push the temptation in front of you far away…
push the temptation in front of you far away in space and time and bring the distant consequences closer in your mind
— from Time
In the book
There is also the slow waste of fighting the wrong battle: do not spend your hours beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. And there is the deepest distortion of all, the one our minds are built for — we discount the future far too steeply, treating the years to come as if they belonged to someone else, when the discipline that saves a life is exactly the reverse: push the easy temptation in front of you away in time, and pull the distant consequence close enough to feel it now. [Name here the stretch of your own flight you would fly differently if the tower would let you turn the plane around — the years you mistook motion for meaning, or let others spend for you.] — Time