Thinking About Long-Term Goals in Days Can Increase Your Drive.
Long-term goals don’t always get the attention they deserve because our minds can do strange things and make them seem so distant. By formulating your goals as if you are days away from them, not years, you may feel more inclined to take action to achieve them.
It’s easy to procrastinate when you know you have a full year to do it, but recent research shows that telling yourself you only have 365 days will help you get started. The study, published in the journal Psychological Science led by Neil A. Lewis Jr. and Daphne Oiserman, suggests that people feel like events and timelines are closer when they think about them in smaller units. For example, when participants were asked when they would start saving for retirement – 30 years or 10,950 days – participants with a scenario of days planned to start saving four times earlier than those asked to think for years.
Even though the number of days is much larger, it is much easier for us to understand the length of a day. Plus, counting down a day – like crossing a day off a calendar – is a much more consistent reminder that time is ticking. So if you have a long-term goal to plan for, consider thinking about it in days rather than years. You may want to take action early, and it never hurts to start early.
When is the future coming? Matter of the metric of time, connecting the “I” of the present and the future | Journal of Psychological Science through the Association for Psychological Science