Anticipation is a stimulant of desire, it is as important, if not more important than the actual fulfillment of wanting. Have you ever had the experience whereby you wanted something really badly, and when you acquired it you weren’t as happy as you thought you would be? Maybe getting into a relationship or going on a date with your crush was not as interesting as you thought it would be. Maybe the new job or salary increment didn’t make you happier than before or contribute much to your quality of life. By now, you should be familiar with the pattern - you thought achieving some goal would make you elated only to feel lost and unhappy when you accomplished it.

Humans are poor at predicting their future emotional states and are more prone to overestimate the effect of significant purchases or changed circumstances on our well-being.

Below is an excerpt on our selective thinking from Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman:

Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson introduced the word miswanting to describe bad choices that arise from errors of affective forecasting. The focusing illusion (which Gilbert and Wilson call focalism) is a rich source of miswanting. The mistake that people make in the focusing illusion involves attention to selected moments and neglect of what happens at other times. The mind is good with stories, but it does not appear to be well designed for the processing of time.

For example, after secondary/high school I was given a choice between Business Informatics (BI) at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) and Business Information Technology (BIT) at Temasek Polytechnic (TP). NYP was 20 minutes from my house, while TP was 1 hours and 10 minutes away. That’s a staggering 50 minutes difference, or 100 minutes if I include the return trip. However, BIT was in the Business School while BI was in the Informatics & IT School. Back then I wanted to get into a Business School and had no interest in technology at all. Guess which school I chose?

I chose BIT at TP and experienced mind-numbing and exhausting commute for the next three years… If I chose BI at NYP, I would have an extra 1 hour and 40 minutes every day. That could mean extra time to exercise, sleep earlier, read etc.

At the time of writing, Jewel Changi Airport opened three days ago with fast food like A&W and Shake Shack. There was even a photo of the sign that says, “Estimated Queue Time from this Point to Food Order Collection is 2.5 HOURS.” If I were to include time into my decision-making, I will choose to go there a few weeks later when the hype has abated. Come to think of it, we have just discovered food delivery services like FoodPanda and GrabFood. The purpose of these companies is to spare the user’s time and hassle while allowing him/her to enjoy great food. It’s truly a first world problem to outsource ‘traditonal chores’ like cooking, washing clothes etc to free up time for other stuffs.

Last updated: 25 July 2021