Delayed gratification is when you experience upsides today from things you did in the past.
Or things you do today that you expect an upside from at some point in the future.
It sometimes works against intuition because we can’t see outcomes earlier in time so it’s not natural to act upon things we don’t know whether will work or not.
But I was recently thinking about all the things that did work for me way long after I dedicated attention to them. Almost consistently, results only start showing after the work has been done by 4-6 months. For me, this has been the case for 2 years now. Efforts and results work together on a rolling 6-month contract.
It also works vice-versa: if you’re doing nothing, you might push through a few more months of not-suffering-from-doing-nothing until it kicks in all at once. So still the cost of ‘doing nothing’ shows up in 4-6 months time, even if it’s not net positive.
This pressures me to think about all the things I want working in 6 months that I should be starting on right now. Chances are there are many things that I should be doing. And the thing is, there’s no way to know whether what I’m doing is right or wrong. There’s just intuition, and an infinite playground.
For areas like fitness, it’s pretty much linear. So yes, efforts put into training definitely follow delayed gratification, as in they “pay off later,” whether in health, shape, or overall wellness. But because the return is expected, it’s rarely exponential or life-changing. It’s linear.
Other areas like business, one decision right now could shift the entire narrative. And it holds true for both good and bad decisions. So you’re left with “Anything is possible” and “Nothing is guaranteed.” Both still follow delayed gratification / karmic law.
This is very evident towards the end of the spectrum, where you’d see an individual or a group of people doing things that will pay off in decades time. For a moment it’d be ridiculous to try put yourself in their shoes. It’s absolutely non-intuitive to keep showing for something that will only pay off after 10+ years for now, yet you’d see some people are fine with it. I think this tells more about faith than work! And looking back throughout history at anyone who has done something of great significance, it seems they all had this too.
So I can’t help but think: Delayed gratification is a muscle. Now I can tolerate 6 months, but I believe I will have to progressively overload this muscle in the next few years. And I also believe that, if everything goes well, this shall happen naturally.