RESEARCH SHOWS that there’s a strong relationship between delayed gratification and success. This goes counter to popular belief. We like to think that emotional intelligence or decision-making lead to a successful life. These skills, however, are not defining metrics of how well you do in life.
In this article, I discuss how the ability to overcome instant gratification sets you apart from others. We’ll go over the famous marshmallow experiment, and dive deep into the roots of human behavior to explain why controlling our impulses is so significant when it comes to achievement.
Key Takeaways
- We must learn to resist the urge of an immediate reward in anticipation that there will be a greater reward later.
- Young children who can put off immediate gratification do better in several areas of life, such as academics and overall well-being.
- The decisions we make, the actions we take, and the habits we indulge in are all motivated by either avoiding pain or seeking pleasure.
- There are many effective personal traits of successful people, but the perhaps most important one is delayed gratification.
Why We Struggle With Impulse Control
We struggle to delay gratification largely because companies take advantage of our primitive nature. Facebook satisfies our innate desire for belonging. McDonald’s uses ingredients like salt, sugar, and fat—substances that are considered addictive because they were difficult to get for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Michael Moss, author of the eye-opening book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, reveals shocking details about the extent to which companies will go to increase profits:
“Some of the largest companies are now using brain scans to study how we react neurologically to certain foods, especially to sugar. They’ve discovered that the brain lights up for sugar the same way it does for cocaine.”
It’s no coincidence that the most successful businesses offer experiences that reward the oldest areas of the brain. Social media, video games, streaming services, fast food, tobacco, the list goes on.
The Difference Between Instant and Delayed Gratification
We have all heard the term instant gratification, but not many are familiar with the term delayed gratification. Here are the definitions to clear things up:
- Instant Gratification: The desire to experience pleasure without delay.
- Delayed Gratification: The desire to delay pleasure in anticipation of a greater reward later.
Considering how easy it is to feel stimulated, it is no surprise that we have grown custom to instant gratification. We want to experience pleasure or fulfillment without delay or deferment. When we want something, we want it now.
While this way of thinking has its uses, it is detrimental to success. We need time to achieve goals, especially big ones. Large accomplishments involve work that doesn’t pay off for months, if not years.
The solution? We must learn to resist the urge of an immediate reward in anticipation that there will be a greater reward later. Put different, we must acquire the skill of delayed gratification.
If this is something you’d like to learn more about, I recommend checking out these books:
- The Power of Self-Discipline: 5-Minute Exercises to Build Self-Control, Good Habits, and Keep Going When You Want to Give Up by Peter Hollins
- Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
- The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits by Judson Brewer
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
- The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal
The Relationship Between Delayed Gratification and Success
A series of experiments in the 1960s changed the way we look at self-control.
The experiment, led by Stanford University professor Walter Mischel, was made up of a sample size of over 92 children between ages 3 and 5 years old.1 The research team wanted to test self-control in children, and understand if a child’s ability to delay pleasure leads to later success in life.
The test began by bringing each child into a private room, clear of distractions, and placing a marshmallow on an empty table. Next, the team instructed them to sit in a chair by the table and told them they could eat the marshmallow.
However, there was a twist. The researcher said that if they could wait 15 minutes without eating the single marshmallow, they would be rewarded with a second one later. The instructions were clear: Get a small treat now or a larger one later.
As you might expect, only a few children passed the test. Most of them gave in within a few minutes. This part of the study was not groundbreaking by any means. That only a few children would resist the temptation was to be expected. The interesting part came decades later.
The Results of the Delayed Gratification Study
The lead researcher and his team followed up with each child for over 40 years. The findings of these future studies were quite interesting.
Young children who put off immediate gratification did better in several areas of life, such as academics and overall well-being. Recent studies show that the children’s delay of gratification also correlated with…2 3 4
- Higher SAT scores
- Superior school performance
- Less risk of developing a substance use disorder
- Enhanced sense of rationality and judgement
- Improved cognitive and social skills
- Healthier response to frustration and stress
The Stanford Marshmallow study showed that the children who delayed pleasure had better academic achievement, cognitive abilities, social skills, mental health, overall well-being.
Behavior Is Driven by Pain and Pleasure
Although the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is an important piece of psychological science, it is just one piece of data in the complex puzzle of human behavior.
The nature of our behavior is made up of many intricate parts. We would be naïve to base the quality of our future on some decisions made by 4-year-old children in their preschool years. After all, 15 minutes is a long time to wait for a child!
The study, however, proves a point: Delay gratification and you do better in life.
You have to understand that human behavior is driven by pain or pleasure. This is known as the pleasure principle. The decisions we make, the actions we take, and the habits we indulge in are all motivated by either avoiding pain or seeking pleasure.
