The Nuance
How Looking Ahead Can Hold You Back
Spending too much time thinking about your future can sabotage your present.
The Roman philosopher Seneca once pointed out to a friend the folly of premature misery. “Those things you fear as if they were impending may never happen,” he observed.
Seneca must have known he was fighting an uphill battle. Human beings are inveterate worriers. In many ways, we’re hardwired to peer into the future and fret about what it may hold for us.
In fact, this is one of the defining traits of our species. While most other living things are forever tethered to the present, people possess the unique and virtuoso ability to anticipate the future and plan accordingly.
Experts sometimes refer to the mental construction of future scenarios as episodic foresight, and it has obvious advantages. “By allowing us to plan and prepare, episodic foresight enables us to prudently take advantage of opportunities and manage risks,” wrote the authors of a 2015 paper in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
“It’s comforting to think that everything you do is leading up to some moment-of-truth in the future — that you will one day have all…
