some principles are beautiful and uncanny we love today too much to worry about tomorrow the human wiring almost always places a high premium on the visible present over the hazy future cognitive psychologists have a name for ithyperbolic discounting we may be simply incapable of committing to longterm benefits worse we may see the future as plain uncertain and fail to manage it rationally for the risks involved we sign up for annual gym subscriptions and fail to turn up after the first few months we dislike term insurance that requires a premium payment today but no reward in the future if we stay alive at the end of the term we love the credit card that enables spending today even if we pay an an obnoxious amount repaying the dues tomorrow we delay planning for our retirement as it seems too far away we fail to keep up the lifestyle changes even after diagnosis of disease blame it all on hyperbolic discounting we simply cannot sacrifice something today for a benefit in the distant future or we willingly trade future benefit for an immediate joy our limitation is the sellers joy marketing mavericks exploit our craving for a benefit today by cleverly packaging goods buy today pay later is the oldest trick in the book to increase sales free gifts discount sales lucky draws earlybird prizes scratchtowin contests buyonegetone are all gimmicks that play on the need for immediate gratification subscriptions are framed deceptively your gym told you that they charge 5000 a month but are offering you an annual subscription for 30000 or a 50 discount if you choose to pay monthly since that is a small amount and you can decide as you go along you end up paying twice the charges 30000 a year is only 2500 a month some still choose that option as it looks smaller than 30000 some others take up the whole years subscription and pay up but only a small percentage of them persist heads they win tails you lose worse you are unable to keep up with the diet and drill because the immediate benefit of a good time seems more precious than the longterm benefit of better fitness the twist in the tale when it comes to hyperbolic discounting is about how we get the math wrong if we were rational we will all use the principles of time value of money and make meaningful comparisons between today and tomorrow what we instead do is make this choice about today and tomorrow but make it with two different discounting rates assume that you were to choose between 100 today or 150 after a year it is likely that you will choose 100 today classic case of choosing the present over an unknown future failing to see the 50 benefit assume again that you were to choose between 100 five years later or 150 six years later very likely that you will tell yourself having waited for five years