Try to learn to delay gratification

Delayed gratification is probably one of the most common concepts in contemporary success studies and chicken soup.

Many people will tell you: learn to delay gratification, cultivate the ability to delay gratification, so that you can become a person who is free from low-level interests and achieve higher achievements.

At the same time, they will also oppose delayed gratification to "instant gratification", telling you that instant gratification will only make you fall into endless entertainment carnival and addiction, constantly dragging you into the comfort zone, and only by learning to delay gratification and endure hardships can you jump out.

Is this really the case? Is "delayed gratification" really that important?

Today, I want to talk to you about this.

Let's start with the ins and outs of "delayed gratification."

In the 1960s, Dr. Walter Mischel of Stanford University did a well-known marshmallow experiment:

He locked a group of children in a small room, and each of them handed out a marshmallow and told them: Marshmallows can be eaten. But if you wait 15 minutes, you can get two marshmallows. If you can't resist the temptation and eat the sugar in your hand, you'll get nothing.

In more than a dozen years of follow-up studies, he found that the children who waited for the researchers to return performed better than the children who "ate the marshmallows" in the future of their lives — including relationships, SAT scores, classmate evaluations, and so on.

According to this, Dr. Walter Mischel believes that this is because the children who are waiting for the researchers to return have a strong ability called "delayed gratification." This ability allows them to resist the temptation of good food, so that they can better correct their own path and resist temptation and misdirection in the future of life.

So, what is the physiological basis for delayed gratification? In 1998, psychology giant Baumeister proposed the theory of "self-depletion". He believes that the essence of delayed gratification is a person's willpower. People with strong willpower are more likely to resist immediate temptations and do things for a longer time.

Further, Baumeister's theory of self-depletion holds that:

1) Willpower is a kind of "mental energy" that consumes a little bit every time you use it.

2) Its physiological basis is sugar. A glass of lemonade with added sugar can quickly and effectively replenish willpower.

3) It's like a muscle and can be strengthened by exercise. Train it regularly and you'll be able to improve your willpower.

This theory seems so succinct, so wonderful, and so much in line with our intuition. Therefore, after the theory of self-depletion was proposed, it immediately swept the world and was regarded as a guideline by countless people. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the most influential psychological theory of the early 21st century.

I think that many of the friends who are reading this article today have been using "delayed gratification" to demand themselves, or use it to educate their children. Is that right?

But is the theory of self-depletion really correct? Is "delayed gratification" really that important?

In fact, for nearly 10 years, this theory has been being questioned and scrutinized indiscriminately.

The first major question about delayed gratification was a 2012 university of Rochester experiment. The experiment found that changing a single variable would result in a completely different marshmallow experiment.

What variables? Trust in the environment and predictable outcomes. Experiments have found that if children are in a more stable and familiar environment, and they can be confident that the researchers will bring them a second sugar, the number of children who choose to "delay gratification" will increase greatly.

This experiment shakes the foundations of the marshmallow experiment, because the "delayed gratification" we have always advocated is probably just some kind of result based on trust in the world. It is most likely not the cause, but the effect.

In 2018, another well-known study again took a comprehensive look at marshmallow experiments (Watts et al., 2018) and found several not-so-optimistic results:

1) The ability to delay gratification that children show when they are 4 years old does have a certain correlation with their academic performance at the age of 15. But: This correlation was only half that of the marshmallow experiment, and the effect decreased by 2/3 after controlling for family background, early cognitive abilities, and environmental influences.

And, to be considered, there are some factors that are missing from this study that are not taken into account. Simplest: for example, the parents' own academic performance and cognitive skills level. Once these factors are taken into account, the effect of delayed gratification is bound to decline further, and it is likely to become negligible.

2) After the age of 15, there was little correlation between children's ability to delay gratification and the outcome of their behavior, and there was no statistical significance.

Why is there such a difference? One possible reason is that we know that inhibiting our impulse to do something is primarily controlled by the prefrontal cortex, which is constantly developing during adolescence. At an early age, most people's prefrontal cortex is still very imperfect, and after the teenage years, everyone basically develops almost the same, and there is no particularly big difference.

On the other hand, the study found that the effects of so-called "delayed gratification" are much lower than family background, early cognitive abilities, and environmental impacts. Among them, the environmental impact is the "trust in the world" that we talked about earlier, so what are the main influences of the first two items?

