you know i'm a living it we know what we're talking about we're living it right the worst part about doing this research is that i started when i was in my 20s and projected ahead till i was 65 and now that i'm in my later 40s i'm like oh god i look older now than i now the reality is what happened is we would then in a variety of ways we would show people their future selves we sometimes we would do it in virtual reality where they would talk to their future self.

40:32We would do it online. Whatever we did, what we found is that the people who were exposed to their future selves were more likely to want to make changes and actually did make changes. Sometimes this is financial decisions. Sometimes this is health. Sometimes it's ethics. Now I'm collaborating with some sort of like whiz kids at MIT where they've created this future you platform where you essentially talk to your future self. Actually, anybody can use this. I can send you the link later. We can put it in the show notes. My warning there is this is sort of still in the beta mode and you got to suspend disbelief a little bit.

41:10You're sort of having this conversation with a technologically assisted future version of you. And if you do suspend disbelief, it's a very powerful experience. And by the way, I went in not suspending disbelief and it was still powerful. I went in kind of skeptical and And I was like, oh my God, 30 minutes later, I still started chatting away. How can we apply this? And what does it mean? Here's what not to do. There's now, there's all sorts of ways we can press a button and get a very realistic image of our future self. You can do this with pretty much any of the AI tools. There's apps. Face app is one of my, I'm not, I don't have any sort of financial relationship with any of these companies.

41:48So I can, the face app is probably my favorite. I think they do a great job. Here's what not to do. Don't just like create an image of yourself and be like, I'm done. The idea here is that that imagery, the technologically assisted imagery, needs to be thought of as an imagination aid. It's something that can help you think more deeply about the future if you use it as such. In other words, take that age-progressed image and look at it and do that time travel exercise we were talking about. Write a letter to that future self. Have that future self write a letter to you, which by the way, that's a really hard mental exercise, but it forces you to step into the shoes of that future self.

42:31If we do that, that's when we can really take advantage of the technology. But, you know, about a year or two ago, there was a trend on TikTok where people could age themselves. And it was like not just static, it was dynamic. You know what I'm talking about, Megan? And it was so interesting because you'd see like a 22 year old with their girlfriend, you know, click a button and then they're both there and they're like laughing about it. And I had calls from journalists who would say, is this going to make a lot of young people suddenly like contribute to their 401k and start going to the gym?

43:06And I was like, no, because this is sort of novel. It's funny. If they're using it as an actual imagination aid. Yeah, I think changes can happen. But if you just press the button and then go about the rest of your life and move on with your day, it's not going to make a difference. So it's really about kind of using it to the full extent. I just thought of an image I'd like to generate. I'd like to try this on Gemini, which has that, what's it, Nano Banana image generation thing. So upload a photo of yourself and say, okay, here I am at age, I'm 70. Here I am at age 90 doing pull-ups. or here I am at age 90, you know, in a wheelchair or whatever.

43:47So, you know, just, it'd be interesting to seek sort of the two futures and basically it's my choice. By the way, come back to me because I'd love not only to know, I'd love just as, you know, from a, I'm also sort of technical, like I get sort of geek out about this stuff. I just love to know like what it looks like. But I also like, I'd love to hear your opinion on like, from an emotional standpoint, what did that do? Yeah. What did you feel when you saw those? And I will, when I was working on the book, we have this great sort of marketing communications team here at UCLA. And I'm in LA. So a lot of the folks that work in this space used to be in Hollywood.

44:23And the guy who runs our team here said, you know, I got this idea. You can say no, but I think it'd be really fun to aid you and do a little video and just see what that would look like. And so he hired some Hollywood makeup artists. and they came into my office and they spent four hours with me. So this is not like a technology thing. The last person they had done this to was Benedict Cumberbatch. And I was like, this is the strangest experience. And they do this thing. And I look in the mirror, just to tell you how real it was. I walked out of my office. I walked by one of my best friends here.

