Future me is awesome. Future me says medium instead of large. Future Me gets his weekly blog post done on time. Future me is a hero. I am yet to meet Future Me so in the meantime, Present Me needs a plan.
Past Me promised his business partner Aoife his weekly blog would go out on time so Present Me needs a way to make sure he does what Past Me said he would.
Enter the Ulysses contract. Essentially Present Me realising Future Me requires some help doing the right thing. Like Ulysses getting his mates to lash him to the mast so he doesn’t get high on siren song and kill them all, I am going to give Present Me a better chance of becoming Future Me by creating a contract with Aoife that if I fail to get my post done by Friday, she will dock my pay by £500 (an amount I can’t spare!) and send it to Shell, an anti-charity if you will, whose business model and views are antithetical to mine.
There are less extreme versions of this like arranging to meet a friend at the gym to add some social pressure to ensure you get your workouts done or those with a sweet tooth removing all sugar laden products from their house, but my Future Me needs a bigger lever to pull on.
Ant