In simple terms, the first two are largely influenced by the parents themselves, and whether they can create a "passing line" environment for a child early in his or her development – which can greatly affect a child's brain development in early childhood.

In other words: whether a child is able to "delay gratification" is a consequence of how well his brain is developing, not the cause.

That is to say, whether the parents themselves are relatively good, and whether the children can grow "stress-free" and avoid affecting the brain development, are important factors that determine the future achievements of the children.

(More specifically, you can refer to this set of rules, which may subvert your three views, and I will not repeat them here.) ）

By the way, Baumeister's theory of self-depletion and its explanation of willpower have also been largely overturned in the last decade. To name a few:

In 2010, Dweck repeated Baumeister's experiment and found that when people believed that "willpower is unlimited," instead of showing self-depletion, they performed better on a series of tasks. This is also an important basis for her "growth thinking".

A series of studies in 2017 also corroborate this: people who believe that people with unlimited willpower have a higher subjective sense of well-being, are more likely to have the vitality to struggle, and at the same time perform better. (Savani & Job, 2017; Bernecker et al., 2017)

In short, we now generally think that there is no such thing as self-depletion, and that willpower is not the cause of "whether I can control myself", but the result of a series of other abilities and elements.

In summary, what conclusions can we draw?

The idea that delayed gratification can make a person better is probably wrong. Delayed gratification is most likely not the cause, but the effect.

What kind of result? There are two main aspects: one is trust in the environment and the outside world, and the other is relatively good cognitive ability.

In other words, children whose parents are better, who grow up well and are cared for enough, will generally have more outstanding achievements and will also show a stronger ability to "delay gratification".

The latter two are the result of the former, and they have no causal relationship themselves, but we have always mistakenly thought that they have a causal relationship.

This gives us a revelation: many times, our children's requirements and education methods may not be good, and may even be self-defeating.

For example, many parents focus on cultivating their children's ability to "delay gratification", but it is this process of cultivation that is likely to cause additional stress to the child, which in turn affects the child's happiness and brain development during growth – which is the greater factor that has a negative impact on the child.

A few simple examples:

Do you always put too much pressure on your child to live in the inner volume of your chase?

Have you overly suppressed your children's needs for entertainment and leisure, thinking that none of this matters?

Are you always procrastinating and delaying your commitment to your child, leaving him full of expectations and disappointments again and again?

Are you always ignoring your child's demands and expectations, constantly telling him that "you will understand when you grow up"?

……

These behaviors, on the surface, are all for the good of the child, causing him to give up immediate small profits for the sake of longer-term benefits – but they are likely to in turn increase the child's stress and thus cause worse effects.

You know, the most critical factor affecting brain development is the pressure of growing up. Children who grow up under stress will have their prefrontal lobes and limbic systems affected, resulting in poor cognitive and executive abilities, as well as a greater inability to "control themselves" and prone to anxiety, depression, and negative emotions.

Similarly, children who grow up in this way are likely to lose trust in the world and are more likely to fall into the cycle of excessive doubt, over-conservatism, and difficulty in acting.

Therefore, many children who grow up in this kind of strict education may have some "retaliatory" and "compensatory" behaviors in adulthood, and they are more likely to live in the fears, desires and shadows of childhood.

Therefore, my personal view has always been: do not advocate letting the child fall into excessive "inner volume", try to give him more space and freedom as the principle, give full play to his nature to explore the world, and let him grow up in a happier, more relaxed, and free environment - this may be the best environment that parents can create for their children.

It may be more important for the child to grow in perceptible love and to develop his ability to love the world.

Of course, this is only a personal opinion and is for reference only. I also understand that parents are worried about their children now, so this question is debatable. However, this article is not a parenting article, so stop here for the time being.

Back to ourselves.

If "delayed gratification" is not a competency that needs to be pursued and cultivated, then what should we do? Is it necessary to pursue "instant gratification"?

Of course not. In fact, I've mentioned "long-term feedback" in many of my articles: we need to do more things that bring long-term feedback and do less that only brings immediate feedback.

So, what is the difference between the two?

Delaying gratification is to postpone the returns that should have been received, telling myself: I don't get these returns now, but I will always get them in the future, so I have to control myself, suppress myself, and survive this time.

It is essentially a suppression of desires and needs, motivating oneself with future rewards.

