Delayed Gratification

by Madeleine Kando

I am not very good at delayed gratification. When I wake up in the morning, half dead, I cannot wait for my first cup of coffee. If the gratification of caffeine rushing through my veins gets delayed, I become intolerable to the people around me.

But sometimes delayed gratification pays off. A man yelled at me in the therapy pool yesterday, because I had positioned myself in his ‘lane’ (how you can swim laps in a therapy pool the size of a large bathtub is beyond me). He became loud and verbally abusive and my instinct was to kick him in the you know what. But I called the manager and revel in the knowledge that this man will pay for his crime by being officially reprimanded. Delaying my gratification will make my revenge taste that much sweeter.

However, when it comes to one of our shower cells, my capacity for delaying gratification knows no limits. It needs so much work that it looks like a bomb exploded in it. My husband and I talk a lot about our shower cell project. Every month or so we go over the details of the soon to be installed tiles, the color of the curtain, etc. Discussing our new non-existent shower has given us great satisfaction for the past five years. So why not just delay indefinitely and forget about the gratification? This way it doesn’t cost us a penny.

Do you suppose some climates are more conducive to a culture of delayed gratification than others? For people who live in a gorgeous, warm place with palm trees, delicious fruits and vegetables growing abundantly and beautiful, half naked girls strolling down the pristine beaches, delaying gratification doesn't make sense. Why would they want to delay the gratification of eating, drinking and having sex all day?

Compare that to where I live in New England. As I write this I am looking out on my backyard where the squirrels are scrambling to get a grip on the huge piles of snow. It is so cold that I don’t go outside unless it is an absolute emergency. I am delaying gratification on almost everything right now. I cannot go for walks, so I write. I cannot relax in the sun, so I clean the house. I cannot meet my friends for coffee, so I do my bookkeeping instead. Does delaying pleasure make you work harder? Is there a hidden advantage to spending my life in this frozen inferno?

Many studies have been conducted on the subject of delayed gratification. It’s tied in to things like ‘temporal myopia’ which, in turn, leads to ‘hyperbolic discounting’. ‘Temporal myopia’, means that clarity decreases the further things are in the future. People's view of global warming is a good example. Because we are myopic to future events, we discount their importance in the present, which is called ‘Hyperbolic discounting’.

In the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (1972), four year old children were offered a marshmallow and told that if they waited fifteen minutes without eating it, they would get another one. Eighty percent of the children ate their marshmallow, but the twenty percent that waited turned out to be more successful in adult life.

Ah, but were they happier? Did they ever regret having missed the opportunity to feel that wonderful sense of instant gratification?

I am sure hyperbolic discounting is just as useful as delayed gratification. There is a risk attached to all that waiting. If you don’t survive today there is not much point to the delay, is there? Someone else will be eating your marshmallows and you'll be cursing yourself for eternity. leave comment here