我们对时间和金钱的误解

这事儿说起来比较复杂，需要细说从头。过去我讲课总提起一句话：“成功太慢，幸福减半。”很多人都会觉得这话说得太对了。其实，这并不是正确的建议，只是大多数人的感受的正确描述而已。认为急功近利是一个贬义词，多少是有些肤浅的。

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20111113132529/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/92.html

Our Misconceptions About Time and Money

> By Li Xiaolai · 2007-05-29 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113132529/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/92.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

This is rather complicated to explain; I need to start from the beginning.

When I lectured in the past I always brought up one saying: "If success comes too slowly, happiness is halved." Many people feel this saying is so right. Actually, it isn't correct advice; it is merely a correct description of most people's feelings.

Treating "eagerness for quick success and instant benefit" as a pejorative term is more or less shallow. In fact, eagerness for quick success and instant benefit is everyone's nature; it's just that only a few people, through the power of the mind, finally think it through completely: in fact, eagerness for quick success and instant benefit is often a behavior pattern whose risk is higher than its return.

Why do people quite naturally become eager for quick success and instant benefit? The reason is that our brains tend to underestimate the value of future returns and, at the same time, tend to overestimate the value of present returns. For example, if you're asked to choose: a) earn 1000 yuan more today; b) earn 1000 yuan more on this day next year; without thinking, of course you'll choose option a). Choose again: a) earn 1000 yuan more today; b) earn 2000 yuan more on this day next year; in fact most people will still go straight for option a)—doesn't the saying go: a bird in the hand is worth a hundred in the woods!

In a sense, this choice is quite rational. Because people know that 1) any time after this very moment is full of variables—a conservative choice is usually the best behavior pattern for avoiding risk; 2) today's 1000 yuan may, through interest and other opportunities, end up being more than 2000 yuan on this day next year; at the same time, inflation may make 2000 yuan on this day next year worth far less than 1000 yuan today—this is the result of thinking with economic common sense.

Surveys have even found that people, on the basis of what is in fact pitifully little experience and of the various predicaments they currently face, excessively underestimate the value of future returns. For example, many people, facing the choice "a) earn 1000 yuan more today; b) earn 10000 yuan more on this day next year," still impatiently choose option a), on so-called "rational" grounds. Even though, in fact, whether by using interest or relying on luck, whether through inflation or the various variables of the future, it is very hard to turn 1000 yuan today into 10000 yuan on this day next year—a difficulty coefficient of over 0.99.

Psychologists call this excessive underestimation "Delay discounting." If you are a normal person, remembering that your own brain has this irrational tendency is extremely important and very useful: **with money, people tend not only to underestimate the value of future returns, but sometimes to underestimate it excessively.** In addition, **people also generally believe that tomorrow they will have more money than today**, even though in fact this is often not always the case.

While believing that they will have more money tomorrow, **people likewise believe that they will have more time tomorrow**—even though today has 24 hours in total, and tomorrow likewise has only 24 hours in total.

Just looking at the sentence above, you may not instantly feel it deeply, but you need only observe those around you, or look into yourself, and you'll know. Why do you often stand people up? Because when you fixed the appointment you were busy, but you felt that in the future you would surely have time, so you confirmed a certain appointment; but when that day came, you finally found that you were, as on some day in the past, so busy your feet were kicking the back of your head, so you had no choice but to phone and apologize, "Sorry……".

Look into yourself seriously again. Are you often surprised at how busy you are, and often surprised at how so many trivial matters can, from silence, burst out like a clap of thunder? It's that line again: **believe me, you are not alone—everyone is like this**.

Observe from another angle and you'll know why we are so obtuse about time. As animals, **one of our most basic ways of learning is through feedback (feedback)**—just like Pavlov's dog. For example, you touch an iron pan that has just fried an egg and get burned, and so afterward you know never again—in such a situation you absolutely must not touch that iron pan. [Translator's note: this sentence is garbled in the original (以后就知道再也不能在这样的情况下是绝对不能碰那个铁锅的), mixing "never again" and "absolutely must not"; translated keeping both parts]

But the problem is that with time, it's very hard for us to get this kind of feedback. Making a mistake with time brings almost no punishment that we can feel—because **when we miss the time, or miss an opportunity, what's really deadly is that we often simply don't know what we've lost**, and it really is hard for us to feel great regret over a loss that "doesn't exist."

When we learn through feedback, we often need the same feedback to be repeated again and again before it produces a deep memory and so achieves a better learning effect. But with time we can hardly get repetition of the same feedback—because for us every day is different, even every moment is different.

When we are busy with something, we often don't really know how long the thing we are doing actually takes. For this reason, we even stupidly believe that tomorrow there definitely won't be as much crap to deal with as today. As Dr. Gal Zauberman of the University of Northern California and Dr. John Lynch Jr. of Duke University observed, we, like everyone, believe (or hope) that the future is perfect: the fridge is stuffed full, the sky is clear, the trains run on time, meetings will definitely end on time…… I'm reminded of the title of a song that was once popular—"Tomorrow Will Be Better." [Translator's note: factual error in the original; Gal Zauberman was then at the University of North Carolina (北卡罗来纳), not "Northern California"; translated as written]

To review: **1) people also generally believe that tomorrow they will have more money than today; 2) people generally believe that tomorrow they will have more time.** And the two doctors just mentioned, Gal Zauberman and John Lynch Jr., through a large number of experiments and verifications, reached this generally accepted conclusion: [of these two theoretically obvious distortions, the degree to which people distort time is far higher than the degree to which they distort money](http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xge134123.pdf).

"Tomorrow and again tomorrow—how many tomorrows there are!" is the sigh of someone with one foot in the grave—you can surely only have this kind of feeling when your days are numbered. Ten years before uttering this sigh, this person would, like most people, have felt, "There's plenty of time; time isn't that tight." [Translator's note: the original writes 发出这个慨叹之的十年前, a slip for 之前的十年, "ten years before"; translated by the intended sense]

This explains why most people procrastinate. **It's not that they lack the will to be diligent; it's just that they are limited by their own brains, thinking they will have enough time in the future to do what they want to do**.

Once again, this is an opportunity to change your fate by using your mind. Once you know what limitations your brain has, you will find ways to struggle and, in turn, control your brain, [be the master of your brain rather than being swayed by it](http://www.lixiaolai.com/?p=223). Don't think this is too hard—although it really isn't that easy, in the end you'll find it's an interesting thing. This is how I see it: because I figured out that I should control my own brain, I suddenly found I had one more toy than the people around me, and a toy I never tire of playing with—my brain.