Long-term feedback is to extend the time of return, share it in the whole process of achieving the goal, and learn to get pleasure from the process, and see the spiritual satisfaction and sense of achievement as a reward.

It does not suppress your desires and needs, but by changing your mindset, in a more flexible and strategic way, it constantly injects energy and cheers you up as you go to your goals.

Let's take an analogy.

For example, if you start a startup, the first few years must have been very hard, but you convince yourself that it will be good to wait for this period of time, and then there will be a return - this is delayed gratification.

For example, if you start a startup, the first few years were very hard, but every time you overcome a difficulty, you can feel a full sense of accomplishment; every step up, you feel one step closer to the goal, so you continue to get feedback and motivation from it - this is long-term feedback.

So, what is the biggest problem with delayed gratification? It will constantly pile up your expectations for future rewards. It is equivalent to using the "repression" and "tolerance" in the process in exchange for the "rich return" of the result.

Once this expectation is too high, when you actually get it, you will get less reward from it - because we know that the reward mechanism of the brain is the difference between the actual reward and the expectation, not the actual reward itself.

Further, when you don't get the lucrative returns you expect, it's easy to fall into disappointment and frustration. You will feel: So what am I doing all this time? Is my suffering in vain?

So, I've always said that we need to develop the habit of long-term feedback, to be able to grow and overcome difficulties to get a sense of accomplishment and happiness – not to pursue "delayed gratification."

Because, there is no point in suffering. We don't have to "suppress" or "endure" at any stage of our lives in vain, which serves no purpose but to create unforgettable memories for us.

So, if we're going to let go of the "delayed gratification" mindset, what good way of thinking can help us build "long-term feedback"?

One of the most important ways of thinking is to find the goal.

This sentence may be cliché, but the goal is extremely important to the meaning of people, and it is very easy to be ignored. Like what:

People with a stronger sense of purpose tend to have a higher subjective sense of well-being and are more likely to recover from a variety of setbacks and failures. (Bronk et al., 2009)

On a 1-7 scale, for every 1 point increase in the sense of purpose, the mortality rate can be reduced by 12%. (Hill and Turiano, 2014)

A stronger sense of purpose also has a strong correlation with having a higher social status and economic status. (Hill et al., 2020)

This is another difference between long-term feedback and delayed gratification. Delayed gratification focuses on the benefits, on ending the process as quickly as possible to get the expected returns, while long-term feedback looks at the goal, and you will clearly know that the process itself is meaningful, it is an integral part of the goal, and every time you go, you are one step closer to the goal.

Then, every action you take in the process, and every tiny feedback you get after the action, will give you the motivation to get closer to the goals you set.

But delayed gratification doesn't give you that motivation, you can only rely on future outcomes, on the outcome's attraction to you – hence the need for so-called "willpower" to support.

Therefore, many people always pursue "willpower" and pursue "self-discipline", which is actually the inversion of the cart before the horse:

It is not because you have willpower, you are self-disciplined enough, you will succeed; but because you have a big enough goal, you can get feedback in the process of moving toward the goal, then your action process is manifested, is "willpower".

So, how do you find a goal that works for you?

An effective way of thinking is to take your eyes off yourself, to focus on the world outside of you, to think:

What do you want to change the world, and what do you want the world to be different because of you?

Why? Because: a good goal must meet two conditions:

On the one hand, you have to have a big enough picture: you have to know clearly what your goal can bring to the world, and who may change because of you when you achieve that goal.

The foothold of this is meaning. Only a grand enough picture can support your sense of value and meaning, so that you can experience the value of your own existence.

Simply "making myself better" itself will not reflect the value and meaning of your existence in this world.

On the other hand, the goal should be able to fit with you. In the process of striving for and moving forward for the goal, you can exert your talents and strengths, enjoy the pleasure of overcoming difficulties, and feel that you are constantly growing.

This will help you get feedback and make you feel that "my efforts to achieve my goals are not in vain." Even if the result may not be satisfactory, the process can give me enough rewards.

So I often say: if you have the conditions, you might as well raise your head, get out of the circle and life pattern that you are familiar with, look at the world, see what the world is like, what kinds of people there are, see how the system of the world works, how people live.

Try to find something that matches your abilities and interests and can bring change and help to the world, even if it only helps a small number of people.

In this process, use your abilities, feel your own growth, and find a sense of accomplishment and happiness to "do one thing".

This is where the higher level of "satisfaction" lies.