The logic behind sacrifices (for fighting procrastination and bad habits)

Is ‘me in the future’ evil?

For quite a few days now, I’ve been slacking off. All the while thinking to myself, what’s the point of anything? What’s the point of giving up binging anime, consuming sugar and putting things off? Why sacrifice awesome things now to get it delivered to me in the future? Who is this ‘me in the future’- that gets priority over the real me- now?

Then there’s always the existential crisis thoughts. If I am temporary, what’s the point of building myself up? What’s the point of sacrificing my hedonist desires for something so fragile? Heck, there’s even no guarantee of safety even if I do the right things! The non-smoker still gets cancer while century-old smoker lives!

This made me ponder about the idea of sacrifices. Why should I sacrifice for my future self? Why should ‘he’ get all the fun- I remember asking a friend yesterday.

 

The Epiphany

Today I had an epiphany. Sacrifices aren’t a one way traffic. They go both ways. Right now I feel stable and alert. Consuming sugar will make me feel dizzy and sleepy.

Consuming sugar will hamper my overall happiness, capacity and longevity. It’s not about me in the future or any other point of time. Rather it’s about ‘the me’- me spread throughout the space-time continuum.

Through each action I’m always sacrificing. There’s no activity without a sacrifice.

Thus, everything is a tradeoff. Meditate?- gain peace and clarity; lose time and opportunity cost. Consume sugar?- taste the goodness and stop craving; lose health, cognitive abilities, alertness etc.

It’s always a tradeoff. There’s no way out of it.

But, here’s the kicker- not every result have the same duration.

Consuming sugar may feel good for 10 minutes, while the bad consequences can linger way longer than that.

The question is then, am I sacrificing a bigger, longer lasting, dividend paying outcome for something that will leave me in an instant? Am I trading for less with more?

I think this is where wisdom stems from.

I could rephrase the question like this- Am I sacrificing the good of the many for the good of one? Maybe this is where morals stem from.

Then there could be another twist- some sacrifices may even enable us to gain an outcome that is very hard to get otherwise. In those cases we often make series of sacrifices because we deem it as good investments!