Kind of tangential, but a self-sabotage concept I find fascinating is called "short term mood repair." That's a phrase that one of the top academics studying pr

Kind of tangential, but a self-sabotage concept I find fascinating is called "short term mood repair." That's a phrase that one of the top academics studying procrastination uses to describe one of the most common prompts for procrastination. (Tim Pychyl) In this concept, you have some tiny anxiety about upcoming work that probably never even reaches your conscious thoughts. And the absolute fastest way to make that anxiety go away (i.e. repair it) is to pivot away from the upcoming work. Rationally, this is a terrible idea. But emotionally, it's very functional. Procrastination creates a short term fix to that anxiety. Or, maybe more familiar to people here, this is just another example of System I and System II thinking from Thinking, Fast and Slow. I think there's something similar going on with "Get Rich Quick." The desire to get rich is both rational and emotional. Yes, obviously, it's rational to want to have money. And then also, there's often an emotional anxiety about our place in the world and having money is a fantasy that resolves that anxiety. So, everyone who points out that Get Rich Quick is not an effective strategy for actually getting rich is right. Rationally, you should choose behaviors that lead to steady accumulation of wealth. However, I do think Get Rich Quick does provide a functional, short term, solution to the anxiety that's prompting people to want to get rich. In other words, these people in the article are performing self-care with a "short term mood repair" strategy. Another concept that Dr. Pychyl introduced me to is that MRI scans show that the same parts of our brain light up when we think about strangers and when we think about our future selves. In other words, it's easy to sell our future self short. http://www.procrastination.ca/ http://www.procrastination.ca/