44:59He just walks right by me, just assumes there's just an older guy walking through the building. And I go into the bathroom, they like sort of film me in the bathroom, talking to myself in the mirror. And it was emotionally like an incredibly moving experience. It wasn't happy. It wasn't sad. It wasn't lonely, but it was kind of a swirl of those things because I couldn't stop thinking about what will I be feeling? Like, what will my life look like when I'm, when I'm this guy and you know who will my the people I love be what will they be doing what's the world going to look like it's the question that I've asked before but in a way that was so much more emotionally rich and so I'd be curious you know there's a difference between having makeup artists do this to you for four hours and having Gemini do it and seeing the pictures on the screen but like if you really were to immerse yourself in it Michael I'd love to know like what does that experience look like for you to go from 70 to 90 and different options and by the way there's a very good chance you'll be doing pull-ups in 90 and especially now I'd like to know after now my dad is 91 and still living and he is in a wheelchair wow but uh every time I visit him you know I get a little bit of picture about what of my futures could look like and he and he really lived most of his life in a time where thinking about the future self making decisions on behalf of the future self, like that was not kind of mainstream, you know, that was not as accessible, I think, as it is now.

46:36I think people are talking about it a lot in ways that are different. And we just live in a different context with more choices and more affluence and things like that, that make this accessible to many of us in ways that it kind of wasn't before. But as we're kind of, you know, nearing the end of our time together, how the thing I keep thinking about is this concept of the future self in many ways is a way to get leverage in the present to reach your potential. Because we all know if we're going to become who we are capable of becoming, I think we all have a sense of there's more here than the way I'm showing up today.

47:12I have more potential and all that. The challenge is I have to do things today in order to get to that person. That person doesn't just magically appear. That person, like you said earlier, is the sum total of, among other things, many other things, some of which we can't control, lots of little choices that we make along the way. And so you kind of talk about this idea of temptation, bundling, and tangential immersion as like a way of neurologically reducing the pain of doing stuff that we know we need to do today. We're going to become the person we want to be in the future. Can you help make this really practical for us?

47:50Like, how do I get myself to do the things I need to do today so that I can become the person I want to become tomorrow? I mean, that's just that. If you can solve that for us, like, we're good. It'll be a home run. Yeah. I'll say it. Seriously. Last question. No pressure. Temptation bundling is a great concept. This is from Katie Milkeman's group at Wharton. the basic ideas. And this kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Take anything that feels like it's painful, unpleasant, et cetera, and pair it with something that's a temptation. It's good. You know, the classic example is you're going to work out, pair that workout with watching whatever show you want to watch on Netflix or audio book that, you know, it's your guilty pleasure.

48:37But by the way, you can't listen to that book. You can't watch the show unless you're working out. That's the key there. So this isn't like I'm up at night watching the newest show and tomorrow I'll go to the gym and watch it too. No, no, no, no. I've got to pair it with the temptation to almost like jumpstart myself to do it. That's the leverage. That's the leverage there. I mean, I just think that concept is so powerful and it's not just for exercise. You know, I talked to a financial advisor who says the hardest thing for couples to do is to sit down and have that conversation about money. Maybe not the hardest thing, one of the hardest things.

49:15And she always says, I always tell them to go on a money date, go out to dinner or have a glass of wine, do whatever you want to do. That's going to be a fun night and have the conversation there so that it's not like, okay, after the kids go to bed, we're tired, we're exhausted. And, and now we're going to have this kind of, it's just not a recipe for success. Now tangential immersion, this is, you know, another one that sounds kind of like a jargony this is from my friend here at ucla ali lieberman the idea there is that it's it's like this other thing temptation bundling but the idea is that you've got to be careful to match the the experiences the positive and negative experiences here's a great example brushing your teeth at night and in the morning it's a twice a day thing um and you can say oh well teeth brushing is that's really that important but you know i think we know from a lot of research which it's not just for our teeth, but there's really compelling work that there's exactly.

50:11And it took me a while to get around that. I'm like, this is not just like, are my teeth clean? And if I want them to really, you know, I really want to get the benefits I got to do for two minutes. Two minutes feels like an interminably long time from just brushing my teeth. And what her work suggests is, let me pair that experience with something that's immersive. But like, not too immersive. If I'm like, gonna go watch, I'll brush my teeth and watch, you know, like a really engaging mystery while I do it, it's like, you might end up just kind of stuck. It's like the show was too exciting. And if I pair it with something that's like, not that interesting, like I'm going to lose interest in both.

