The Story Phase
If we look at everything that we did as human beings for the last 30,000 years, it’s quite clear what our primary focus has been: defining boundaries.
Countries draw them on maps; in a relationship, we draw them through trust; companies draw them through different roles; even a simple conversation depends on the mutual agreement that one person has to stop speaking so that the other can start speaking. Not very true in politics, but you know what I mean!
A boundary, by definition, is quite restrictive. It’s, in fact, the whole point of a boundary. But it has its advantages. They are what make cooperation possible.
Setting up boundaries could start wars, but without them, there would be continuous wars over the smallest issues possible. A relationship might collapse as a result of setting up a boundary, but without them, both sides get hurt, and may continue to get hurt over an unreasonable issue.
Without boundaries, there will be no division of labor, no careers, and no real advancements in civilization, as I argued in the previous issue. The whole system collapses under its own weight because human progress didn’t emerge as a result of one man or woman, but rather because billions of people were slightly different from each other, learned how to coordinate those differences to elevate mankind by working towards a better future.
But recently, I’ve been thinking about a different kind of boundary. A boundary that is more personal, more intimate, and to some extent, more important to think about: the boundary within ourselves.
You might not notice it at once, but this is something that we all share. For example, when you sit down to work, at work or at home, you sometimes feel like you are behind, even though you have enough time and energy to finish the task in time.
The first one is what I call the “current self.” This is who you are today: the one who feels the moment, the one who experiences happiness and sorrow, and also the one who experiences stress, the one who gets distracted, the one who gets tired, and the one who is uncertain about the future. The second version, which I call the “emerging self,” is a bit ahead.
This version lives in the future.
This is the version that tells you to take the lecture more carefully; it’s the one that tells you to stop scrolling through social media and get some work done; this is the version that tells you to work that extra hour before going to bed.
This is the version that your “current self” hopes to become, but sometimes fears becoming, yet strongly believes should become. And the most interesting thing is that we already know quite a lot about this emerging self of ours. But one might argue, “Well, I don’t, and that is why I’m lost and depressed.” But how can you become stressed and feel like you are lost if you don’t have a reference point to the future? You feel lost and depressed because your future self—or the emerging self—and your current self are not in good agreement with each other.
This, for most people, is the very place where stress comes from: from the conflict between your future self and your current self. The future self wants growth; the current self prefers comfort. The future self wants stability, but the current self wants certainty. And so they are always at war with each other. Now, there’s no coordination at all between these two selves. Instead, it’s fragmentation.
So, how do we get out of this unproductive, potentially harmful loop?
The Structure Phase
The most effective way to answer this is by finding the answers to the question: what are the causes of this fragmentation in the first place?
Well, there are many…
For one thing, the hundreds of notifications we get every day, most of which are not worth our time, interrupt our attention. We visit social media for one thing, and all of a sudden, a whole hour has passed us doomscrolling through content that adds practically no value to our lives. Then, with it, begins the comparison with peers that continuously interrupts our identity.
Every social media platform, every alternative lifestyle, introduces us to a whole new alternative self: a new career, a new body, a new standard, or another version of success. Now, with all these alternative future selves in mind, we try to align our current selves to coordinate towards each and every one of those future selves. Obviously, it is not possible, so the fragmentation between our current self and future selves takes the stage. Because of this, part of our current self is always in a continuous debate, always comparing, reacting, trying to catch up to competitions that you haven’t really set yourself up for, regretting things you don’t have, putting up a mask to pretend to be different selves to different people.
Today, the currency of the most value is not money, but attention.
With all this, at some point, the role of the future self changes from being a guide to being an accuser.
Every unfinished task becomes a source of guilt; every ambition and goal starts to feel like an overwhelming source of pressure; every interaction, even a social media post, starts to feel like “the evidence” of the fact that we are falling behind the person we want to become.
Strangely enough, this is what modern culture seems to value: the pressure of feeling behind. Everywhere we look on social media, the so-called self-help gurus remind us that we are in the wrong, that we should feel guilty for not putting in the work, and that we should use this guilt as fuel to drive towards our success.
But personal growth does not work through internal warfare between your current self and the future self. In order to get anywhere in life, these two selves must work in harmony.
This is well supported by the literature: people tend to become more successful, that is, they tend to reduce the gap between their future self and their current self, not through self-punishment, not by making their current life a living prison, but by cooperating with their future self, by accepting who they are today, and by making necessary adjustments to properly align themselves with who they want to become tomorrow.
Like civilizations need borders to remain stable, we as individuals need boundaries around attention to grow without burnout.
Without defended territory, there is no stability; without stability, there is no controlled growth.
The Interface
So, how do we do this in real life, where everything moves at us from all directions, all the time?
How do we defend our attention?
And then how do we ideally reduce the friction of becoming who we want to become?
I think the best place to start is understanding “who you really are.” Not the easiest thing to figure out, of course. And also, I don’t think that this is something that you can figure out over a coffee either.
The easiest way to do this, in my opinion, is to figure out “who you are not” first. To figure out what creates stress in your life. This is relatively easy to figure out compared to figuring out “who you are” on the first go.
What drains your energy on a daily basis? A career that you know for sure you should not be in? A relationship that you know is toxic? Or a group of people that you know are no help to where you want to be in the next five years?
The good news is you already know the answers to all these. If any of them are bugging you, you are just reluctant to break the cycle, and in turn, fragmenting your current self with many of the future selves that you know are not compatible with you.
When you figure this out and then remove such incompatible selves, you begin to see a clear path between your current self and one achievable future self that you must, and are able to, work towards.
The fragmentation then becomes coordination again, and the harmony between the two selves is restored.
This is how progress really works, both for civilizations and also for our inner selves.
References & further reading
This issue draws on a few ideas from psychology and economics, especially around possible selves, attention, self-improvement, and human cooperation.
- Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius, Possible Selves — on how people carry imagined versions of who they might become, want to become, or fear becoming.
- E. Tory Higgins, Self-Discrepancy: A Theory Relating Self and Affect — on how the gap between who we are and who we think we should be can create emotional discomfort.
- Hal Hershfield, Future Self-Continuity — on how feeling connected to your future self can shape choices in the present.
- Sophie Leroy, Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks — on how part of our attention can remain stuck on a previous task after we switch to a new one.
- Juliana Breines and Serena Chen, Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation — on how self-compassion can support, rather than weaken, the desire to improve.
- Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist — on trade, trust, specialization, and the role of cooperation in human progress.