Imagine you’re given the choice of $90 now or $100 in two weeks. Which would you choose?

Most people would take the $90 because “good now” is more enticing than “better later.”

This tendency to discount the value of future events and outcomes underlies a host of self-destructive behaviors, including substance abuse, pathological gambling, risky sexual behavior, and most notably for us, an inability to stick with health-promoting habits.

There are ways to short-circuit it, however, and one is something scientists call episodic future thinking, which simply involves imagining a specific, personal, and detailed future event linked to a personal goal. Productive daydreaming, essentially.

In a study conducted by scientists at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, researchers split 29 overweight or obese women who wanted to lose weight into two groups: one that used an episodic future thinking (EFT) protocol, and another that used an episodic recent thinking (ERT) protocol.

The EFT protocol asked participants to think of five health goals they would like to complete in the next three weeks and five exciting events that would occur in the next three weeks. Then, participants were told to vividly imagine (location, time, emotions, context, and so on) and describe how achieving their health goals will contribute to the experience of the events.

This process produced statements like this:

“In three weeks, I will go to the concert with my friend. We will sit near the back so we can chat more easily. I will be feeling strong and proud of myself after having achieved my goal of going to the gym three times per week. I will be feeling excited and happy to see the band play for the first time.”

The ERT protocol was different.

It simply asked participants to list and rate the importance of five things they did regularly, and then to vividly remember and describe five events of their choosing that had happened in the past 24 hours.

All participants also recorded their statements, and on the following day, were taken to a food court full of tempting “diet-unfriendly” food. They played their recordings back to themselves, and then, without being given any nutritional guidance, were told to eat whatever they wanted.

The results showed that the EFT group consumed significantly fewer calories than the ERT group (~540 vs. ~749) and chose foods containing less fat (24% vs. 37%) and more protein (26% vs. 19%).

By thinking about the future, people made better decisions in the present.

We can use this simple strategy to help us achieve our goals, too, fitness and otherwise. For example, imagine you’ve just set a wedding date, and you want to look fit on the big day. Paint a mental picture of the following:

  • Where you’ll be on your wedding day
  • How happy you’ll be to see your closest friends and family
  • How pleased you’ll be with the event, including your attire, venue, decorations, wedding party, etc.
  • How confident and satisfied you’ll feel in front of everyone and how comfortable you’ll feel having your picture taken because you stuck to your fitness plan and you know you look great
  • Etc.

Then, describe the mental movie in writing until you feel you’ve captured all of the important details, and record yourself reading it aloud.

Finally, whenever you’re tempted to abandon your diet or exercise plan, listen to the recording and dream along with it, and odds are it’ll renew your resolve to go the distance.