Hyperbolic Discounting

Interesting to note that most humans will devalue or discount something that has a time delay to the result. Studies show that most people would value $15 dollars just as much as $30 if seperated by a delay in receiving the extra money. This behavior pattern seems to be universal and is the cause of a wierd sort of reverse procrastination.

This becomes a problem in a high functioning person. In research by the IMD organization, they find that high functioning individuals will devalue or discount personally important things that could have long term benefit. For example, taking a break, going on vacation, or going to the gym. The problem is that we know that these activities are beneficial but we devalue the benefit because it is not immediate. What we do instead is continue to work, because solving a problem or fixing an issue, or winning a deal has more value to us because we simply discounted the value of the healthy activities. The longer the realized value the greater hyperbolic impact.

Point is that this is bad. It causes you to work on things that have less value then long term benefit.

Guy Reams

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