Instant vs Delayed Gratification

Is there something more important that you should be engaged in currently and yet here you are hovering over some random stuff? If so, then you’re not alone. Most of us find ourselves in such a state where short term enjoyable activities take over long term goals. Each of us suffers from this habit of procrastinating things until they cant be delayed any longer. But have you ever thought why this happens? Why is it so hard to focus on our long term goals when their advantage is obvious and we know for sure that short term pleasures would hamper them? The answer lies in the fact that instant gratification often over weighs delayed gratification.

Instant gratification

Instant gratification is based on the fact that we desire immediate pleasure. This is governed by the pleasure principle which is a psychological phenomenon in which we tend to reach for immediate benefits rather than wait for achieving something more. Our life is full of scenarios where we often sideline the main goal to seek instant pleasure.

• Many times we plan to follow a certain diet to lose weight but often tend to deviate from the track as our brain wants to have more delicious food to gain instant satisfaction rather than waiting for enough time to experience the joy of weight loss.
• People suffer from not getting up on time as snoozing the alarm gives tremendous instant joy which might occur at the cost of delay in reaching the workplace/school etc.
• Temptation to go out for a party rather than getting a good night’s sleep is also proof that we desire instant pleasure.
• It’s a common trend among the millennials to buy products which require high interest loans rather than waiting for some years to buy the same thing without loans.
• Often people release stress by indulging in smoking and drinking which gives immense short term pleasure.

Delayed gratification

Delayed gratification is the ability to know to delay instant pleasure to fulfill a more important and rewarding goal. This is a necessary skill required for long term growth and many studies have shown that those who have the ability to delay gratification, are quite successful in life.

• Working out to get lean requires the ability to give up your daily food habits for a better future.
• Delaying social gatherings and instead studying for important exams helps in achieving long term goals.
• Working hard to save for retirement also requires one to be able to give up on instant pleasures and focus more on future goals.

Why is it so easy to delay things?

It so happens that procrastination rules over our lives. It is so with the brain that it values instant pleasure more over delayed one. When one makes some plan for oneself like setting a goal to lose weight, one usually envisions oneself in the future for how good one would be and this makes the brain see the value in taking necessary actions to achieve it. However when we begin to implement it, we are no longer in the future. We need to make an instant decision and thus we tend to like instant gratification that we would get by eating some tasty snack rather than holding on to it for better future returns. In other words, the brain values long-term benefits when they are in the future, but it values immediate gratification when it comes to the present moment. Some other reasons why we prefer instant gratification are:

• Desire to avoid delay
• Uncertainty about future
• Lack of ability to envision future
• Low cognitive capacity
• High impulsiveness

How to overcome this desire?

Giving up the temptation for instant pleasure is no small task as if it would be, we all would have been pretty healthy with a huge bank balance. But some of the measures which can be adapted are:

• Before taking any action for instant pleasure, consider how you would feel in future. Will you be happy recalling what you did for instant pleasure or not? If not this realisation would let the temptation fade away.
• One could always plan beforehand to avoid any temptation. For example, if we are on a diet and we go out, what we can do is to carry minimal cash to avoid spending on food which would hamper our diet.
• Since we know that we crave for instant pleasure, we can break our long term goals into smaller goals. Setting a reward after completion of such goals can help us a lot to achieve the main goal.

The Marshmallow Study

This Stanford study was done to correlate the ability of delaying gratification with success achieved in life. In this hundreds of children were tested in their early ages (4–5) for the ability of delaying gratification.

Children were taken in a room and a marshmallow was placed in front of them. They were told if they could resist the temptation of eating it before the person returns back in the room, they would be awarded with another marshmallow. So the deal was “one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later”. Some of the children ate it right away, others a bit later and some managed to wait for the person to come back.

As the children grew, researchers conducted experiments on them which revealed that those who were able to delay gratification, had done well in terms of study, health, social skills and much more. Years later they conducted experiments again on them and it was found that those who could wait for the second marshmallow were successful in their respective fields. Thus it is rightly said:

Success usually comes down to choosing the pain of discipline over the ease of distraction. And that’s exactly what delayed gratification is all about.