50:50So you got to figure out like, is there a game I can play on my phone? I'm not trying to suggest more screen time, but is there something I can do that's like equally exciting as the thing that I need to do is, is boring or painful. and if I can kind of match them, that will predict persistence. That's the idea. So you can play solitaire, but only while you're flossing your teeth with a one-handed thing. There you go. That's really good. Or something like that. That's powerful. That's actually great because there's all these little things that we normally would feel like are bad for us or we shouldn't be doing.

51:25You don't really want to be spending much time playing Candy Crush on your phone unless you're flossing your teeth or something like that. you know, and then knock yourself out. Right. And, but, but like really importantly, don't do it on the rice. Right. Right. Save it. Yeah. Save it for that moment. So you link dopamine to it basically is what you're doing. Right. Exactly. Exactly. You know, my like guilty pleasure is, um, it was like spelling B game and you put all the letters together. I mean, I don't really know you, but I'm going to just say that sounds so perfect for a professor. My guilty pleasure is a spelling B game.

51:58Of course it is. I love that as it came out of my mouth I regretted it the other night I I got caught up in it and I was brushing my teeth and I was like I have one of the electric toothbrushes and I was like I'm going for another cycle here because I got it oh my gosh that's amazing I love it well guys we could go on for another hour but the book is Your Future Self, How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. Hal, in addition to buying and reading the book, how can people follow your work? HalHersfield.com, it's got my latest work. I also post a lot on LinkedIn about what I'm up to and my thoughts and stuff.

52:39And I think those are probably the best ways. Yeah, and the book's available wherever you buy your books, so. Better books everywhere. Yeah, exactly. I really appreciate you having me on. Thanks, Hal. It's been a great conversation. Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

53:00Okay, Megan, let's start with you. Ladies first, what were your takeaways from this conversation with Elle? Besides the fact that while I have never put Candy Crush on my phone, I think I'm going to do it for a tooth brushing. No, I'm just kidding. I actually loved that concept. That was the last thing we talked about. Temptation bundling. That was the phrase, right? And I love the idea that we need to think about things that we want to do in the future. How can we make them more sort of palatable to ourselves by linking them up with something that we actually enjoy? In some ways, I think, like he said, those of us who are Gen X or older, we kind of have this idea that if it's worth doing, it should be hard and we should be able to just muscle through it.

53:45We can do hard things. We can do hard things. I mean, yes, that's inescapable in life. It's true. But when we think about the sustainability of habits, and we didn't really talk about habits specifically, but I think what he's talking about are a lot of things that have to relate to habits if you think about your future self. If we can link those up with something that we enjoy, all the better. I had a breakthrough in that concept too, because I kept thinking I was struggling. Strength training, no problem, because I have a trainer that shows up at my house just like you do. In fact, it's the same trainer.

54:13But my off days, getting myself out there to walk, is a chore. I dread it. I'm inconsistent. And I thought, oh, back when I was consistent, it's not just because I was listening to books. I was listening to novels. Really? I did not know that. And so I have to go walk to get back to the story to learn what happens next. Yeah. So that's a real pull. But here's one. You've listened to a podcast now on this topic, so that makes you an expert. if you are consulting with me or if how we're consulting with me one of the challenges I have is doing the normal bread and butter vanilla financial processing like transactions you know I've given that to an accountant in the past and they did a great job you mean like coding your personal transactions like reconciling quick and let's just be really yeah yeah so what temptation could I pair with that because that's pretty immersive when you're doing it yeah you can't really think about anything else.

55:08Yeah. Well, this has nothing to do with what we just talked about. Okay. But I actually just went through my own version of planning personal finances for next year. And I was saying that to kind of our point where we're talking, they're like all these things that happen that are outside of your control that derail me on stuff like that. Like we just went through this big medical crisis with Naomi that was on and off again for three plus months. And you know, we were just kind of hanging on our fingernails during that time. Well, my personal financial management during that time took a real backseat, which was okay.

55:36But like, It's not going to be helpful if I continue that. So as I was working on this with Claude, I did like a whole big project. And, you know, like you can imagine, you would probably do the same thing. Claude is an artificial intelligence platform. Claude is not actually a person, but is an AI platform and an LLM, a large language model. And I was doing kind of a query back and forth. And I was saying this plan that we had come up with was great. However, I know myself and I know my life and I know where I'm going to get tripped up. And where I'm going to get tripped up is life is going to happen.

