Delayed Gratification and the Character of Hard, Important Things

Doing the hard but necessary thing is often difficult because the rewards are reaped in the distant future, if at all. Realizing the compounding benefits of consistent good work becomes challenging when there's no immediate evidence that any of this work is worthwhile. Relatedly, and ever so perniciously, it's easy to fall out of positive behaviors when the impact of those decisions isn't immediately felt. Such is the character of the hard, important things.

For me, procrastination is my biggest vice. I find it incredibly difficult to start a task unless it's either so overwhelmingly immediate or interesting that I cannot resist. One bad day in isolation wouldn't be so problematic, but I'd frequently follow that up with another and another in a downward spiral that was very difficult to escape.

For the longest time, I would beat myself up about this spiralling, as if castigating myself would trigger some kind of redemptive epiphany. That was predictably ineffective. I already felt bad about my behaviour, so layering more negativity on top was neither useful nor an enjoyable way to live.

Another technique I'd employ was asking, or more frequently begging, myself to never have a "zero day." This approach was at least somewhat sympathetic. Any progress, regardless of how small, was acceptable. The issue was that I knew that any progress wasn't really a win, and now any single day without appreciable progress felt like an absolute disaster.

I needed a new way of thinking about this problem. Even if my work wasn't objectively suffering, I couldn't live with the gnawing anxiety that I was never quite doing enough. I needed to examine the problem from first principles and confront what was actually happening.

First came the realisation that there's some evolutionary benefit to procrastination. It's not some failure of my psyche but something entirely normal. This is equally true of many things people struggle with (snacking, a sedentary lifestyle, etc.). If you don't know whether tomorrow is promised, conserving energy and doing the pleasurable thing right now is the correct choice evolutionarily. However, in our modern world, there's basically no upside to these behaviours, assuming your safety and security are guaranteed. I found knowing I wasn't broken in some fundamental way comforting, and that knowledge provided a foundation to examine what was truly difficult about doing the hard but important things.

Looking at those difficult tasks, I realised they share a common pattern:

  1. They are hard to start - you necessarily won't see any fruits from your labor for a long time, so you lack incentive to suffer pain today.
  2. They are hard to maintain - you will go through long periods of plateau, and your performance will almost always feel as though it's below the level you "should" be at, given your current training and activity.
  3. They are easy to break - in addition to feeling "behind" where you should be, any positive effect of your cumulative work to date will probably persist for a while. So you can coast on yesterday's labor, but shouldn't.

What I then realised is that many "bad" habits have precisely the inverse character:

  1. They're easy to start - there will be no negative effect for a long time, so you might as well begin today.
  2. They're easy to maintain - one more episode before bed or biscuit after dinner won't hurt much. But the compounding effects of those choices over time really do add up.
  3. They're hard to break - there's no point stopping now if you're already late with your work or unfit anyway.

Recognising these as simply the inherent characteristics of the things I'm avoiding (and inversely, the things I'm doing that I shouldn't) was extremely helpful because it unlocked a different pattern of thinking. I'm not doing the hard thing for myself today; that person won't see the benefits nor suffer the downsides. But I am enjoying the rewards and living with the consequences of my behaviour from yesterday or a week, month, or year ago. This realisation illuminated something profound: doing the hard, necessary things today is a special sort of kindness that one can do for one's future self.

In hindsight, this lens seems obvious. At the start of each new year, I write myself an email1. I write about anything and everything, but I find the most natural approach is to write as if the recipient is a close friend. Someone for whom I'm promising a favour and essentially hoping the best. What I now realise is that while the words are nice to read, actions speak louder. How I act today and throughout the year will have much more impact than anything I could possibly say.

Understanding and confronting the character of these hard things is beneficial because it's widely applicable. What I've said about procrastinating applies equally to eating right or going to bed on time. With all of these behaviours, the benefits and downsides aren't immediately obvious. And in every case, acting with kindness toward your future self is likely the most positive and helpful framing to make the correct decision.

Footnotes

  1. FutureMe - https://www.futureme.org/ ↩