Perhaps no one is like my wife and me, but we have a place in our pantry where chocolate goes to die. Actually, for quite some time, we had a place where all snack food would go to die. We would eat most of a particular snack food, but then since no one wanted to finish it (because then we wouldn’t have any more), it would get placed in a particular pantry that I called “The Snack Graveyard”. Turns out this is a fairly common human trait.
The New York Times had an article on this tendency: Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow. They say:
Once you start procrastinating pleasure, it can become a self-perpetuating process if you fixate on some imagined nirvana. The longer you wait to open that prize bottle of wine, the more special the occasion has to be.
Unfortunately, we overestimate the pleasure we will get from big enjoyable experiences. We are better off enjoying small pleasures throughout our life: eating a nice chocolate, buying a nice smelling soap, or splurging on nice dinner out. The sum of these will exceed the pleasure we get from buying a new house or a new car. So instead of procrastinating a small pleasure, consider whether now is a good time to savor life.
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