56:12Something will blow up with kids. You know, we have kids that have lots of needs and I'm not going to be consistent with the habits that I need to be consistent with. Basically, I need to be consistent with number one, saving in a certain way. Number two, I need to not overspend my budget because those two things are related, right? Well, what it came back with was fascinating. It basically said, you need an execution plan that matches the reality of your life, not the ideal state. And so it said to me, you need to quit using Quicken like you're using it. You basically need to automate all these different things.

56:51So it basically said, you're going to automate three different, you're going to have three different accounts. One for things that don't change. You're just basically going to have like, you know, like how you probably have your mortgage, auto-drafted, but all the things that are kind of in that camp. Things that you're not tempted to overspend and you can budget, you know, like your utilities, they're variable, but you're not going to ever like go over your water bill budget, you know, like that's not a risk. And then you need to determine, here are the, in my case, five to eight categories where I consistently go over budget, meaning I need to watch these things.

57:23And it said, all you need to track is this. Don't track any of that other stuff. It doesn't matter. It's not the problem. The problem exists in this very narrow band of things. And so it said deposit X amount of money in an account. And you basically watch that account and you watch it dwindle throughout the month and you pace your behavior because these are basically behavior driven risk factors. You know, like I go over on food, I go over on clothing, I go over on household supplies, like stuff I've ordered from Amazon, you know, you know, my name is Megan and I have a problem with Amazon. Amazonaholic.

57:59Amazonaholic. And basically, if I know I have X amount of dollars and it's the middle of the month and I've outpaced what the middle of that is, I need to slow my roll. Okay. This is brilliant. And I was like, yes, finally. Okay. But let me just ask you at a practical level. This may just be peculiar to my personality, but I do things like when I do them, there's a certain level of perfection that I have. Right. And I don't think it comes, I'm not an Enneagram one, but I think it comes from like, If somebody in the future discovers my Quicken account, will they know that all the transactions have been categorized appropriately?

58:34What are you going to do on a practical level? I mean, what I'm going to do on a practical level is I'm going to just transfer, I'm going to auto transfer that money to the card for the behaviorally driven stuff. And I think what I'm going to do, I actually need to talk to you about this from an AI standpoint. I want to set up an auto text or an auto email that emails me the balance of that. So I don't even have to do the activity of going to check the balance and log in. Like I want it to come to me just like in our business, we get a daily cash report. I want that to come to me. And if it's good, it's good.

59:08And if it's not good, I'm going to slow my roll. Because what I'm ultimately solving for is I'm not trying to be the master of Quicken, which is what I use also. I'm doing very much what you're doing. I want to be the master of reaching my long-term financial goals. So you're not going to worry about reconciling accounts on Quicken and doing all that kind of stuff? No, I'm not. I'm going to set it up where these other two accounts are ones that also have balances or deposits that are made to them. But those aren't the ones I need to pay attention to because that's not what's getting me in trouble.

59:40What's getting me in trouble is a handful of things that I know are the problem. Okay, so the lesson in this I have is go to your favorite large language model, AI, and get it to brainstorm with you. And how can I create something that's a temptation and couple it with something that I consider sort of torturous or at least boring? Yeah. And get some ideas because that's where I – and that's the best way to use AI, by the way, is as a co-thinking partner or collaborator. And I think, too, kind of to the future self idea, the point, your future self isn't going to be, you're not going to be high-fiving your future self and your future self is not going to be high-fiving your present self for reconciling your Quicken transactions.

1:00:26Neither is mine. Literally, nobody cares. Nobody cares because no one knows. It's like a level of geekery that doesn't matter. My future self is going to high five me when I retire 20 years from now because I had enough margin in my personal finances to do the investment work that's necessary to make that very comfortable when that time comes. And to do that, I need to be consistently not overspending and consistently taking that margin and doing the right things with that margin. That's fabulous. Well, this is a great takeaway. And I wish we had time to go on with some more takeaways, but that's probably sufficient.

1:01:01It's probably sufficient. Okay. So guys, I hope this was a helpful episode for you. All the links that we talked about will be in the show notes. So check that out. And guys, if you would please review the show, post a rating, posting a rating is super simple. All you got to do is select one to five stars, hopefully five stars, but then give us a review. That'll help us get visibility inside the Apple algorithm so that more people get exposed to this content. We'll see you next time. Bye.

1:01:32Thank you.