Though human behavior is complex, everything we do is motivated by the pleasure principle. The children who chose immediate gratification wanted to avoid the pain of waiting for the second marshmallow. The delayed gratification group was motivated by the pleasure of getting a second marshmallow later on. Those who gave in to the pain of waiting would, as it turned out in the study, enjoy a lower qualify of life.
What Are Some Examples of Delayed Gratification?
Achievements in any field require you to stay long-term oriented. A startup turns into a profitable business after years of hard work. Similarly, an amateur athlete becomes a professional after years of honing their skills.
This is not just true for large-scale success, but also for accomplishments in everyday life. Here are a few examples…
- Finances: Delay the gratification of spending your money and invest in stocks, bonds, retirement funds, or other assets.
- Health: Delay the gratification of eating a bag of chips at night and prepare a healthy vegetable snack ahead of time.
- Education: Delay the gratification of scrolling through social media and read a book on self-improvement or popular psychology.
Doing any of the above means you must say “no” to something that delivers a quick reward and say “yes” to something that brings a later, more satisfying reward. Show up a second time after you delay a behavior. The best thing you can do is to find enjoyment in actions that do not deliver quick results.
How to Become Better at Delaying Gratification
In a time where distractions are ever so present, delaying gratification does not come easy. The lure of Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon can be tough to resist. How can you stay disciplined when businesses are fighting for your precious attention?
To answer this question, I’d like to provide you with some delayed gratification exercises.
Step 1: Know What You Are After
Success is what everyone strives for, but not what everyone achieves. To improve your odds, you must first identify your intentions. A good place to start is by extracting a goal from your present interests:
- Owning material items and money.
- Reaching a state of happiness.
- Maintaining physical health.
- Influencing people positively.
- Learning or discovering new things.
- Using time well and being productive.
- Building relationships and making friends.
- Reaching success in business and jobs.
Where do you want to be in 5 or 10 years from now? What do you believe is your “social responsibility” or purpose in life? Put your goal in writing and commit to it. Once you’ve decided what you’re after, the real work begins.
Step 2: Define Your Ambitions
You may already know your ambitions, but chances are, you haven’t defined them yet. SMART is a well-established goal-setting tool that paints a clear picture of the small steps that lie ahead. While there are many interpretations of the acronym, the most common one is that a goal should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
- Specific: Define and identify your outcomes clearly.
- Measurable: Express your goal as a quantity.
- Achievable: Establish realistic expectations for yourself.
- Relevant: Connect the goal with your personal values.
- Time-bound: Create and meet self-imposed deadlines.
Step 3: Create a System
It’s easy to set goals but difficult to implement systems. Although goal setting is important, problems arise when you spend too much time pondering about your success and not enough time designing your systems.
Your system is how you break down your actions and how often you practice. Divide your goal into manageable chunks and be clear of what it takes to make progress. Know what you want to accomplish every day and you will see results.
Step 4: Practice, Practice, Practice
Delaying pleasure is a skill that leads to better outcomes. But like any skill, you learn by doing. When you have to choose between instant and delayed pleasure, what it comes down to is your willpower.
A temptation can come in many forms, whether it is a marshmallow, cigarette, or clothing sale. Whenever you feel the pull of any desire, pause, and ask yourself, “Does this action agree with my long term goals or does it satisfy an immediate need?” The more you ask yourself the question, the better you get at answering it.
Next Time, Delay the Reward
We have individual differences and come from different cultures. We grow up in a unique home environment and with a different household income than our peers. But despite different personalities, we can all work on our self-control skills.
You live in a world where products and services deliver instant relief. Quick rewards are everywhere you look, making it challenging to develop impulse control.
There are many effective personal traits of successful people, but the perhaps most important one is delayed gratification. A short delay can be difficult, but it is a decision that leads to success almost every time.
The Marshmallow Experiment and its supporting studies show that when children delay gratification, they develop better cognitive skills. Look at typical day-to-day tasks and you see delayed rewards are not just beneficial for young people, but for people of all ages.
The good news is that you can use delayed gratification to achieve your long-term goals. The practice is the same across the board: Know what you’re after, define your ambitions, create a system, and substitute a small reward for a later and better reward, over and over again.
References
- Mischel, W, et al. “Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 204-18, doi:10.1037/h0032198.
- Mischel, W, et al. “Delay of gratification in children.” Science Journal, vol. 244, no. 4907, May 1989, pp. 933-38, doi:10.1126/science.2658056.
- Mischel, W, et al. “The nature of adolescent competencies predicted by preschool delay of gratification.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 54, no. 4, Apr. 1988, pp. 687-96, doi:10.1037//0022-3514.54.4.687.
- Mischel, W, and Y Shoda. “Predicting Adolescent Cognitive and Self-Regulatory Competencies From Preschool Delay of Gratification: Identifying Diagnostic Conditions.” Developmental Psychology, vol. 26, no. 6, Nov. 1990, pp. 978-86, doi:10.1037/0012-1649.26.6.978.