The farther away something feels, the more abstractly your mind treats it
Psychologists Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman showed that psychological distance, whether in time, space, social closeness, or likelihood, changes how concretely you think about something. A vacation next week gets planned around specific logistics, like what to pack; the same vacation a year out gets imagined in vague, big-picture terms, like 'relaxing.' The theory ties together why distant goals feel simple and nearby ones feel complicated.