Right then – in part 1 and part 2 of this series I’ve looked at the pros and cons of delayed and instant gratification.

As Gaina suggests in the comments for Part 2, hitting the right balance is vital. Like most things in life, it’s going to one extreme or the other that brings problems (is there an exception to this rule?)

So, total delayed gratification thinking may well see you at the head of some vast commercial empire – but if your gratification comes only from moments of triumph and profit then it’s likely the rest of your life isn’t quite so satisfactory.

And when instant gratification is your default setting this also leads to an unsatisfying, empty and pointless existence – and you’ll probably not have much money either.

The Faulty Thinking of ‘Single’ Gratification

It’s pretty obvious from all this that finding that elusive balance is where it’s at. But even if you have a balance you are seriously limiting yourself if your mind is shackled by the either/or thinking that our culture so often pushes us towards.

This is the kind of faulty thinking that leads us to the assumption, for instance, that healthy food has to be ‘worthy’ and dull, while gorgeous comfort food has to be bad for you. We apply these polar assumptions to all aspects of our lives and society and mostly, we never have a clue that we are doing it.

The mindset here goes like this: if it’s good for you it’s no fun – and if it is fun it’s not good for you.

That’s why, if you read articles about the benefits of delayed gratification you’ll see words like ‘discipline’, ‘worthiness’ and ’self-control’ taking pride of place.

It’s all so ridiculously one-dimensional.

I’m not suggesting, by the way, that self-control and its buddies don’t have their place – of course they do – but they are not the whole story. In fact they are not even the best part of the story.

Introducing Double Gratification

This is a very simple idea, but one that I know flies straight past many people, creative or otherwise:

• When you are working for future reward, find ways of getting instant reward at the same time.

As Barry Green says in the excellent The Inner Game of Music:

If your life is precious to you, you will want your practice to be both enjoyable and musically rewarding

When you practise double gratification it means you are enjoying, really enjoying, activities that will pay dividends in your future – and when that occurs those empty instant gratification moments lose much of their temptation.

It Sounds Obvious

I know this may sound way too obvious, because actually it is obvious. And yet for some reason our tendency is to take it only so far. Sure there are activities that easily give you double gratification, but there will almost certainly be many more that you’ve accepted as either one or the other.

These are often peripheral to your core creative work, but hugely beneficial to it. You’ve probably unquestioningly accepted these as boring, hard, and un-enjoyable. They are the kind of activities that you already know would help you move forward in your own creative shtick. But even though you try sometimes, you never quite get it together enough to make a difference.

Here are some examples, but your own personal favourites might be quite different.

• Get fitter
• Work on your appearance
• Do some networking/go to events
• Catalogue your work
• Plan you time
• Work more regularly
• Go to bed earlier/get up earlier
• Source better materials
• Join a group
• Practise your artistic weaknesses

Now you may, at this point, be hearing a little negative voice telling you that it can’t be done – there is simply no way to find instant gratification in such banal activities. That’s your self-limiting belief speaking. It’ll encourage you not to bother, and it will give you all sorts of justifications as to why this can’t work for you.

Tell it to shut up, because it isn’t helping you. Tell it that you already know you improve with practise, and adopting double gratification is no different. Okay, so you might find it odd at first, but it’s all about finding the right groove for your thinking so that you automatically ask the question: how can I make this enjoyable?

Double Gratification Becomes a Philosophy of Daily Living

Gradually, with practice, double gratification can become ingrained into your way of life. It can become your first and best tactic to help get those difficult but ultimately rewarding tasks done, and it should be part of your planning when you are working out how to achieve your goals.

What does double gratification look like in practice?

More often than not it looks like fun. It’s all about finding, new imaginative ways of doing things so that they give reward now and in the future. Here are a couple of examples of typical delayed gratification tasks that can have an impact on our artistic abilities.

• Getting fitter

Most of us can benefit from getting fitter – and fitness can directly enhance our creative output by boosting energy and brain power. Unfortunately, much of the fitness industry seems to be stuck in the ‘no pain no gain’ mindset and while many creative people find gym work etc. intensely boring we often forget that there are lots of other forms of exercise that are fantastically stimulating and enjoyable.

