I love instant gratification - but wish I could give it up

Do you do things for the long term, or just for right now?

Can you resist? Photo by Fahim mohammed on Unsplash

As I lay in bed yesterday morning, having my child-free woman’s regular Saturday morning lie in until at least, oh, 11am, I pondered my life’s balance.

I love newness. We all do - fashion exists partly because of our desire for novelty.

Ordering things on Amazon is a thrill, and when we get a notification that our item is on its way, we track the little motorbike on the map as it heads towards our location, excitedly opening the door (the delivery person rang my door at 9.57am yesterday – so inconsiderate – I had to get out of bed early!) and ripping open the parcel joyfully.

Then we leave its contents on the floor for the rest of the day.

Lying diagonally in bed yesterday morning, I watched a video of one of my nephews opening Christmas presents when he was three. He adored the umbrella my mother had given him, but almost as soon as he’d identified the item, he was off under the tree looking for the next gift. I think we continue to do this as grown-ups, but we learn to do it in a more considered way.

There’s a famous experiment that tried to understand our desire for rewards and our ability to wait for them that I often think about, which I call ‘wait for the marshmallow’.

It’s a 1970 experiment by Stanford University where young children were asked to sit in a room alone with a sweet treat such as a marshmallow on the table in front of them. If they could wait 15 minutes without eating the treat, they would receive another, they were told. If they ate it before the allotted time, they would not.

Subsequent studies showed the children who waited to eat the marshmallow did better in life than those who did not.

I was very well-behaved as a child (apart from the time my mother gave me liver for supper) and would probably have waited for the marshmallow if I’d been part of this experiment. When I went to university, I finally rebelled, buying and eating whole packets of custard creams on a whim.

Now I love instant gratification. A dear friend sent me some delicious caramel-centred chocolate bears this week. There were four, and there was absolutely no way I was going to eat them on four separate occasions – no, I wolfed them all down on the spot.

It’s not just chocolate I consume straightaway. As a journalist, I have to look for the new stuff. What’s next? I constantly ask people I interview.

Why are we writing this now? is the question editors ask about things I pitch. And, if we can’t ‘move the story on,’ we’re looking for the next new thing.

I thrive on this constant, caramel bear stuff: I rarely get bored.

Yet as a midlife grownup, I’ve realised my desire for instant gratification (whether that be via chocolate treats or Instagram hits) needs to be tempered: it is not a long-term life strategy, so I am trying to re-learn how to wait for the marshmallow.

It’s a struggle we all have - our brains are wired that way. Sweet treats like fruit used to be rare and early humans’ brains created a response that felt very pleasurable.

Now we’re surrounded by sweets so we can get that sugar hit whenever we like - but as our brains haven’t moved on much, they’re hard to resist. It’s the same with new information, as executive coach Ed Batista explained in a Harvard Business Review article in 2014.

I’ve noticed that clients’ finances are tighter this year, and I’m sure ChatGPT also has a role in work being a little quieter (by the way, I think generative AI can be a great tool in some ways, but it won’t replace real journalism - and most of my editorial clients ban writers from using it).

So, I have to find a balance between hustling for now (eat the tasty work/life/food snacks as soon as they’re offered!) and investing in life for the longer term (eat my greens, stop looking at my phone so much, exercise, learn new skills).

The fitness personality Joe Wicks talks about his ‘overnight success’ taking 10 years. Ten years of standing outside a railway station in south London handing out flyers for group personal training in the park, finding no-one showed up to his sessions, and keeping going regardless.

Joe didn’t seem to expect instant gratification, or success, and years of keeping going helped grow his appeal, along with honesty about his difficult childhood, and being a decent human being (I interviewed him during lockdown and he was generous with his time and words).

I think I need to see my version of keeping going (The Honesty Box being a big part of that) as an investment for the long-term. I don’t always have hits, new followers and comments, but I’m sticking with it, and you.

What we do now is going to help us thrive (hopefully) in the coming years. What does that mean for you? I’m not yet sure what that means for me.

Maybe I take classes in psychology, perhaps I do some kind of AI prompt-training course or start making smartphone videos. It’s all there for the taking - I just need to stick at it.

Now, who’s got some of those caramel bears?

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