How to Work for Long Term Goals If You Hate Delaying Gratification
Why Delayed Gratification Is Not a Suitable Strategy

For millennia, humans lived from moment to moment. We had to continually think about how to get food, avoid predators, and find shelter. While our world is very different from our ancestors’, experts showed that our brains didn’t change much compared to early humans. We still love and seek immediately rewarding actions. Eating sweets, gossiping, and hearing stories, are all integral parts of who we are.

By delaying instant gratification, you wage a losing battle between your homo-sapiens instincts and your modern aspirations. Yet today, you do most of what you do not to get immediate gratification, but rather to achieve something or be someone later on. Building a successful startup, investing money, or training to be fit, have no seemingly instant rewards.

This contrast between modern success habits and deeply-rooted tendencies begs the question: “is it possible to make long term oriented work immediately satisfying?” James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, answers this question best. He says:

“What is immediately rewarded is often repeated.”

What he means is this: if a habit gives you a dopamine hit, you’re more likely to do it again and again. Otherwise, you’ll have no reasons to keep doing what you’re doing.

While gratification from indulging in sweets or checking social media is not beneficial, a feeling of joy right after important work can be crucial in keeping you excited. At the same time, the long term rewards pile up in the background.

Instead of delaying gratification, a better strategy is to add a bit of fun and excitement to your work while slowly moving forward. This way, you won’t need to delay anything. Your brain will process hard work as if it’s eating ice cream. Here are three tactics to make difficult and critical tasks more fun to do.
['Younes Henni']
['Education', 'Productivity', 'Motivation', 'Life', 'Self Improvement']