The person who owns it

Go back to the picture you had of the bag at ten past nine. It was on your shoulder, on a station platform, on a Friday afternoon. The person carrying it had somewhere to go and someone to go with. They were the sort who gets away for weekends.

That person was what you were buying. The bag was the part of them that could be delivered.

This is what Richins found underneath the rise and fall in chapter 3. The people who felt the most before a purchase were the ones who expected it to change something that mattered. They expected it to change how they lived, how others saw them or what kind of person they were. She called these transformation expectations, and they explained the rise. They also help explain the fall. The running shoes arrive, and the person who opens the box still doesn't run.

Two other studies show what's going on. Derek Rucker and Adam Galinsky found in three experiments that people who'd been made to feel powerless were willing to pay more for things, but only for things that signal status. Where they felt short of something, they reached for an object that stood for it. Then Monika Lisjak and colleagues looked at what happens next. They found that buying a symbol of the very thing you feel short of can backfire. It kept the sore spot in people's minds, they dwelt on it, and they did worse afterwards at tasks needing self-control. The object reminded them of the gap it was meant to cover.

A lot of lift purchases are of this kind once you look. There's the notebook for the person who writes every morning, the pan for the person who cooks from scratch, and the course for the person who's learning Italian. I'm not mocking any of it. The want underneath is a good one. You'd like to be someone who gets away at weekends, and you probably should.

But the purchase does something sly. It lets you feel you've made a start. Ordering the bag at ten past nine feels like a step towards weekends away, and it's the only step that takes one tap. The real steps are finding a free weekend, asking someone and booking a train. They're harder, and none of them has been done. The mild satisfaction of having acted makes them slightly less likely, because the itch has been scratched.

So the reframe is to reverse the order. Do the thing first, badly equipped. Go away for a weekend with the holdall you've had since college. Run in the trainers you've got, three times. Write on whatever paper is in the house for a fortnight.

Then see what you find. If you do the thing and keep doing it, you'll soon know what kit you lack, and you'll buy it with a history of wanting behind it. That's a planned purchase, and it'll be used. Or you may find you didn't much want the activity, only the idea of being the person who does it. That's worth knowing, and you'll have found out for nothing.

Either way you've spent the evening's energy on the life and not on the luggage. If it's weekends away you want, book the weekend first and think about the bag afterwards.