
40 Yr Stanford Study Found People with Delayed Gratification More Likely Succeed - elmar
https://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification
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leggomylibro
This is something I've been thinking about lately; so much recent pop culture
centers about 'genius' figures who seem to always know what to do and how, but
I don't believe that most big discoveries and innovations are a result of
'eureka' moments or some sort of savant who just Knows Everything.

What I think matters, besides good old-fashioned luck, is having a person or
group of people that is willing to bang its head against a brick wall for
hours on end, day after day, week after week, until the cracks finally start
to show. That sort of perseverance requires a lot of things, but the ability
to put off a payday until you've gotten a few more metaphorical concussions is
probably a big part of it.

~~~
justinpombrio
> person or group of people that is willing to bang its head against a brick
> wall for hours on end, day after day, week after week, until the cracks
> finally start to show

This is what getting a PhD is like (at least in STEM). I mean, you _do_ have
to be smart, but you _also_ have to be willing to work on a specific,
technical, narrowly defined problem for years. It's great.

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jfaucett
I love research like this. Our psyches are so complex and we are so filled
with biases and errors in a plethora of ways that the only way IMHO we can
compensate for it long term is to understand how those structures work and
build social systems and structures that auto-correct it.

It looks like this area turns out to be one of the lucky ones that we can at
least attempt to improve ourselves, unfortunately when it comes to cognition
and particularly cognitive biases and errors to much of it seems not to work
like muscles or have simple "do X" solutions.

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tlb
Just a reminder that this result doesn't imply that practicing delaying
gratification will improve your success. It may well be that a third factor
causes both ability to delay gratification, and success.

It's remarkable that there is data about the outcomes of billions of lives,
but we still have only vague indications about which behaviors lead to which
outcomes.

~~~
itamarst
There are some relevant follow-up studies, e.g.:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3730121/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3730121/)

> We demonstrated that children’s sustained decisions to wait for a greater
> reward rather than quickly taking a lesser reward are strongly influenced by
> the reliability of the environment (in this case, the reliability of the
> researcher’s verbal assurances). More broadly, we have shown that young
> children’s performance on delay-of-gratification tasks can be strongly
> influenced by an implicit rational decision-making process.

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joncrane
Sometimes I think there's a perfect balance these people have between the
ability to put off reward and the ability to enjoy reward.

Because I can put off rewards but what I end up doing is saying "I can live
without that reward forever" and it turns into asceticism, not success.

I feel like if I could combine my ability to put off rewards with an enhanced
sense of "winning" when I do finally pull something off, I could motivate
myself to "succeed" better.

But then again, what is "success?"

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mr_data
Also, the more wealthy you are, the better you'd be at delaying gratification,
even if you are very young. If you never know hunger or want and you know that
the "marshmellow" will always be there, then you can more easily delay
gratification. But if you are poor and you know that the marshmellow might not
be there tomorrow, you are less likely to delay gratification.

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workthrowaway27
Haven't read the study, but I bet this has a high correlation with the big
five trait conscientiousness. That and IQ are great predictors of success.

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tabeth
People who can delay gratification are likely those who have the means to do
so to begin with. I know it's not the point of research, but it would really
be nice if this stuff was more prescriptive (to the article's defense they do
touch on this a bit in the end).

Discipline and willpower and what not are great things, but for the average
person simply creating an environment to which discipline is unnecessary is
easier.

Some more thoughts for anyone who's bored out there:
\----------------------------------------------------

1) Website usage: many people check websites religiously, just to see if
anything is new. Most of the time nothing is new. A means to prevent the
actual visiting of the website (which will lead to more wasted time) would be
nice.

Example, you refresh the page right now, perhaps there are some new comments,
maybe there aren't. Either way, _maybe_ it's only worth it if there are X
amount of new comments. A way to prevent "pointless" checks would be nice.

2) Soft reminder: it's worth thinking about a potential way to get someone
back on track without explicitly reminding them to do so. I'm not quite sure
how would do this (redirect to a website that was being worked on, maximizing
the window that was important) as figuring out important itself is difficult,
but it's worth a thought.

EDIT: grammar

~~~
throwaway613834
> People who can delay gratification are likely those who have the means to do
> so to begin with.

You're saying this after reading that researchers gave 5-year-olds
_marshmallows_ and told them they would get a second one if they waited for 15
mins instead of eating it? Because the kids who delayed their marshmallow
gratification "are likely those who have the means to begin with"?

~~~
tabeth
Indeed I am. Clearly there must be some factor that resulted in the difference
in the ability to delay -- whatever that factor is called, it has to be the
"means."

Why should you wait 15 minutes to get another one instead of eating the one
you have now? Imagine two kids, one with abundance and another with nothing.
Intelligence and other temperamental traits aside, do you think there'd be any
difference in their inclination to wait?

I obviously can't say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised. There are also
other things that others have criticized about the experiment:

1\. Desire for sweets -- maybe one doesn't like sweets

2\. Preexisting hunger

3\. The premise that 2 marshmallows are superior to 1.

etc.

I still think it was a good experiment, but it's hardly the end-all-be-all.

~~~
nrhk
Yea, kid's who grow up with food scarcity probably wouldn't believe they would
even get the second marshmallow. These are the type of kids who hoard food
even when it becomes completely unnecessary later in life due to their
childhood experiences.

I imagine a better way to control for this is to have separate groups for
different socioeconomic classes.

~~~
ddxxdd
I've been listening to the audiobook "Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence"
by Daniel Goleman, and in one of the chapters, he brought up this experiment,
along with many others (I think there was an Australian experiment that
followed about 16,000 kids throughout their life).

He actually concluded that focus and discipline have far more explanatory
power in predicting future success than race, class, socioeconomic factors, or
any other variable.

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kazinator
Some failing people are just delaying their gratification even more.

What form of gratification could be more delayed than being unknown and
struggling all your life, and then having your works achieve posthumous
renown?

