According to a USA Today poll 25% of the American workforce plan to leave their current jobs and start a business of their own.  That’s their plan, yet many will never follow through.  Here’s why, our brains are better suited to stalking wild prey than to opening up a business.  David Laibson and Robert J. Goldman Professor of Economics at Harvard, did some research and came up with an interesting finding:  Our minds tend to discount future benefits by about half, while giving full value to immediate gratification.

     As an example, suppose you were offered a free 15 minute massage right now or a free 20 minute massage 2 days from now.  Laibson’s research suggests that most people will opt for the immediate massage. 

     You can frame each offer numerically:  The immediate massage would equal x and the future massage would equal x/2.  So, the decision would be framed as 15 vs. 20/2; that is, our mental accounting give the immediate massage a “value” of 15 and the future massage a “value” of 10.

     It is easy to see that the people who want to start a business, but don’t, would rather have the immediate gratification of watching TV than the future gratification of being their own boss.

     Laibson also described how two different parts of the brain come to opposite conclusions about certain opportunities:
1. The cortex, the rational brain, weighs the future and immediate benefits equally.
2. The basal ganglia, the emotional brain, discounts altogether whatever rewards might exist in the uncertain future.

     The easy way to escape this vexing mental conflict is to procrastinate, hoping the need to choose will go away.  If you are planning to start a business take control of your situation and take action.  If you don’t do anything different today you’ll be in the same situation tomorrow.  It takes work, effort, and passing up immediate gratification to start a business.