Miswanting

One of the many interesting concepts nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman talks about in Thinking, Fast and Slow is that of ‘miswanting’.

He defines miswanting as ‘bad choices that arise from errors in affective forecasting’.

A rich source of miswanting are the dozens of bad choices we each make on a daily basis about how certain behaviours are likely to impact our future well-being.

In actual fact, most often these aren’t active choices we make, but rather wilful blindness to the negative future impact of our actions.

We take the path of least resistance and focus on the immediate pleasure or benefit from taking (that heavy pasta at lunch) or not taking (avoiding going to the gym) action! 😀

You could call it self-sabotage, but to me, miswanting describes my daily internal narrative much more succinctly.

Does that resonate?

#productivity #personaldevelopment #performance