From Akrasia, hyperbolic discounting, and picoeconomics on LessWrong:
We all instinctively assign a lower weight to a reward further in the future than one close at hand; this is "discounting the future". We don't just account for a slightly lower probability of recieving a more distant award, we value it at inherently less for being further away. It's been an active debate on overcomingbias.com whether such discounting can be rational at all. However, even if we allow that discounting can be rational, the way that we and other animals do it has a structure which is inherently irrational: the weighting we give to a future event is, roughly, inversely proportional to how far away it is. This is hyperbolic discounting, and it is an empirically very well confirmed result.
I say "inherently irrational" because it is inconsistent over time: the relative cost of a day's wait is considered differently whether that day's wait is near or far. Looking at a day a month from now, I'd sooner feel awake and alive in the morning than stay up all night reading comments on lesswrong.com. But when that evening comes, it's likely my preferences will reverse; the distance to the morning will be relatively greater, and so my happiness then will be discounted more strongly compared to my present enjoyment, and another groggy morning will await me. To my horror, my future self has different interests to my present self.
Compare to a college student's tendency to procrastinate, rush assignments, not study, and consequently get lower grades than they would otherwise. I'm looking at you, 2013!Nathaniel.
Actually, I still have this problem (though to a much lesser extent), which is why I'm writing this post when I have two final exams in the next 48 hours. While I dislike the university alarmism, the grades (and more importantly, habits) one obtains during their tertiary education has a tremendous impact on the trajectory of their life. Yet extremely little attention is given to the innate psychology of human beings which makes us act against our own long-term interests.
I'm not sure how to solve it, beyond increased self-vigilance while inculcating better behaviors. I've done better this semester (my first proper engineering courseload since 2014) and my grades, though far from ideal, are passable. I study a lot more than I did at Purdue and don't procrastinate as much. But there's been quite a few trivial inconveniences and general willpowers sinks that I'm hoping to avoid in the future (and would have already, if contract hadn't required me to endure them through May).
