Why We Offload Crappy Stuff Onto Our Future Selves

Our brain differentiates between thinking about similar others and dissimilar others, including our future self. We tend to treat our future self like a stranger and don't use the same brain regions to think about their likes, dislikes, and goals. This leads to treating our future self as a concrete stranger, resulting in the miseries of life. We have a strange theory about who our future self will be, seeing them as an aspirational self who has solved all our current problems but is also unaffected by certain things. We believe our future self won't mind unpleasant tasks as much as we would and won't enjoy things as much as we do. This mindset causes us to prioritize immediate gratification over long-term benefits.