This is why you fail to resist Instant Gratification!
According to Study.com, Instant Gratification is “The immediate fulfillment of a person’s needs or desires. When someone makes an impulsive choice to do something for the instant feeling of pleasure or satisfaction, they are receiving instant gratification.”
We all have done this.
Maybe even every single day. Few are living their entire life on the basis of instant gratification and no judgment but this kind of behavior is not that good for a long-term life.
This might not feel a bad thing while you're in the indulgence but you know how it feels afterward.
Maybe not every time, since your brain justifies some of your acts, but sometimes you do understand the impact of this behavior.
Now, this is not exactly our fault since we have evolved like this.
Let me explain why!
Now in a very simple language, you are just postponing stuff (mostly things that are actually good for you) in order to get a short-term pleasure of some kind.
An example may be right now only, you are sitting, reading this and enjoying your snacks when in the back of your mind you know that you are supposed to be working on an important project.
Maybe who knows? I have zero telepathy.
There are two sides to this coin
1)Instant Gratification
2)Delayed gratification
Let's see.
The thing is, your brain tends to choose instant pleasure. The urge to say, maybe binge-watch, play video games, have snacks, and so on and so forth. Knowing that you are delaying something really important, which can actually bring in some real positive impact on your life in the near future or maybe the distant future.
Here the factor is Time.
When will you get the result? When will your brain get that hit of dopamine?
For one is Right Now, another one, in the Future.
This is where our evolutionary factors kick in.
Look, when we were not civilized and were mainly focusing on food and safety while living in the woods.
There was NO future. There was no tomorrow.
We were living on food that we had to find and if you don’t have that right at that moment, you won’t even live to eat in the near future.
If we didn’t protect ourselves from predators at that exact moment, then we would not have survived.
It was all then and there since there was no certainty.
Now, things have changed, we have changed, but certainly evolutionary factors are still there. We still carry those things.
So, it is true that nothing extreme would happen if you skip those delicious meals right now and have them after work, but you know, you have been wired like that.
This kicks in the urge for instant gratification.
Our brain still thinks that the future is uncertain (which is true but not at the extreme level) and so let’s get indulged right now.
This is one of the main reasons why Instant Gratification is so common among us.
Now, according to Psychology
Instant gratification is fueled by the basic human nature, that is to Avoid Pain and Embrace Pleasure.
It is a fact that humans are driven by pleasure to a certain extent and you can feel that in yourself, we don’t really need science to prove it.
It is the fact that we avoid the task that has the potential to give us great payout in the future, just because at present we will have to go through a certain level of pain for that.
Pain is subjective and something which is super easy to you might be painful for me.
So, we choose the thing that has the potential to give us pleasure, and that too without going through pain.
This is the cause of instant gratification.
Generally, if anything is not giving you instant pleasure, and it will take some amount of work or pain, then we humans avoid the heck out of it.
We give up on our future goals, just to avoid the present pain!
This is how we think, most of the time.
Now I must include that not all instant gratification is bad.
Sometimes, it is important to take a break and live a little, at the moment.
But most of the time, this habit does bad.
In my own life, I found that one thing helped me avoid this instant gratification call, most of the time.
And that is to break a big task into small chunks.
I make sure, my brain doesn’t feel that the task I am about to take on, is going to be “painful” at any level.
I tend to break my goals into very small, easy, and doable chunks.
This tricks my internal system to feel that 1)This task won’t take long
2)This is an easy task and I will have no trouble finishing this.
Avoiding the notion of pain has helped me get a lot of things done.
Even for this article.
I gave myself only 10 mins to start with this article.
10 mins go by fast and that is why my brain predicts no pain while starting with the task.
And now, it is over an hour and a half and I am still into the work.
So, I suggest trying this method. It might work for you as well.
Finally, thanks to all for spending your valuable time with my work!