The trick is to figure out what activities are great for you. For myself, it took me years to understand how much I love unstructured throwing, catching, chasing, dodging. I mean I really gain joy from these activities. So when I can get someone to play with me it’s great. And yes, I know I’m 54 – sometimes part of the battle is to release your thinking and your inhibitions. I’m still working on this and haven’t found a way of making it part of my routine exercise.

But I have made aerobic exercise to music one of my regular activities. Again, I seem to get most out of it when it’s relatively unstructured, intuitive and expressive. (Okay, it’s bouncing about to music – but it keeps me happy and exercising)

So I’ve discovered fitness activities that I love doing – you might want to think out of the box to discover what floats your boat – here are a few suggestions: dancing, cycling, wind-surfing, climbing, racquet sports, walking, skipping, boxing/martial arts, running a children’s football/hockey/basketball team.

• Strategic Thinking and Planning

If you want to make the most of your creative instincts, then in my opinion there has to be some element of strategic thinking and planning. Good thinking of this kind will dramatically enhance your creative abilities, your output and your creative career success.

But if your mind is clinging to the deadly image of dull and tedious delayed gratification, then the very idea of it can fill you with dread. There you are sitting alone – forcing yourself to endure a process that you know is good for you, but which you also know will be about as much fun as pulling teeth.

Now enter our hero – double gratification!

Yes, you are going to reap the rewards of strategic thinking and planning – and double yes – you are going to enjoy doing it.

How? Here are a few suggestions.

• Remember first that strategic thinking and planning should be every bit as creative as your own chosen creative shtick
• Make extravagant mind maps, including colour, pictures and the odd bit of daftness
• If you play an instrument, do your thinking to your own musical accompaniment
• Write your ideas on a wall – so, graffiti thinking. (Buy a cheap roll of wallpaper or lining paper to pin to the wall first)
• Invite some friends around and have a strategic thinking party.
• Get a friend to interview you about it (can be very powerful)

Don’t forget that it’s up to you to find your own routes towards creative, rewarding double gratification activities. Get into the habit of asking yourself that simple powerful question:

How can I make this enjoyable?

I know from my daily coaching experience just how much difference this can make for my clients – and there’s no reason why it can’t do the same for you. So practise finding those double gratification answers for all the delayed gratification tasks you’ve got used to putting off or failing at. Try it, and see your creative abilities blossom and your artistic success grow and grow.

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Other posts:
- Delayed Gratification and the Creative Soul – Part 1: Delayed Gratification is Good For You
- Are False Priorities Blocking Your Creativity?

Okay – so you read (I hope) the case for incorporating a delayed gratification approach into your creative life – now, for the first time anywhere (so far as I know), here is the case against – or:

Why Instant Gratification Rules
Note: I’m taking a devil’s advocate stance here so don’t expect any kind of balanced argument.

Delayed gratification can be a real creativity killer. If you’ve ever seen the kind of person who has truly embraced delayed gratification you’ll know exactly what I mean.

This is the kind of person who plans to marry their partner in 7 years time. They actually set a date. It’s dull, dull, dull accountant-think where everything is subjugated to the hallowed dogma of future profit.

When you are deep in the delayed gratification groove it becomes a cop out from the terrifying, exhilarating joy of living in the here and now. It’s safe, uneventful and smug, and you can look down on your lesser life forms secure in the knowledge that you will end up in a bigger house, with a better car and a wonderful 2.5 children family. And when the time comes you will know exactly when to stop delaying your gratification and begin to enjoy – really enjoy – all the accumulated fruits of your dutiful toil.

Yeah… right. As if.

The awkward truth is that delayed gratification is a habit that’s hard to give up. The grim puritan soul of delayed gratification feeds on the consistent denial of the good things on offer at this moment – to the point where denial itself becomes the reward.

Well stuff that!

How can you be creative when you hold back from the spontaneity of now? How can you be original when your imagination (if you can call it that) is fixed within the rigid tram-lines of your ever-so-conventional future vision?

