The Future You: Why Delayed Gratification is a Superpower

Delayed Gratification is a superpower across all parts of life. Understanding how and why it works is important, because it will improve every decision you make.

Moving your mindset from instant to delayed gratification is simple, but not easy. It requires the courage to deviate from the crowd and the commitment to build a better life. To help demystify delayed gratification, this article will explore the concept, how it applies to daily decisions and how you can change your thinking to unlock this way of thinking.

Let’s begin with an experiment.

Marshmallows

In 1972, the psychologist Walter Mischel ran an experiment at Stanford University where nursery children were offered a choice between one, immediate marshmallow as a reward, or two marshmallows if they waited fifteen minutes. The results were quite evenly split – some preferred the sweet immediately, others preferred to wait for the double reward.

Tracking these children over several years, the researchers observed a direct link between the tendency for delayed gratification and the children’s life outcomes, as measured by educational attainment, physical health and other measures.

The implication was clear – that delayed gratification is a predictive power for success. Since then, variations on the original study have come to the same conclusion.

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Delayed gratification is important beyond the realms of marshmallows. We see it everywhere. It could be in delaying your social media dopamine hit and reading a book instead. Or it could be in saving for retirement rather than spending today.

The key component that links together these examples is the ability to think beyond what you want in the present, and towards what you will want in the future. To explore this, let’s consider a new concept.

The Future You

Those who fall into the trap of instant gratification often deride long-term thinking. They will say that the future is uncertain, so why worry about it now. Taken with balance, there is some truth to these views. But only some.

To harness the power of delayed gratification, think outside your immediate self. The ‘you of today’ doesn’t know what the future will hold in ten years – because you can’t look forwards with clarity. But the ‘future you’ in ten years’ time will be able to see both that future ten years away and today’s present. So ask yourself – ‘how would the future me advise the present me?’

While the instant gratification addict may justify scoffing the next doughnut because they don’t know if the sun will rise tomorrow, you can be quite sure that the diabetes-ridden 70-year-old version of them will regret the doughnuts, and advise the ‘present’ version to change their ways.

Would the ‘future you’ regret the ‘present you’ saving enough for retirement? Unlikely. But you can picture the future you very upset if the present you saved nothing and caused financial difficulties.

Using the concept of the ‘future you’ helps your decisions about the trade-off between instant and delayed gratification. It puts you beyond the position of the person today thinking about the vague concept of the future, and into the head of the person in the future, looking back at the reality of the choices you make today.

That’s a powerful framework from which to make decisions.

Why We Struggle

This all sounds sensible. But the reality is that very few of us operate like a rational machine. And there are very good reasons why we struggle.

From an evolutionary standpoint, we are primed to think about the present. It’s not that long ago (on the scale of human history) that we needed to think about the here and now before anything else. The need for food, the immediacy of tribal war, the urge to produce a large family – these are all evolutionary factors which drive decisions with a short-term time horizon. And we needed to think about them – without that short-term thinking, we wouldn’t have survived.

The world has changed, but our evolutionary psyche has not, so we are wired to think short-term in a world where it’s now long-term thinking that carries the greatest rewards.

There are other reasons why it’s tough. Most of us lack accountability partners who hold us to our own goals. In moments of reflection, we think rationally – but then we struggle to translate those rational thoughts into consistent daily actions over time. Having someone to remind you of your long-term goals is important – but most of us don’t have that.

This is key. Almost everyone who understands delayed gratification wants to live life that way, but very few people actually do it in practice. The short-term temptations of an instant gratification world get in the way…

It’s More Than 2:1

In the marshmallow test, the delayed gratification ratio was 2:1 – you would gain two marshmallows for every one that you sacrificed up front.

But with money, the ratio is larger – it can be 10:1. If you invested £1,000 today, earning a return of 7% per year (the average stock market return), you would have £10,000 after 35 years. Most of us will hope to be alive in 35 years – this is a realistic time frame.

From today’s standpoint 35 years seems a long time away. But it will come around. And at that point, the ‘future you’ will look back and ask you why you didn’t save and invest. Or it will thank you for doing so. There are few decisions in life where the upside for consistently doing something small is so life-changing. But long-term investing in the stock market is one such area.

You can’t become a miser, but applying the principle of delayed gratification to money will change your life in more ways than you can imagine.

The Practical Next Steps

At this stage, you might ask: ‘What can I do, in practical terms?’

The basic answer is to be more aware of your decision-making, and ensure harmony between your daily choices and your long-term goals.

Celebrate the small wins, where you make a conscious effort to delay gratification. Reduce the triggers of instant gratification. And when it comes to money, invest today to help the Future You. Rather than Buy Now, Pay Later, choose to Invest Now, Buy Later.

Armed with this toolkit, you’ll quickly find out just how useful the concept of delayed gratification can be, for money and for life. Be conscious of what’s truly important, and make this superpower work for you.