The Art of Delayed Gratification
A healthy body, clear mind, loving relationship, & true wealth lies in your ability to delay gratification.
The good news?
Delayed gratification is like a muscle - you can train it to be stronger.
The bad news?
You can’t experience what you delay today.
This raises the questions as to why some people seem to be better at developing the habits to achieve their desired outcomes relative to others.
What’s their secret?
They increase their perceived value of delayed gratification so it’s price is worth paying.
You need a dream outcome. The why behind your actions.
If you’re not living your life the way you want to, you don’t have a vision that’s more compelling than the extraordinarily gratifying short-term benefits you receive from your bad habits.
You need a story that you can tell yourself that’s deeply thought through and personal to you that gives you reason to not participate solely in ineffective short-term actions.
One form of storytelling you can rely on is from Tim Ferriss who shares his “recipe for avoiding self-destruction” in his famous Ted Talk called fear-setting.
Fear-setting rests on practicing misfortune and visualizing the negative as a secondary forcing-function for aligned action with good habits.
Imagine if you lose your job, become sick or disabled, someone close to you dies, or you lose half your wealth to a poor decision.
What could you do to prevent this fear, or at least, decrease the likelihood that this happens?
Let this imagery run tangential to your dream outcome when things get tough.
Just as a north star helps guide you, what roads not to take are just as valuable as the right path.
Alex Hormozi has a framework he utilizes to craft a story to make delayed gratification easier:
Increase the perceived likelihood of achievement → Eliminate external factors holding you back
One underrated skill is turning discipline into consistency. Discipline ensures you stay on track. Consistency ensures you make progress.
Decrease perceived time delay → reduce the time to achieve what you want
Yes, building wealth takes time but if you’re only looking into the future you’re missing that it’s the journey not the destination that yields your dream outcome.
Decrease perceived effort & sacrifice → reduce frictions to making these decisions
Lower the bar. Make your first action so easy you can’t say no.
Increase the perceived likelihood of achievement
“A goal without a plan is just a wish”
What good is delaying an experience if you don’t know when you'll experience it next?
Without a guarantee your plan to delay gratification falters under the slightest stress.
A goal of financial independence means saving more money. Although, saving and hoping for the best creates little conviction when tempted by the constant hum for endless consumption.
You must create certainty.
What do I need to save to make work optional by X year?
Saving $10,000/yr for 40 years growing at 7.1%/yr is just over $2,000,000. Using Wiliam Bengen safe withdrawal rate rule of 4%. This is $80,000/yr (pre-tax).
Adjust this to whatever is needed relative to you. Here’s a future value calculator to play around with on your own.
Decrease the perceived time and delay
“There is no elevator to success, you must take the stairs”
I’d love to wave a magic wand for superior health, wealth, & loving relationships but life doesn’t work like that.
But we’re being trained to think it does –
Amazon shipping in < 2 days
Use of credit to buy things we can’t afford
Food we don’t have to cook (& can have delivered), etc.
This is why people will pay $25,000 for liposuction but won’t pay $60 for a gym membership.
You receive your dream outcome after a few effortless hours – Magic.
The magic shortcut to any level of success is that there is no magic shortcut to any level of success.
To combat the battle of extended effort, you need to shift your perspective to appreciate the benefits you discover along the way:
Increased discipline
Increased peace of mind
Increased confidence
Increased compassion
Increased optimism
Increased sense of freedom
Your dream outcome is the car, the benefits you discover along the way is the gas.
What’s tough today becomes easy tomorrow.
Decrease the perceived effort and sacrifice
Saving money is a sacrifice to consume less today to consume more in the future.
That sacrifice is huge:
Reduce/eliminate eating out
Vacations are less extravagant
No fancy cars
No fancy house
Embarrassment of not “appearing” wealthy
Learning new money skills.
Fear of losing money in the stock market
Compare this to effort and sacrifice of buying a product (perceived silver bullet):
Buy one product
Guaranteed future income
No “loss” of principle from market volatility
What you value (fast & cheap) and what’s good for you aren’t the same.
Not being able to take your wife out to eat when you're 70 is expensive at the cost of your relationship.
Not being able to go golfing on a nice Tuesday afternoon is expensive at the cost of your inability to control your time.
Not being able to meet up with your friends because you need to work at 70 is expensive at the cost of your friendships (& mental health).
Suddenly, a sacrifice today doesn’t seem to be much of a sacrifice at all.
Make the Offer
Delayed gratification works – under one condition.
You accept an offer from your future self to your present self.
The acceptance of your offer is predicated on your perception of your offer’s price tag being worth the cost of delayed gratification.
Make the offer sexy.
I once heard someone talk about the idea of visualizing there’s an imaginary film crew that’s documenting your every move.
I think about that on occasion.
Are my actions aligned with a film that would inspire me to leave the world better than I found it?
Live as though you’re the main character in your own movie. Every action and thought you have is being broadcasted to the world.
What would have to happen for you to be proud of what others took away from watching your film?