In my first year of business school, way back in 1999, I took a required leadership course

where our final assignment was to write a two-page memoir detailing what we would be doing in

2011, 10 years after graduation. My professor had us bring in two copies, one to turn in and one to keep. And yes, I still have mine.

My memoir says that by 2011, I would be married with three kids, living in West Africa, working for UNICEF.

It's no surprise to me that this was my vision. I knew very few people at the time

who were in their mid-30s, without kids, and I had done some work in the nonprofit world before

business school. So all the little details just made sense. But 10 years after graduation,

my life looked nothing like that, and my life today is

even more different. I live in my hometown, New York City. I'm a business school professor. I've been

married, and I'm happily child-free, which is such a reminder that it's so hard to know what the future will hold.

So why is it so easy for us to assume that who we are today is the same person will be 10 years from now?

I'm Madhupacanola. This is Ted Business.

Our speaker today is Shankar Vedantam, journalist and host of the podcast Hidden Brain,

a show that explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior.

In this talk, Shankar explains why we believe our future selves will share the same views,

perspectives, and hopes as our current selves and shows how we can more proactively

craft the people we are to become.

Then after the talk, I'll share how we can be wrong about our future

emotions too. But first, a quick break. When I was 12 years old, I fractured my foot playing soccer.

I didn't tell my parents when I got home that night,

because the next day, my dad was taking me to see a movie, a soccer movie.

I worried that if I told my parents about the foot, they would take me to see a doctor.

...