The Future Self Trap
Businesses know how to exploit this psychological human feature; don’t fall for it
I keep a running list of things I might someday like to write about, and mostly I don’t write about these things, because they aren’t good ideas.
On the top of a recent list of topics is “Haircut (you have to go through a part you hate to get to a part you like).” I was going to delete that altogether, because “haircut” didn’t go the way I thought it was going to go, and while I did go through a part I hated, and I did get to a part I liked, I didn’t walk the path I’d intended, so I can’t write what I’d imagined.
Here’s what I’d wanted to write:
I had bangs, and I grew them out, and I hated growing them out, but because I waited, I was able to get a chic, bang-less haircut. Now I look terribly chic and cool, and I have no bangs. This is extraordinary, because I am able to flaunt my forehead wrinkles, a thing I want to do as a political statement. On top of that, I look like a mean legacy art dealer who says things like, “If you don’t understand it, that’s entirely your problem, and get out of my gallery.”
The moral is, you have to wait. And if you wait, you, too, can scold little men who come into your art gallery that anything Hockney has breathed near is way out of…