If you want to find and keep your creativity you need to party. And every now and again you need to really party. You need to feed your creativity with unplanned indulgence and planned stimulation. You need the ability to drop everything when your friends need you to – to cry with them, laugh with them, bitch with them.

You need the time to gaze at the stars, to become fascinated by the wrinkles on an old man’s face, or awed by the perfect lacework of a dragonfly’s wing. And you need to be idle enough to allow your thoughts and ideas to come together at their own pace.

Our creative soul needs everything that a life dedicated to the god of delayed gratification denies. If we want to be creative we should deny its false promise.

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Other relevant posts:
Delayed Gratification and the Creative Soul – Part 1: Delayed Gratification is Good For You
Delayed Gratification and the Creative Soul – Part 3: Why Double Gratification is Best

Have you ever given up something pleasurable now in order to reap greater rewards later? That’s delayed gratification. And I’ll bet you’ve also decided to blow the consequences and take the pleasure now. That’s instant gratification.

In this post I’m going to present the standard arguments for delayed gratification and against instant gratification. Then in the posts that follow I’ll look at whether anything is ever quite so simple.

The Importance of a Marshmallow

There was a remarkable study using children’s (in)ability to resist a marshmallow that had some amazing results. Psychologists gave some lucky four-year olds a marshmallow. Then they told the child that they could eat it straight away – or save it for twenty minutes and be rewarded with a second marshmallow.

Of course some kids scoffed the marshmallow immediately, some tried to resist the temptation but gave in, and some others actually managed to hold out for their prize – though not without agonies of squirming, shall-I-shan’t-I temptation. It must have been superbly entertaining for the experimenters.

Anyhow – the point of this beautifully designed torture was to follow the kids as they grew and developed, and find out if there was a link between the early ability to delay gratification and how well or badly these children did in later life. There have been many similar studies and the correlations are astonishing – consistently showing that those tending towards instant gratification did worse than those who managed to hold out for that extra marshmallow, bigger candy bar or extra dollar (depending on the experiment).

And the delayed gratification kids do better over a range of measurements – from better school results, improved relationships, higher incomes and more reported happiness. They’re also less likely to have problems with stuff like drink and drugs.

Narrow Definition of Success

So the results are pretty compelling – though it’s worth noting that much of the personal development literature available assumes a very narrow definition of success that basically means things like traditional career, position and salary. Nothing wrong with that, but not necessarily the drivers for the dedicated creative soul – though we might easily argue that there are equivalent desires for success in the arts, writing, music, etc.

Denied Gratification?

Because delayed gratification is more complex than the experiments assume (it’s rarely one marshmallow now for two later in real life), there’s a sense in which the trade seems much more like denied gratification. It seems to be life’s little luxuries that lose out – it’s the late nights, the extra drink, the burger or the full fat French cheese, the latest whizz-bang gadgets or being seduced by the current TV fad.
And it makes you wonder – aren’t those delayed gratification types just so deadly dull? Can’t they just lighten up and enjoy the moment?

Well – yes they can – it’s just that unlike those under the spell of instant gratification they get to choose: some gratification now, or more later. Delayed gratification is not denied gratification, it’s a trade off where the trade is to your advantage.

‘Empty’ and ‘Negative’ Gratification

There’s also another little detail that’s worth mentioning – and that is that much of the instant temptation we succumb to is ‘empty’ – it’s passive, temporary and actually makes us feel worse about ourselves afterwards. In fact in terms of achieving growth and success, and in terms of maintaining health and vitality there are often all too clear negative impacts to instant gratification.

But the trouble is that in our western culture almost every waking moment is bombarded with messages selling instant gratification. Most of our advertising is based on it. Buy this car, TV, cosmetic, perfume, music, drink, burger and not only do you get the product, you also magically receive an aura of ’success’ that the adverts tell you come with it – irresistible charm, affluence, exotic and exciting lifestyles, amazing skills, happy families… did I miss anything? Of course. Lots of sex.

So we buy – we feel the promised magical properties rubbing on to us, feel the rush of pleasure and triumph – and then a couple of days later, when the magic has worn off again, feel the need for another consumerist hit.

Rich Thinking and Poor Thinking

No wonder some experts liken delayed and instant gratification to ‘rich’ thinking and ‘poor’ thinking. Guess which is which.

