How To Actually Delay Gratification (even if you want everything now)

In 1970, a Stanford Psychologist by the name of Walter Mischel ran an experiment.

In the experiment, he placed a child in an almost empty room void of distractions, with nothing but a single marshmallow.

The child had the option to either eat the single marshmallow now or abstain from eating it and get 2 later.

An experiment designed entirely to test the child’s ability to delay gratification.

And what they found was pretty insane…

The researchers did follow-up studies on the children and found that those who were able to delay gratification and not eat the single marshmallow were more likely to be successful in other areas of their lives as adults than the children who ate the single marshmallow.

This single study encapsulates both humans and the dichotomy of instant and delayed gratification in a nutshell.

You can get something now or you can get something better later.

And that’s the question that we all need to answer - are you willing to delay gratification and put off pleasure now for something better later, or are you not?

If you are, well, that’s all you need to get success in any area of your life - whether it’s in a relationship, in business, in fitness or wealth.

Because every ounce of success and every single result that you want is an outcome that is produced by the compounding of 100s or even 1000s of tiny actions coupled with the understanding that you have to do the work now, but you won’t get the result till later.

Essentially, every bit of success you desire is the result of your ability to delay gratification.

You looking and feeling good is the result of your ability to put down the junk food, get off the couch and instead eat clean and train hard.

Your business growing is the result of your ability to put down your phone and do 2-4 hours of focused work on your most important tasks every morning.

The ability to delay gratification will improve every area of your life.

But of course, it’s easier said than done.

This creates the question of how do we delay gratification, even though we want everything now?

What are the steps? What is the process?

Well, I’m going to use a graph to explain:

 

This graph is essentially a graph of pleasure now vs reward later.

As the amount of pleasure you get now decreases, the size of the reward you get later increases - this is delayed gratification in a graph.

And with it, you can clearly tell that to delay gratification you need the ability to ignore what gives you pleasure now for what gives you a reward later.

In other words, you need to understand your priorities and prioritise what gives you a reward later - because realistically, if you could choose between the pleasure of junk food or the reward of a great physique, you would choose the physique.

Hence, the physique and the work that you need to do to get it is a higher priority than the junk food that gives you pleasure now.

To delay gratification, we need to understand our priorities, because if you understand them, when it comes to making the decision of either;

• Doing the work that you know you need to do and delaying gratification

or

• Choosing pleasure now and giving into instant gratification

You will know what choice to make and find it easier to make because you know what matters more to you.

But again, this isn’t as easy as it sounds because most people in this situation will just think “What’s the harm in eating junk food once?”

And so they don’t delay gratification simply because they don’t understand nth order consequences

So really this step 1.

Understand Nth Order Consequences.

In life, you cannot start to make changes until you accept responsibility for your ignorance and make an effort to improve your understanding of both yourself and how the world works.

And with that, one of the most important things you need to understand is that every action has a reaction.

If you take the action of eating junk food - your body then has the reaction of having to process that junk food and absorb the crap.

Most people think it stops there - not realising that every reaction causes another reaction that causes another reaction and so on.

Let me use another graph.

 

If you eat junk food, the 1st order consequence is that your body has to digest the crap - every one knows this and is aware of this consequence.

But then there’s a 2nd order consequence that nobody thinks about.

The 2nd order consequence is that your body starts to crave the junk food because of the higher sugar content and all the additives.

The 3rd order consequence is that you then eat more junk food

The 4th order consequence is that you end up in calorie surplus

The 5th order consequence is that you get fat

That cycle keeps going and you get stuck in this repetitive cycle or pattern of behaviours which hold you back.

And it’s even worse than that because if you eat junk food, there are multiple pathways of reactions.

After your body digests the crap, your blood glucose levels spike but they then fall and you crash, ruining your mental performance and energy - and if you’re working on big goals and trying to build businesses, your work quality is going to suffer and hence your results are going to suffer.

You’re in this downward spiral that holds you back and since you justified giving into instant gratification in one area of your life, you’ll justify it in other areas of your life.

Every decision you make and every action you take has these nth order consequences where the reaction to your action creates another reaction.

If your initial action was a negative action that doesn’t benefit you, then all the reactions will be negative reactions.

If the action you take is positive, if you decide to turn your phone off when you’re meant to be doing important, focused work, then the reactions of that action will be positive and instead of holding you back, they will push you forward.

Simply by understanding this and understanding the potential impact of your actions and how they ripple out into your life, you are much more likely to delay gratification and make the right choices because you’ve removed your ignorance around this and you’ve improved the choice architecture of your decisions.

However, this doesn’t act in a vacuum and relies on you knowing what actions will benefit you.

Knowing What You Want.

You won’t delay gratification unless you have 2 pre-requisites;

• You know what the reward is

• You have a filter for your actions

The reason you need to know what the reward is, is simple.

Neitzsche said “he who has a why can bear almost any how”

Delaying gratification is the harder option than giving into instant gratification because delaying gratification will require you to either do work now or give up the opportunity to indulge in pleasure or “fun”.

The reward is the why that you have to bear the how - so you won’t delay gratification for a reward later if you don’t know what the reward is.

And the reward is achieving your goal, so without a goal, or an understanding of what your goal is, you don’t have a reason to delay the gratification, you don’t have the why to bear the how.

Goals are a necessity for delaying gratification because they ensure you meet both of the prerequisites.

Your goal is the reward, hence if you have a goal you know the reward and you know why you should delay gratification

But a goal also allows you to filter your actions.

