THE MISMATCH BETWEEN IMMEDIATE AND DELAYED

THE MISMATCH BETWEEN IMMEDIATE AND DELAYED
REWARDS
Imagine you’re an animal roaming the plains of Africa—a giraffe or an
elephant or a lion. On any given day, most of your decisions have an
immediate impact. You are always thinking about what to eat or where to
sleep or how to avoid a predator. You are constantly focused on the present
or the very near future. You live in what scientists call an immediate-return
environment because your actions instantly deliver clear and immediate
outcomes.
Now switch back to your human self. In modern society, many of the
choices you make today will not benefit you immediately. If you do a good
job at work, you’ll get a paycheck in a few weeks. If you exercise today,
perhaps you won’t be overweight next year. If you save money now, maybe
you’ll have enough for retirement decades from now. You live in what
scientists call a delayed-return environment because you can work for years
before your actions deliver the intended payoff.
The human brain did not evolve for life in a delayed-return environment.
The earliest remains of modern humans, known as Homo sapiens sapiens,
are approximately two hundred thousand years old. These were the first
humans to have a brain relatively similar to ours. In particular, the
neocortex—the newest part of the brain and the region responsible for
higher functions like language—was roughly the same size two hundred
thousand years ago as today. You are walking around with the same
hardware as your Paleolithic ancestors.
It is only recently—during the last five hundred years or so—that society
has shifted to a predominantly delayed-return environment.
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Compared to
the age of the brain, modern society is brand-new. In the last one hundred
years, we have seen the rise of the car, the airplane, the television, the
personal computer, the internet, the smartphone, and Beyoncé. The world
has changed much in recent years, but human nature has changed little.
Similar to other animals on the African savannah, our ancestors spent
their days responding to grave threats, securing the next meal, and taking
shelter from a storm. It made sense to place a high value on instant
gratification. The distant future was less of a concern. And after thousands
of generations in an immediate-return environment, our brains evolved to
prefer quick payoffs to long-term ones.
Behavioral economists refer to this tendency as time inconsistency. That
is, the way your brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across time.
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You
value the present more than the future. Usually, this tendency serves us
well. A reward that is certain right now is typically worth more than one
that is merely possible in the future. But occasionally, our bias toward
instant gratification causes problems.
Why would someone smoke if they know it increases the risk of lung
cancer? Why would someone overeat when they know it increases their risk
of obesity? Why would someone have unsafe sex if they know it can result
in sexually transmitted disease? Once you understand how the brain
prioritizes rewards, the answers become clear: the consequences of bad
habits are delayed while the rewards are immediate. Smoking might kill
you in ten years, but it reduces stress and eases your nicotine cravings now.
Overeating is harmful in the long run but appetizing in the moment. Sex—
safe or not—provides pleasure right away. Disease and infection won’t
show up for days or weeks, even years.
Every habit produces multiple outcomes across time. Unfortunately,
these outcomes are often misaligned. With our bad habits, the immediate
outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good
habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the
ultimate outcome feels good. The French economist Frédéric Bastiat
explained the problem clearly when he wrote, “It almost always happens
that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences
are disastrous, and vice versa. . . . Often, the sweeter the first fruit of a
habit, the more bitter are its later fruits.”
Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The
costs of your bad habits are in the future.
The brain’s tendency to prioritize the present moment means you can’t
rely on good intentions. When you make a plan—to lose weight, write a
book, or learn a language—you are actually making plans for your future
self. And when you envision what you want your life to be like, it is easy to
see the value in taking actions with long-term benefits. We all want better
lives for our future selves. However, when the moment of decision arrives,
instant gratification usually wins. You are no longer making a choice for
Future You, who dreams of being fitter or wealthier or happier. You are
choosing for Present You, who wants to be full, pampered, and entertained.
As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the
more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term
goals.
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With a fuller understanding of what causes our brain to repeat some
behaviors and avoid others, let’s update the Cardinal Rule of Behavior
Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately
punished is avoided.
Our preference for instant gratification reveals an important truth about
success: because of how we are wired, most people will spend all day
chasing quick hits of satisfaction. The road less traveled is the road of
delayed gratification. If you’re willing to wait for the rewards, you’ll face
less competition and often get a bigger payoff. As the saying goes, the last
mile is always the least crowded.
This is precisely what research has shown. People who are better at
delaying gratification have higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance
abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, and superior
social skills. We’ve all seen this play out in our own lives. If you delay
watching television and get your homework done, you’ll generally learn
more and get better grades. If you don’t buy desserts and chips at the store,
you’ll often eat healthier food when you get home. At some point, success
in nearly every field requires you to ignore an immediate reward in favor of
a delayed reward.
Here’s the problem: most people know that delaying gratification is the
wise approach. They want the benefits of good habits: to be healthy,
productive, at peace. But these outcomes are seldom top-of-mind at the
decisive moment. Thankfully, it’s possible to train yourself to delay
gratification—but you need to work with the grain of human nature, not
against it. The best way to do this is to add a little bit of immediate pleasure
to the habits that pay off in the long-run and a little bit of immediate pain to
ones that don’t.
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