Problem now (problem later) | Seth’s blog

People always address Now Problems before they work Later Problems

Every time.

One night in 2004, you might have two choices. You can go out for a fancy dinner with friends, or you can buy a share of Google at their IPO. Decades later, your dinner is forgotten but the stock has multiplied.

Of course, some people bought that stock. That’s not because they faced the opportunity to save for their retirement after 18 years. Because they told themselves a story that people send money to the market after their shoes 7 days. They have turned a future problem (leisure) into a present problem (I would be a loser if I went to this dinner instead).

Our story about the future is now, no matter how far away the future may be.

All we can do with the future is experience our story right now.

All problems are short-term problems if we tell ourselves the right story. But we don’t usually do that, because we make significant concessions in the future. A grilled cheese sandwich is more important today than two grilled cheese sandwiches next week. Unless we tell ourselves a present and urgent story of how it feels to ignore the future.

Because sooner or later, we live in the present. A gift full of stories and cultural pressures and the urgency we invent for ourselves.