Chapter 1

1. I Want It Now

“I think my generation is obsessed with instant gratification. We want everything now, now, now.”

—Dakota Fanning

Do you want one marshmallow now, or two in fifteen minutes?

The late psychologist Dr. Walter Mischel and his colleagues posed this question to a group of children in his groundbreaking 1960s study on delayed gratification at Stanford University.1 Two-thirds of the children elected to take one marshmallow immediately, but this finding was just the start. Later known as “the marshmallow test,” Dr. Mischel gained further insight into delayed gratification several decades later when he followed up with the children. The results were staggering. The third of children who waited the entire fifteen minutes were demonstrably more successful (as measured by grades, test scores, self-worth, maturity, etc.) than the remaining two-thirds who had succumbed to temptation (instant gratification).

The ability to delay gratification led to higher levels of competence in dealing with stress, anxiety, and unhealthy cravings. Each extra minute preschoolers delayed the temptation of eating the marshmallow resulted in a 0.2 percent reduction in body mass index, thirty years later.

What Drives Our Need for Instant Gratification?

There is a battle going on in your brain between your “hot system” and “cool system.” Popularized by Dr. Mischel and his team, your hot system drives emotion and impulse and your cool system fuels your ability to reason and rationalize. Your hot system is controlled by the amygdala, the part of your brain that is easily triggered by stress and stimulus, while your cool system is controlled by the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that is responsible for executive functions—reason, decision making, and self-control.

Your hot system loves instant gratification. It wants you to buy those shoes now and worry about the consequences later. Your cool system tries to stop you. It uses reason and logic and reminds you of your long-term goals. While the systems are both important parts of being a whole and healthy person, when it comes to spending, your cool system is at a major disadvantage. Why? Because of distance, intention, and imagination.

Distance

Long-term goals are distant and abstract. You can’t see, touch, or taste them. Current consumption is right in front of you, and you can experience the benefit today. The closer you are to the reward, the greater the advantage to your hot system. Your cool system knows that building wealth is a priority, but when it comes to making a decision between buying a beautiful pair of shoes or saving for retirement, your long-term goals are no match. The distance is too far. You’re buying the shoes.

Intention

Why do we act on impulse and emotion? It’s likely because we have no clue what we really want. We have no direction or intention. We’re just moving through life reacting to the stimuli around us. Bright lights, models, and sale signs draw us in, and before our cool system has a chance to process what’s happening, our hot system is swiping the credit card. Our hot system is spending with little to no consideration of whether the purchase gets us closer to, or further away from, our values and true wants.

Imagination

For your cool system to be effective, you need to be willing and able to imagine the future. Your brain needs to visualize how good the end of the journey will feel by delaying consumption. With the noise and distractions that occupy our lives, our attention is under attack. It’s nearly impossible to step back and imagine the benefits that come with waiting. Our brains are too cluttered.

To make things even harder on your cool system, brands and marketers are well aware of its vulnerabilities and do all they can to diminish its influence.

Brand/Marketing Strategies

Each day you’re exposed to between four thousand to ten thousand brand messages. Each message has the same goal: to get you to buy now! These people behind these brands are clever and appeal to your hot system because they know it’s in control.

“Now” Messaging

“Lose ten pounds in ten days!” Think of the power behind this message. It promises a real benefit in a short period of time.

The real brilliance comes when a message can tug at both your hot and cool systems. Your hot system is being targeted with a promise for a short-term reward (it will only take ten days), while your cool system is being targeted by a sensible goal (lose ten pounds). Deep down, your cool system can detect when something’s too good to be true, but it’s also exhausted from the constant resistance. So, it lays down and waits for a different battle. This explains why schemes to get rich quick and expensive products to lose weight fast can be so effective.

Sales and Promotions

Study the sales and promotions that crowd your inbox. What are they trying to tell you?

The thing you want is on sale now, and it’s going fast. There’s no time to wait. You’re immediately flooded with concern that you’re going to miss out on something you want, and at a good price. You don’t trust that the sale will be available in the future. Time constraints provide little time and space for your cool system to catch up with your hot system’s desire to act. Forget about your long-term goals and values. Forget about intention because time is running out.

Imagery

Brand experts have done an amazing job doing the imagining for us. They sell us clothes using models that look the way we want to look. They don’t just show us a picture of a chair; they show us what our entire living room could look like. They don’t show us a can of paint; they show us how beautiful our entire house will look with a new color scheme. Our cool system is no match.

To make matters worse, brands and marketers know when to get you.

How? Because you’re telling them. They know what you like, who you like, how you like it, and when you want it. And they know when you’re most vulnerable. There is an old marketing saying: “You waste half of your marketing budget; the only problem is you don’t know which half.” Yet, with social media, online search, and digital advertising, this is no longer the case. Your digital footprint is all over the internet. Data is now the most valuable commodity in the world, and these companies are the keepers. We may not be able to avoid social media and the internet completely, but we can be more mindful of our vulnerabilities as they relate to the manipulation of our actions and intentions.

Growth of Credit

Once you have an engaged customer, reduce any friction between the customer and the sale. This is the first rule of sales. In retail, the main friction points used to be traveling to a physical store and having cash to make a purchase. This is no longer the case. With the explosion of credit cards and e-commerce, there is zero distance between you and the sale. The easier they make it on you, the more you spend. You want it now, and you can have it now. This is terrible for your cool system. As a result, consumer debt levels are at a peak—the average American owes $6,849 in credit card debt.2 And with credit card interest rates as high as 25 percent, the average American is paying up to $100 each month in credit card interest alone.

Think of interest as the cost of access to extra money. You are paying for the right to use an intangible, excess resource. When you’re caught in a spiral of debt, interest can make the hole even deeper.

For most banks, the credit card division is a multibillion-dollar industry with a goal of collecting a lifetime of interest from you. We can’t help ourselves, and they oblige by making spending as easy as possible. When you act on an impulse using credit, just remember this: you must pay it back. If you can’t pay it back in full, the interest will cost you.

Can You Train Yourself to Embrace Delayed Gratification?

Instant gratification is saying yes to mindless consumption. It’s succumbing to the daily attacks of brand messages and allowing yourself to be manipulated to spend. Delayed gratification is the exact opposite. It’s about being committed to your goals, living in alignment with your values, and imagining all the benefits that come with waiting and prioritizing to build the future version of you. It will take time, but you can train yourself to embrace delayed gratification. It all comes down to giving your cool system a louder and more commanding voice. When your cool system is in control, you are saving, investing, and spending with intention. And intention is the difference between working toward meaningful goals as opposed to owning a lot of stuff.

We’ll cover this in more detail in upcoming chapters, but here is a sneak preview and some helpful tips and tricks to help you fight back against the urge to consume:

Bring future goals to the present.

While saving for retirement is an important goal, it’s too far away. The only way we’ll embrace saving and budgeting is if we can get some points on the board today. We need to see progress. We need savings goals and targets...