Anticipatory Utility

Anticipation lets you mentally rehearse a future experience while it remains full of possibility. Each act of planning brings the reward into the present: you picture scenes, make choices, and revisit the promise of what is coming. That repeated enjoyment can enlarge the experience beyond its actual duration.

This helps explain one advantage of Experiential Purchases. Waiting for a delivered object is often merely a delay between payment and possession; waiting for a vacation can contain its own pleasure because imagining the experience is itself rewarding.

The mechanism depends on the waiting period being pleasurable. Anticipation can also become worry—as Anticipatory Stress makes clear—or planning can turn into burdensome work. In those cases, the runway subtracts from the experience rather than adding to it.