How to Make Delayed Gratification Easier

According to many pundits exercising delayed gratification is all about self-control, discipline and willpower. There’s a certain moralistic tint goes with this argument, a judgement that the delayed gratification type is somehow ‘better’. That’s ridiculous. More effective perhaps, but then so were Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Effectiveness does not make you a better person, and neither does delayed gratification.

Self-control, discipline and willpower do help, but I believe there’s another factor that is way more important – the ability to visualize the outcomes of your chosen actions. When we can see only the instant rewards it’s no contest.

But a vivid awareness of the fuller impacts of our choices not only makes the negative outcomes of instant gratification more real, it does the same for those far-away positive outcomes of delayed gratification. And that makes it much, much easier to do the right thing.

Years back, when I was a college English Lecturer, I learned the value of this kind of visualization for my students. So when I set work for them I would also explain the tangible benefit to them of doing the work – namely, better marks in a particular exam paper, and the positive feeling of actually tackling questions in those papers that they would be baffled by otherwise. When I got the visualization right, even the most distracted of students could muster the enthusiasm to do a little more work.

Set compelling goals.

Of course, you can only visualize success if you’ve figured out what it is you want to succeed at. So taking the time to set yourself some worthwhile goals is absolutely paramount. With no future vision of success, no goals, what’s the point in delaying gratification? Well, there is no point. But find a compelling and realistic set of goals and build a vivid understanding of the rewards and benefits of achievement and you have the vital ingredients for pain free delayed gratification.

So the next time you are faced with the tempting, oh-so-immediately-satisfying, oh-so-temporary hit of instant gratification, remember that what you may be giving up is more, longer lasting and better gratification, later.

***

See also:
Organic Goal Setting
Delayed Gratification and the Creative Soul – Part 2: the Case Against
Delayed Gratification and the Creative Soul – Part 3: Why Double Gratification is Best

Here’s a question to mull over – what happens if your definition of the word success is so difficult to attain that it cripples your ability to achieve it and blinds you to the very real successes that you can (maybe already have) achieved?

The trouble with the word ’success’ is that we often take its meaning for granted. And the meaning that we unthinkingly accept tends to be narrow, unhelpful and not at all tailored to our individual needs. Carrying such a debilitating definition can be a real pain in the rear. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Enjoying the Small Successes

On my 50^th birthday I set myself a ten year goal – begin learning blues guitar, and either on or before my 60^th birthday to play for an audience. Now you might argue that this is hardly a ’stretch’ goal: ten years is a long time and merely playing for an audience is hardly shooting for stardom. But it felt right for me then and it does now.

That was 4 years back and I’ve been chipping away at it ever since – learning slowly – no pressure on myself, but enjoying the time I’ve spent. Occasionally I’d feel out of tune with what I was learning and I’d change tack. It was two years before I tried a bottleneck slide and found more satisfaction in a moment than at any time before. I’ve stuck to slide playing ever since.

It seems strange that picking up the guitar at 50 I didn’t have a sense of urgency about learning to play – and I know that my meandering and often unstructured learning process has frustrated those who have taken their music higher levels.

I understand that frustration even though I don’t share it, even though my repertoire remains pretty thin. The process feels like when a child puts their language skills in place. There’s an awful lot going on before they’re ready to speak. It’s unhurried, exploratory and experimental. It’s enjoyable and it’s not forced.

My pace of learning has frustrated me occasionally, but I haven’t let it worry me overly – because there have been other things – projects, challenges, family and friends, that I’ve given precedence to. Despite that I’ve found the time to enjoy some strumming and twanging most days.

What’s this to do with creative success? After all, you could argue I haven’t succeeded in learning guitar over these last 4 years.

Well… I think it’s about defining what success means for you (or in my case, for me). Figuring that out can be the key to finding true meaning, joy and yes, creative success on your own terms.

Defining ‘Success’

The trouble with the word success, as I’ve said at the beginning of this posting, is that we tend to accept a narrow culturally dominant definition. But by narrowing what we think success means, we also inescapably widen our definition of failure.

