The problem with instant gratification

You’ve probably heard something about instant gratification (or immediate reward). Every motivational book doesn’t forget to mention this term and how it can affect your life.

Basically, this is a temptation to obtain pleasure HERE and NOW instead of gaining some more in the future.

First of all, you should understand that this is a weird natural thing that happens to all of us on a daily basis. I won't deep dive into the reasons for such behavior (google it), I’ll just say that we have inherited this tendency to see pleasure and avoid pain from our ancestors. It gave them some advantages many centuries ago. But the world has evolved and nowadays this behavior is mostly ruthlessly ruining our lives.

Some examples of instant gratification are:
- Hitting snooze instead of getting up early in the morning.
- Watching funny YouTube videos instead of completing your work (study).
- Eating junk food instead of cooking healthy one

Easy to see that delayed gratification is generally (there can be some exceptions*) the best choice for your future self. If you prefer deferred reward, most likely, you pursue a long-term goal which can be learning new technologies, getting fit, saving money for your future self.

There are several ways, which can help you to choose delayed gratification over instant one.
1. Think about your future self. What would you feel? Will you be happy about your "past self" decision to choose immediate reward?
2. Plan (again and again) and commit to something beforehand. This won’t require making any decision at the moment. This way you’ll more likely do what you suppose to do.
3. Break down big goals into smaller ones. It is hard to do something when the task is laborious and unclear, moreover, the moment of getting pleasure lies too far from you. When you achieve a small goal you can already get some satisfaction (this is a little hack).

*As I was writing this post I had a related discussion with my girlfriend which led us to the conclusion, that we are all different and instant-grat-thing for one person could be a part of a long journey to success for another. For example, somebody chooses to watch some entertaining youtube videos, cause it helps him to relax and get some mental boost for another work session, not because he is simply procrastinating.