Time Shifting The Punishment

KNOWING we will sit shivering in our sitting room in our seventies because we did not save for the gas bill in our thirties does not cut it.

The punishment will certainly come – but it is forty years away, and we might all be dead by then.

So the punishment of not saving simply is not enough of a deterrent to stop us buying a new car today.

The trick, therefore, is to bring the punishment forward by decades – so we feel its pain now. Then we will modify our saving behaviour.

If we can do the same with the punishment for procrastinating, then we are well on our way to being an efficiency expert in our lives. We need to find a way to get us through the pain of starting the task – research has clearly shown once we have started, there is no longer a problem.

Indeed, we feel less stressed doing the job than not doing the job in the first place.

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