Delayed Gratification

Day 235 / 366

When I sat down to write this blog, I did not know what the opposite of instant gratification is. But I thought of course it couldn’t simply be delayed gratification, there must be a fancier term for it. So I googled it, and it turns out it's indeed that simple. Hence the title of this blog.

In this age of on-demand entertainment and consumerism, our brains have been spoilt with instant gratification. If we try something new, we want to see the results as soon as yesterday. This has led to books like — “24 Hour MBA”, or “21-day Habits”, or videos like “Learn Day Trading in 30 Minutes!”.

As the saying goes, “good things come to those who wait”. Delayed gratification is something that no longer feels natural to us. So it’s something that we have to train our brains to understand again.

When I was working at JP Morgan, I had stopped doing any sort of web development. Even before that, I mostly worked as a backend developer. When I decided that I wanted to switch, I remember that each day from 5–7 AM I would learn Frontend development, something that till then I had avoided since I sucked at it. It was months later that I got an interview at ErosNow and the stuff that I had learned gave me an edge in getting selected as well as standing out as a fullstack developer when I worked there.

And I have so many more stories like that. Sometimes when you put efforts into something, you might not see the results right away. But don’t let that stop you. Have faith that if you are doing the right thing, the results will come one day or another.