Part V – “Don’t eat the marshmallow”

“I had a dream last night, I was eating a ten pound marshmallow. I woke up this morning and the pillow was gone.” – Tommy Cooper

Dear Shawn –

As you move through your working career and its ups and downs one thing will remain constant; rewards and recognition always feel good and they are addictive. So addictive in fact, that once you receive them you will need them to continue and it will take even greater rewards to feel the same level of satisfaction over time. 

On one hand this is positive, as it drives your ambition to achieve greater success and push yourself harder but on the other hand it can put you in a situation where you make a decision in order to receive an immediate award but lose out on a much larger reward further out into the future. 

Back in 1998 the rewards are largely physical but speaking from the year 2023 I can confirm that our world has evolved into one of immediate gratification fueled by digital devices and the internet;

• Order something on amazon it arrives the next day.
• Send a text message, receive a response almost instantly.
• Post a photo on Instagram, get likes from your contacts.
• Order food and watch the delivery driver real-time.
• Stay in a hotel or take a flight and get status rewards deposited into your account.

Almost everything we do in the year 2023 comes with some sort of instant gratification with points, rewards, levels all urging us to say connected, stay engaged and keep the rewards coming. The challenge is that in chasing all of these immediate rewards we lose sight of longer-term rewards that have a much larger impact and a longer lasting effect.

This idea very much reminds me of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment by Walter Mischel and Ebbe B. Ebbesen back in the early 1970s. Essentially the experiment involved a very simple decision for 32 children aged between 3-6 years old. A marshmallow was placed in front of each child, and they were given a choice to either consume it or resist eating it for 15 mins with the promise of a second reward. (If you are interested you can read more about the specific study here). The most important finding of the study was that those children who were able to resist the immediate gratification of eating the marshmallow not only received a larger reward BUT in in follow-up studies, the researchers found that they tended to have better life outcomes including SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI) and other life measures.

Let this serve as my advice to you. When assessing a key decision in your personal or professional life “Don’t eat the marshmallow” by default, instead think about the rewards that potentially come with a longer-term decision. I am confident this will lead you to making better decisions with even bigger rewards down the road.

This piece of advice was shared to me early in my career by one of my good friends and colleagues Greg D – It really changed my perspective.