Out of reach
It was exam week. Every evening at seven, Dhruv meant to open his maths book.
On Monday at seven, his phone was in his pocket. He took it out for one minute. At half past eight, the book was still in his bag.
Dhruv likes to test things. So he counted what each one took, right then.
The phone took one step: a hand into his pocket. The book took four. Put the phone down, open the bag, find the book, find the page.
He had decided at breakfast. So why did the deciding not hold at seven?
The idea
Dhruv was not lazy, and the sums were not too hard. By Wednesday he had found something that worked.
People who study choices have one sentence for why it worked.
The idea
A choice made now can bind the later self; it works because present bias is true.
Take it in pieces.
To bind is to tie a thing, so it cannot easily move.
On Tuesday night, Dhruv gave his phone to his brother Kunal until the exams were over. Kunal would give it back whenever Dhruv asked. He only had to ask.
Now the phone took six steps. Get up, go to Kunal’s room, knock, ask, say why, and take it. The book still took four.
On Wednesday at seven, the book won. So it did on Thursday.
Why Tuesday night? At nine on Tuesday night, seven o’clock on Wednesday was a whole day away. The phone was not pulling at him then.
So choosing the book was easy. Nothing was pulling the other way. That is the choice made now: made at a calm time, for a moment that comes later.
Where you saw this last
Last chapter: the later self has no more time and no more willpower than you. Present bias is a lean towards now.
Before Kunal, Dhruv had tried the bag. On Tuesday afternoon he zipped the phone inside it. At seven, the phone won again.
The bag added one step. The phone was still nearer than the book.
Willpower is pushing yourself to pick the harder thing, right then. At the moment, the nearer thing wins most of the time. That lean towards now is present bias.
Wednesday’s Dhruv had no more willpower than Monday’s. The bind did not make him stronger. It made the phone farther away than the book.
What people say instead
On Wednesday morning, Mummy heard where the phone was.
“You didn’t need to give it away, beta,” she said, and patted his head. “You’re a sensible boy. At seven, you’ll just decide.”
She meant it as praise. She trusts him, and she tells him so.
Most weeks, deciding on the spot was exactly what he did.
Dhruv smiled. On Monday he had thought the same thing. The phone stayed with Kunal.
One more place
The same shape turned up with Dhruv’s sister Sai, who is nine. She was saving coins for kites, for Sankranti.
She kept them in a tin. Every evening the kulfi cart rang its bell down the lane. The coins took one step: lift the lid. By Friday the tin was nearly empty.
So on Sunday she dropped the coins into a clay gullak. A gullak has no lid. To get a coin out, you lift it down, find something hard, break it, and pick through the pieces.
Keeping them took some doing too: shut the window, go back to her game, stop listening. But now it was the nearer end. The bell still rang. The coins stayed in.
Spot it
One more place. Look at it the way Dhruv would.
1
Kunal wants to be up at six, to run before school. His phone is his alarm, and it charges by his pillow. At six, switching it off takes one step. Getting up and into his shoes takes three. Which wins?
2
What could Kunal set up at bedtime, so that six o’clock goes the other way?
Dhruv got out his pocket atlas. On a spare sheet he drew their flat from above, the way the atlas draws a country.
Then he walked it with his pencil, room by room, counting steps.
Nobody got stronger
By the pillow, the alarm wins. Kunal switches it off and sleeps.
At bedtime, he could leave the phone charging in the hall. At six he has to get up to reach it. And then he is up.
Kunal tried it that week.
The exam week, the gullak and the hall are one shape. Nobody got stronger at the moment. The pull was put farther away, at a calm time, by the same person, earlier.
And each one was small, with a way back. Kunal gives the phone back when asked. A gullak can be broken any day; it just costs a gullak.
The name
People who study choices call this precommitment. Pre means before. A commitment is a choice you are held to.
So a precommitment is a choice made before the moment, and set up so that it holds when the moment comes.
Mummy was right that Dhruv is sensible. The sensible part just happened on Tuesday night.
On Friday evening, the last exam done, Kunal knocked on Dhruv’s door and held out the phone.
This week, at home
Pick one moment that keeps going the way you did not mean. Count the steps to each end. What could you set up, at a calm time, to put more steps before the pull? Keep it small, and keep a way back. Ask someone older what they have set up like this.
Dhruv thought of Emperor Ashoka, who cut his rules into rock. A rule cut in stone cannot be put away on a tired day, the way a rule on paper can. Kunal’s door was Dhruv’s rock. A small one, and it opened when he knocked.
Where you will see this next
This is the last chapter of the Class 7 book. The next time you open one like it, you will be in Class 8, a year from now. Whatever you set up before then will be waiting for that later you.