We tend to pin down success to things like the attainment of wealth, high position and fame. But:

1. only a few people actually achieve it
2. there’s an implication that if you haven’t achieved it you have failed.

Using that reasoning I have failed in everything I’ve ever done. Now there’s a recipe for a life of happiness and contentment. Not!

A Crippling Definition of Success

While ever we use the dominant, narrow definition of success we are doomed to feelings of failure and lack of self-worth if we aren’t achieving it, and anxiety if we are (for fear that we will lose our success and therefore become a failure again).

I’m not suggesting, by the way, that going for fame, fortune and position is wrong – just that it needs to be a part of each individuals personal definition of success.

If it’s the only way you can feel validated as a worthwhile person then you may wish to redefine success as something less damaging. And it wouldn’t hurt to do some work on your self esteem too.

Find Other Definitions

In my trusty dictionary (Oxford Compact) there are two other definitions. They are as liberating as the definition above is constricting.

1. The accomplishment of an aim: a favourable outcome
2. A thing or person that turns out well

Now we’re talking success.

Start thinking about the people around you who are happy, content, fulfilled, yet don’t conform to the usual definitions of what it means to be successful.

Aging Rockers

One example that prompted me to think about this topic was the 70s rock band Wishbone Ash. Somehow I never got to see them at their peak, but I finally caught them last week at The Boardwalk in Sheffield.

There’s only one original member left in Andy Powell, but the performance was all Wishbone Ash – astonishing virtuosity and professionalism and stunningly beautiful guitar rock. Ash’s trademark is to have two lead guitars playing different but complementary parts. I thought the gig was fantastic, but it did raise all sorts of questions about success.

For a start, the high standards of all four musicians made me re-examine the value of my own musical creativity. I’ve talked before about the way the excellence of others can be demotivating rather than inspiring. A well rounded view of what success means to me, rather than to anyone else, acts as proof against this.

But what about the band themselves? Wonderful musicians, a fantastic back catalogue of songs, but playing in front of 2-300 aging rock fans on a wet Sunday night in Sheffield. This is a band whose audiences used to number thousands, and whose album sales have been in the millions. But hey – they were still playing and they knew that what they were playing was exceptionally good. They were and are brilliant live performers who still gig worldwide.

Maybe they are due for rediscovery by more contemporary audiences and hit the big time once more – but if these musicians were to use that as their main measure of success they would neither be getting or giving the creative joy that was there for everyone to see.

Finding Your Own Definitions of Success

I’ve used musical creativity as examples in this posting but whatever your creative shtick, finding you own meaningful definitions of success is vital.

You can find separate strands of success within your vision. These can be things like:

• Levels of skill and accomplishment
• The quantity of creative output
• Enjoyment factors
• Public versus private levels of recognition and achievement
• Earnings (anything from none to millions)
• Source of earnings (for instance, purely from creative output, or from work associated with your creativity such as teaching/running workshops, or from a mixture)
• The importance of fame, fortune, position

Adjust Your Definitions

First of all make sure your definitions aren’t simply what you’d like to happen in your wildest dreams. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t have big dreams and goals, but using them as your sole definition of success can bring frustration, bitterness and self-loathing if you don’t meet them rather than enjoying all the brilliant stuff you might be doing and achieving that are ‘off dream’.

So definitions of creative success have to be in tune with what gives a you satisfaction and meaning on an ongoing basis.

When you have your draft definition of success there is something else to take into account – are you willing to do what it takes to achieve it? You can begin to sort this one out by asking this question:

• What does success behaviour look like?

Remember that this means your definition of success, not everyone else’s. So what does it look like? And how appealing and realistic is that?

This is all about what you are prepared to do, what you want to do and what you enjoy doing. And if that doesn’t fit with what success means to you then you still have a little work to do.

My Own Creative Success

As I’ve already stated, my own success definitions regarding blues guitar playing have been pretty modest over the last four years, but now I sense a change. I need to move up a gear if I want to maintain those feelings of satisfaction with my process of learning. It’s exciting to recognise.

Truly Personal Definitions Lead to Joy and Fulfilment

Truly personal definitions of creative success lead to joy, fulfilment and enhanced creative output – and ironically they often lead to the kind of outward success that can be all too elusive if that is your only motivation.