Certain actions will move you toward your goal and will benefit you, whilst certain actions will move you away from your goal and be a detriment.

If you don’t have a goal, you don’t have a way to know for sure which actions benefit you and which don’t.

Goals give you a destination through which you can judge the efficacy of your actions and so without a goal that you are aware of, you have no way to tell the difference between good and bad actions and therefore, no way of knowing when to delay gratification.

And as humans, if you don’t have clarity on what to do, you will always choose the safest and easiest option - which will always be not delaying gratification.

So if you want a why to bear the how and if you want the ability to filter your actions and delay gratification, you need a goal.

Likely you already have a rough idea of what this goal is.

Whether it’s building your business or building your physique or whatever else - whatever it is, get clear on it, make it specific and write it down.

Remove The Temptations Of Instant Gratification

Once you’ve figured out your goal, ask yourself - what things do I do that stop me from getting there as effectively as possible?

Maybe you work with your phone beside you or you jump from business model to business model or you eat junk food all the time.

Maybe you go out and get hammered every Saturday night or spend your morning scrolling your phone.

Whatever it is, just make a list of all the things you do that could potentially hold you back from achieving your goal.

What you’re going to find is that all these things that you do that stop you from getting the thing you want are forms of instant gratification.

They are all full of pleasure now but empty of a reward later and the nth order consequences are all negatives.

But you do them because you subconsciously prioritise the pleasure they provide over the reward, your goal, that you want.

However, the vast majority of the time, the reason you subconsciously prioritised them is because you weren’t aware of 3 things;

1. The Nth order consequences of the actions

2. Your goal

3. The actions themselves

Most of the forms of instant gratification that you give into are mindless and you don’t even realise you’re doing them half the time, but now that you have gone through and listed them all out, you’re aware of them and the impact they’re having on your goals.

So now you can deprioritise them. You can realise that you doing these things gives you pleasure now but doesn’t give you any reward later - in fact, they make you feel like crap later.

After you finish spending the first 2 hours of your morning scrolling you feel terrible, you feel anxious and guilty, because deep down you know that isn’t what you should be doing.

What you need to do now is go through that list of things that holds you back and remove them.

Every time you give in to instant gratification, you have the opportunity to delay gratification.

Every time you pick up your phone when you’re meant to be working, you have the opportunity to not pick up your phone and continue working, delaying gratification.

But if you remove the source of instant gratification that you do, you don’t have the opportunity to give in to that instant gratification in that moment because you can’t do something if the thing you need to do it isn’t there.

So if you eat junk food, stop buying it - this way it’s not in your house.

If you work with your phone beside you, put it in another room when you’re working.

If you spend hours every day watching TV, take your TV down and put it in a bloody cupboard.

Because look, it doesn’t matter how disciplined you are - your willpower is finite and if your phone is beside you when you’re working, you will eventually pick it up.

If you have junk food in the house, you will eventually eat it.

So why not make delaying gratification as easy as possible for yourself and remove the temptations?

And while you do that build your damn discipline and your level of self-mastery to help you first remove the temptations but secondly, just not give in to them when they’re presented to you.

Because the better your level of self-mastery, the easier it will be to do the thing which you know you need to do.

If you want to achieve Self-Mastery, click here.

Being Aware And Asking Yourself - What Is The Right Thing Here? 

This is probably one of the easiest ways to ensure you delay gratification and yet, it’s the most simple.

Whether you know your goals and the nth order consequences of your actions or not, we all know, at least deep down, when we’re doing something we shouldn’t and when we’re not doing something that we should.

If you’re working and you pick up your phone, you know you shouldn’t be doing that.

If you decide to procrastinate and not even do the work, you know you shouldn’t be doing that.

Deep down, you know when you’re doing something beneficial and when you’re not, but the problem is that so many people go through life mindlessly, with no conscious thought of what they’re doing.

So one of the easiest and most effective ways to delay gratification is to stop going through life mindlessly in a blur.

To actually think about what you’re doing.

Like right now, you’re reading this email - be cognisant of that, be aware of what you’re actually doing and if this is the thing you know you should be doing.

If it’s not, turn off your damn phone and go do that thing.

If you stop going through life mindlessly doing things and start being conscious and living, you will be aware of the actions you take and the outcome of doing them and the Nth order consequences and so you’ll do the thing that’s right, you’ll delay gratification because you’re not going through life on auto-pilot, always taking the easiest path.

How many times have you gone through an entire day without consciously thinking through a decision and being aware precisely of what you’re doing - when you type on your phone are you aware that your thumbs are moving in this certain way to hit this certain button to convey this certain message or are you just on autopilot?

If you’re on autopilot for the majority of your day, you’ll never delay gratification because the autopilot takes the easiest route and that is the path of instant gratification.

But when you take actions consciously, taking the right action is the easiest thing to do because you know which action you should take and it is hard to go against what you know is right when you are consciously living life and not just living it on autopilot.

And this is even more true when you have a goal and you have a why to bear the how and you have filter to run your actions through.

If you go to pick up your phone, you can be aware that you’re doing it and stop yourself. You can put it down and go back to doing the thing you know you should be doing because you are aware of your actions, you’re aware of the consequences of those actions and you’re aware of how those actions will either move you away or toward the thing you want in life.

So be conscious and ask yourself as often as possible - what is the right thing to do here?

And trust me, you’ll know the answer.

- Ross

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