Scientific Definition
Today's discomfort outweighs tomorrow's reward.
Plain-English Definition
Today's discomfort outweighs tomorrow's reward.
Feynman Explanation
Every diet starts Monday. Every strategic pivot starts next quarter.
Core Principle
Today's discomfort outweighs tomorrow's reward.
Mechanisms
Today's discomfort outweighs tomorrow's reward.
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
Every diet starts Monday. Every strategic pivot starts next quarter.
Examples
- Difficult restructuring postponed in favor of incremental polish.
- Painful but correct moves perpetually deferred.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Pre-commit to actions and dates. Bind future self to present resolve.
Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Pre-commit to actions and dates. Bind future self to present resolve.
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Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.
Feelings act as shortcuts for facts.
Over-reliance on the first number that hits the table.
Adding a clearly worse option steers people toward the option you wanted.
Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.
We value things more once they're ours.
The same information lands differently depending on how it's wrapped.
We disproportionately prefer rewards now over rewards later.
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
Believing more information leads to better decisions, regardless of relevance.
When trivial metrics become the target, the trivial becomes the strategy.
Losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good.