Unchain yourself from those narrow definitions of success. It could be the best thing you ever do.

***
Related posts:
Creativity and Joyfulness
Double Your Creative Output by Being in Two Places at Once (Seriously!)

In my previous post, Planning and Goal Setting – a Message for the Terrified I talked about the difficulty many creative people have in applying goal setting and planning to their own artistic medium. We looked at how fear, bad experiences, negative image and a lack of knowledge about planning and goals could all play their part in condemning us to a meandering, dilettante approach.

It’s an approach that all too often leads to dissatisfaction and disappointment, but can still feel preferable to that apparently hard, businesslike science of planning and goal setting.

So let’s not think of it that way – let’s make it altogether more friendly and approachable. This is the organic approach to planning and goal setting.

If you want to do more or better than you are currently achieving, please give it a try. To take it seriously make notes as you go and use as much detail as feels right for you. And make sure you take action at the end of it.

Organic Goal Setting

Organic goal setting harnesses your power of visualisation but that doesn’t limit its use to visual creativity. It should be equally effective for music, performance and writing.

1. Imagine your artistic career as a growing plant. Get a picture in your mind of your own individual plant – its leaves and branches, its size. This plant may be well grown by now – or it may be little more than a seedling. It may be lopsided or small but perfectly formed. Or it may have stopped growing and be at the beginning of a slow decline.

Whatever – Get that picture in your mind. And regardless of its condition make it a warm and loving picture – because you are the gardener and it is your care and attention that will make a difference.

Now, if you haven’t already, think about the flowers or fruit that your plant is producing. Imagine these as your artistic output. What are they like at the moment? Again – remember that you are the gardener here – you feel a warmth towards this plant – a commitment to help it grow, flourish and bear good fruit.

Okay – so you have in your mind an image of your creativity plant as it is now.

2. Next, I’d like you to think of the absolute maximum potential of this plant. Imagine it metaphorically, as the image of a plant, but also in the context of your own artistic medium.

Ask yourself: if everything went perfectly – if every condition for growth fell into place and there were no barriers to success – what is the maximum potential for this plant? Don’t worry about how achievable or even desirable this is – just get the picture.

So you now have two images – one of where you are now, and one of where it is possible to be in a ‘perfect’ world.

3. It may be that this vision of ultimate success is what inspires you, but the wonderful thing is that it doesn’t have to. Because you can have a successful, unique and creatively fruitful plant without getting anywhere near it. And you can visualise a goal that suits you now, knowing that in the future you can always grow it on further if you wish. The key here is to visualise a goal for your creative growth that feels empowering and inspiring.

It’s worth spending a little time on this. Experiment with your visualisations and register your feelings towards them.

You now have a third image – a comfortable yet stretching goal. You may have a lot of growing and nurturing to do along the way – but plants grow slowly – putting out new leaves and branches steadily but imperceptibly. When a healthy plant grows new leaves they are developing organically and unhurriedly from the previous growth.

And so a small plant can develop into something magnificent, provided it has the time and reasonable conditions to grow. Those growing conditions will vary from plant to plant. Like your own creative ability, each needs its own mix of nutrients, light, shade, position and climate.

4. You are the gardener. What do you need to give to your creative self to help it grow the way you want it to?

Write a list of the possibilities.

• Is your plant short of certain skills? How can it get them?
• Does it need more knowledge, or contact with like minds?
• Does it need more physical or mental space to work?
• Do you have a clear enough vision of what your art is about?
• Do you need to share what you produce, but are holding back from doing so?
• Do you need help or guidance?

From your list, choose one or two areas that will improve the health of your creativity plant?

Ask yourself what kinds of things would make a positive difference. Aim for a list of ideas and hey – be creative.

Choose one or two ideas and make a commitment to actually make them happen. Make another commitment to enjoy the process.

Start putting your actions into place and watch your creativity plant begin to grow, to bloom and to bear its wonderful fruit.

Happy Gardening.

* * *

See also: Planning and Goal Setting – a Message for the Terrified
Your views are appreciated. Please leave a comment.