A lot of the time, what the Internet delivers is, at best, ho-hum. Your weekly re-supply of toilet paper from Amazon. That sales strategy book your boss insists everyone in the company has to read. The Gilmore Girls reboot. And as Nowlis et al. But a lot of the time, online technology just ensures the prompt arrival of our prune juice. As Alfie Kohn writes , quoting psychologist Jack Block:. This, rather than self-discipline or self-control, per se, is what children would benefit from developing.
But such a formulation is very different from the uncritical celebration of self-discipline that we find in the field of education and throughout our culture. The closer we look at research on the relationship between self-control and delay of gratification, the less likely it seems that the internet is eroding some core human virtue. Yes, self-control correlates with a wide range of positive outcomes, but it may come at the price of spontaneity and creativity. We love causal stories about how the internet is having this or that monolithic impact on our characters—particularly if the causal story vindicates the desire to avoid learning new software and instead curl up with a hardbound, ink-on-paper book.
Because that puts the burden back on us: the burden to make good choices about what we do online, guided by the kind of character we want to cultivate. JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. Privacy Policy Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message. You would feel more energetic, clothes would look more appealing and you would appear more desirable to the opposite sex.
Yet, when you go to a restaurant, the juicy burger with a thick patty and melting cheese, sways your mind in the opposite direction. You give in and postpone your weight loss plans for the day. When the clock shows 7 AM and you know you must get ready to head to the gym, a thought creeps in.
I will workout tomorrow without fail. Boom, your plans for a healthy lifestyle took a U-turn. The comfort of laziness today overpowers the future benefits of a lean body. When you are at work, the email that popped up catches your attention. But I know you want to check it now. You have to clean your cupboard and stock up groceries for the week.
If you do not, you will spend the whole next week with a dirty cupboard and food from restaurants. But what do you choose? You decide to open Netflix and watch one episode of the series. We still have time. You plan to save more money each month instead of blowing all your income on buying things you want. When your money hits your bank account each month, you vow to not spend it all. But somehow, you face an expected expenditure which derails your plan.
At least that is what you convince yourself. If you make up your mind, you can reduce the number of times you dine at restaurants or refrain from hitting the buy button on an item you peeked through on Amazon.
You often apply for a loan to buy an expensive asset which you cannot afford. But what about buying a brand new Ford on loan, when you could have opted for a cheaper car? You justify your decision saying a reasonable car is a necessity. When Amazon announces a big billion sale, you stand on your toes, waiting for the day to arrive. When it does, you scroll through the deals and add one item after another to your cart. You hit the buy button and rest back on your chair smirking about saving a hundred dollars due to the discount.
You will glance at some of those for a few days and toss them into a cupboard. The pleasure of buying something for yourself on sale gives you the instant gratification over saving the money. Addictions trigger a dopamine rush within your body.
These are hormones secreted by your brain which makes you feel good. For the same reason, a drag off a cigarette seems like a stress buster. You find yourself in a happy zone after a glass of wine.
While all the addictions alter your state of mind in some way, the dopamine creates the craving to indulge in them again. Related article: How to break a bad habit. You do not have to prevent every single case of instant gratification bias. Sometimes you need the pleasure which comes out of it. The key here is to find a balance where you do not let instant gratification win in every decision you make.
For example, if you set your phone on silent and shut it close inside a drawer, you will go through your day without any distraction. Compare that with resisting the urge when you hear your phone beep. If the smell of donuts on your way back from the gym causes your belly to rumble and your willpower to give in, take a different route to your house. You will find it easy to resist the urge if you do not face the temptation at all. Trying to fight the urge is no easy feat.
Related article: How to improve focus. You might buy all the good looking clothes during your visit to the shopping mall and walk right past the ice-cream store without a second glance. I might scan the whole costume section without buying a thing only to grab a large bowl of hot chocolate fudge on the way back. Once you know where you fall victim to instant gratification, use the first tip to avoid the temptation itself.
Whenever you are about to indulge in bad behavior or stray away from the good, pause for a moment to apply the 2-second rule.
The small break of just 1 or 2 seconds can cut your current line of thought. For example, if you have a lifestyle of healthy eating, picking a jelly-filled chocolate donut once in a while does no harm.
However, if you were a chain smoker who quit smoking a few months back, lighting up one cigarette can trigger your old habit. A coworker brought chocolates? Great, let me grab one. Your partner said something offensive? Hold on, let me give it back. Let me watch a video on Youtube.
When you pay more attention to the little decisions you make, your choices become more conscious. However, impulsivity may not simply be due to how long people are willing to wait for gratification. A recent study by a team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found that when people waited for a reward, patient people were seen—through the lens of a functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI machine—imagining the future.
In more patient people, the researchers observed increased activity in the region of the brain that helps you think about the future the anterior prefrontal cortex. The patient individuals, it seems, devoted more energy to imagining receiving their reward later.
What sets this Washington University study apart from previous studies is that researchers have never before focused on the brain responses of individuals after they make a decision and are waiting for their reward. Instead, researchers have typically measured brain activity while people are making their choices. Prior researchers likely disregarded the waiting period because their studies used hypothetical rewards over long delays.
This new study presented people with real rewards in the form of squirts of juice either immediately or at a delay of up to a minute. In fact, the researchers squirted the juice straight into the mouths of study subjects, in much the same way that animals have been rewarded in similar studies. Now, one more phenomenon can be added to the list of contexts in which people imagine a future outcome and activate their aPFC: imagining future rewards.
One problem with the future is its vagueness. While you are able to imagine in your mind going to the gas station or cooking dinner in general, the exact details of these activities are not clear. In this way, the future is fuzzy. We even expect business growth -- a phenomenon long considered to be gradual -- to happen overnight. Like the viral explosion of a YouTube video, we want to hack business growth for viral expansion.
The big-picture way to give your audience instant gratification is to provide something now. The real application of this, though, is going to depend on your business. What can you give to your customers right now? I need to issue a warning here. Instant gratification begets instant gratification.
In other words, once you give your customers some level of instant gratification, they will expect that same instantaneous response in future interaction. One of the most obvious and easiest ways to satisfy instant gratification is to do so with your messaging.
One CrazyEgg article explained why this headline is so effective:. This headline makes a promise, as all good headlines do. It promises that we will receive a benefit. And it promises that we will receive a desirable quantity of that benefit in a desirable time period.
People want instant results. In the world of weight loss, seven days is about as instant as it gets. This language of instant results meets the craving for instant gratification, and gives people something to move forward on.
Provide chat or phone contact. If your customers want information, give it to them as best as possible.
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