The end of history — Tip #23

Or is it just an illusion? 🔮

In the last two tips we talked about food, gotta switch gears before Don’t Panic turns into a fitness/lifestyle newsletter 🤓. I recently came across something I’ve experienced first-hand countless times, and chances are you have too. Today’s tip is less about productivity or performance, and more of a reminder for your future self.

The end of history illusion is a cognitive bias that affects people of all ages. In the original study published in Science, participants ranged from 18 to 68 years old. In plain English, the bias goes like this:

It’s easier to remember the person you used to be than to imagine the person you’ll become.

If you think you’re immune, think again. This bias is linked to several limitations in how our brains work. A few of them:

• 🧠 Memory needs data: The past self is easier to access because memory gives us real examples, emotions, and stories to hold onto. We can recall who we were, but we can’t recall who we haven’t yet become.

• 🔮 Imagination is blurry: The future self has to be constructed from scratch, but the brain struggles to simulate detailed future preferences, values, and identities.

• 📌 Present moment projection: Current feelings, tastes, and priorities are treated as if they’re more stable than they really are. What feels important today gets projected into the future as if were permanent.

• 🧩 Need for coherence: The mind prefers a stable, coherent identity. Believing “this is who I am” feels psychologically safer than admitting that our values, goals, and personality may keep shifting.

• 🚫 Blindness to the unknown: Many future changes come from events we cannot yet predict, like new relationships, loss, work changes, illness, success, failure, or aging. Because we cannot imagine these clearly, we underestimate their impact.

• ✨ Feeling "finished”: We generally like to believe we’ve grown into a wiser, better version of ourselves and that we have done most of the work.

I’ve seen this bias at play in my own life more times than I can count. At 15, I promised myself I would first become a billionaire☝️ and only then buy a house. Today the last thing I want to do is buy a house and lock myself into one place. Or take the first time I visited Dubai, I thought: “Wow, this is the future…clean, safe, luxurious. I could see myself living here”. Four years later, after actually living there, I was describing it as one of the most inhumane places on Earth (great for holidays though! 🎢).

I’d argue life is a lifelong journey of figuring yourself out. There is no final You.

Your weekly tip: Embrace change → it’s inevitable. Forgive your past mistakes, that was a different You. Leave room for optionality in long-term decisions. You may feel you won’t change, but you will. Be water, my friend.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who thinks too rigidly. Things change 🫰

See you next week, until then…

Don’t Panic 😱