I have personal experience of the following in thought experiments:
“Students, the night before an exam, often wish that the exam could be put off for one more day. If asked on that night, such students might agree to commit to paying, say, $10 on the day of the exam for it to be held the next day. Months before the exam is held, however, students generally do not care much about having the exam put off for one day. And, in fact, if the students were made the same offer at the beginning of the term, that is, they could have the exam put off for one day by committing during registration to pay $10 on the day of the exam, they probably would reject that offer. The choice is the same, although made at different points in time. Because the outcome would change depending on the point in time, the students would exhibit time inconsistency
People display a consistent bias to believe that they will have more time in the future than they have today. More specifically, there is a persistent belief among people that they are “unusually busy in the immediate future, but will become less busy shortly.” However, this “time slack” is shown to be a bias. However busy you are this week is generally representative of how busy you are in future weeks. When people are estimating their time and when deciding if they will make a commitment, they anticipate more “time slack” in future weeks than the present week. Experiments by Zauberman and Lynch (2005) on this topic showed that people tend to discount investments of time more than money. The authors have nicknamed this the “Yes…Damn” effect because of the tendency to agree to do things in advance (e.g., travel to a conference), but when the time arrives you are very busy and it is inconvenient to attend.[4]”″
I have personal experience of the following in thought experiments:
“Students, the night before an exam, often wish that the exam could be put off for one more day. If asked on that night, such students might agree to commit to paying, say, $10 on the day of the exam for it to be held the next day. Months before the exam is held, however, students generally do not care much about having the exam put off for one day. And, in fact, if the students were made the same offer at the beginning of the term, that is, they could have the exam put off for one day by committing during registration to pay $10 on the day of the exam, they probably would reject that offer. The choice is the same, although made at different points in time. Because the outcome would change depending on the point in time, the students would exhibit time inconsistency People display a consistent bias to believe that they will have more time in the future than they have today. More specifically, there is a persistent belief among people that they are “unusually busy in the immediate future, but will become less busy shortly.” However, this “time slack” is shown to be a bias. However busy you are this week is generally representative of how busy you are in future weeks. When people are estimating their time and when deciding if they will make a commitment, they anticipate more “time slack” in future weeks than the present week. Experiments by Zauberman and Lynch (2005) on this topic showed that people tend to discount investments of time more than money. The authors have nicknamed this the “Yes…Damn” effect because of the tendency to agree to do things in advance (e.g., travel to a conference), but when the time arrives you are very busy and it is inconvenient to attend.[4]”″