In this blog post, I’ll compare my future self with my present self, reflect on experiences where I set goals and then gave up on them, and consider why it’s important to focus on who I am right now.
I’m the type of person who believes in living a life according to a plan, yet I struggle to stick to those plans myself. In other words, I make the best plan possible before starting a task, but in most cases, I burn out and end up failing to fully carry it out. The piles of calendars and planners stacked on my desk are proof of this. I’ve bought them every year without fail since high school to manage my schedule, and every single one shares two things in common. First, the first page of every month is filled with the goals I set for that month, without exception. In one month, I must have wanted to build abs, so it says, “30 sit-ups every day,” and in another month, I must have wanted to improve my TOEIC score, so it says, “TOEIC 850 by the end of this month!” The other thing all these planners have in common is that I never once actually stuck to these plans. My ambition to get a ripped body through sit-ups and my dream of becoming an English master lasted only about a week—or, at most, a month. Not only have I never had a six-pack, but in the month I set the goal of scoring 850 on the TOEIC, I didn’t even take the test. Perhaps that’s why the last page of every month in my notebooks is always filled with self-reproach or attempts to encourage myself, such as “Sigh…” or “I’ll definitely do it next month!”
Before last summer break began, I also made a few plans—such as mastering algorithm concepts and improving my TEPS score. However, looking back on my track record, it’s easy to deduce that I would inevitably fail to properly achieve the goals I set for this summer break as well. And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. At least I managed to read through the basic algorithm textbook to some extent, but I didn’t even open the TEPS practice book. Most of my other minor plans turned out to be much of a muchness, so in the end, I didn’t achieve a single goal I had set out to accomplish.
One evening, with the start of the new semester just around the corner, I sat blankly on a seat on the subway ride home, thinking, “So this vacation is just slipping away like this.” I was mulling over various thoughts in my head—like whether I could have made better use of the time, or if I’d perhaps made my schedule too tight. Then it suddenly occurred to me: “Even though it didn’t go according to plan, I still worked hard during this break—hasn’t there been some improvement in me?” As I looked back on what I’d done over the break, I realized one interesting fact. Most of the improvements I’d made weren’t the result of the plan I’d originally set for myself. For example, I’d recently taken an interest in reading English-language international IT news as a hobby, and as a result, I’d started to find my major’s academic papers somewhat easier to read.
Of course, I’m well aware that it’s rare for things to go exactly according to plan. This is especially true for someone like me, who tends to draw up grand plans before even starting anything. However, I thought the fact that most of the changes I experienced over the break occurred outside of my plans was worth reflecting on. Would it actually be more helpful for me not to make plans at all?
A while back, I read a psychology column titled “Why We Procrastinate.”
It analyzed why people procrastinate, and in short, it argued that people put things off because they view their “future self” as a different person from their “present self.” In other words, even though people fully understand that if their present self does the work, their future self will be better off, they psychologically perceive their future self as someone other than themselves. Consequently, they view the effort required now as a sacrifice for someone else and end up putting it off. The most interesting part of this column was the interpretation that people perceive “present me” and “future me” as completely different people. This is because I felt I could apply this perspective to the notebooks piled up on my desk as well.
In fact, I haven’t often been truly satisfied with who I was at the time. This is because I have a habit of comparing myself to others. Whenever I saw areas where I fell short or was lacking compared to others, my first instinct was to try to bridge that gap somehow. Fortunately, that habit often served as a driving force to improve my skills when studying or pursuing hobbies, but it’s also true that there were many times when I quickly gave up, thinking, “There’s such a big gap between me and that person—will I even be able to catch up no matter how hard I try?”
Perhaps I was comparing “future me”—after achieving my goals—too harshly with “present me.” Doing 30 sit-ups every day doesn’t mean I’ll suddenly have a ripped body in a month, and working through a TEPS workbook a few times doesn’t make me an English expert. It seemed like the sight of me huffing and puffing through my workouts or scribbling through TEPS workbooks wouldn’t immediately bring me closer to the future self I’d envisioned, so I’d quickly become disappointed in my current self and give up on my plans. On the contrary, it’s probably for this reason that I found myself more motivated by simple hobbies—like the IT news I read during break—that I hadn’t even set as goals, and that these activities actually brought about positive changes in me.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to imagine a better version of myself in the future. But there’s nothing more foolish than vaguely comparing my future self to my present self and then giving up so easily. I realized I need to practice looking at who I am right now before looking toward my future self. As the upcoming winter break approaches, I plan to think more deeply about what I want to do right now and what I’m good at right now. Rather than having vague ambitions like “I just want to get in shape” or “I need to get better at English,” I’m going to think about what brings me joy and what will actually help me right now. Perhaps the plans I’ve made will change before the break is even over. But at least I won’t feel frustrated because I didn’t become the person I expected to be when I first made those plans. By then, there will surely be a new version of myself that has improved in some way.
