The Ulysses Contract
How to beat your future self at their own game before they even show up.
Grounded in the research on ulysses contract
Lock yourself in now
A Ulysses contract is a decision you make today that binds your future self when you know you'll be weaker. Ulysses had his crew tie him to the mast before sailing past the Sirens — he wanted to hear the song but knew he'd jump ship if he could. The contract removes the choice when it matters most. You're not trusting willpower. You're engineering around it.
Study the mechanism
Richard Thaler and Shlomo Benartzi formalized this in their 2004 Save More Tomorrow (SMarT) program. Workers pre-committed to automatically raising their savings rate with each future pay rise. They couldn't feel the loss because the raise hadn't hit yet. Savings rates tripled over 28 months. The mechanism: pre-commitment exploits present bias — your future self is a stranger you don't trust, so you bind them in writing before they show up.