I Saved $100 for 8 Weeks and Never Wore It

0:00Hey, Alex. How long did it take that hair to grow? No idea. I just haven't cut it. I probably need to cut it. Um, one of the things that no one tells you about delayed gratification is that once you learn how to do it, you keep doing it until you die and then what you delayed never happens. And so, this is the fallacy of the third marshmallow. So, everyone knows the story of, you know, they gave kids the option of one marshmallow now or two marshmallows in 30 minutes. and the kids that made it to 30 minutes uh ended up being more successful. So, it was a great microcosm example of um delayed gratification. But when you start changing the variables and let's say you get a third marshmallow if they wait for a year, is that really worth it? Or maybe they get a a third marshmallow if they wait 40 years. Is that worth it? No. But the problem is that once you learn how to delay gratification, you assume that all delayed gratification is correct. When in reality, you actually want to maximize gratification per unit of time.

0:56just looked over a a global period of your life, your entire lifetime. And so when you think about that, it's actually an optimization issue um more than anything else, which means that um as all uh worthwhile skills in life, it is not an extreme. It is actually walking the balance between two tensions of wanting to use things now and wanting to, you know, rather wanting to consume now and wanting to invest for later. Um but the magic is really in the middle kind of by holding the tension between these two extremes and these two poles.

1:26And I think that is something that like wisdom and self-awareness. Um which is basically just pattern recognition over time of you trying uh to consume a little too soon. Um but also on the flip side, I'll give you a story. When I was um I think 11 or 10 years old, I was I really I think it was when X-Men came out. The Cyclops had these orange glasses, uh, these Oakley glasses, and I remember thinking that they were like the coolest thing in the entire world.

1:53And I asked my, uh, mom, I was like, "Can I get those glasses?" And she was like, "No." [laughter] And she was like, "But you can work and save up money." And so, um, I remember saving up $100, which took me like, I don't know, like eight weeks, you know, I mean, of doing like chores and stuff to save up $100. And I went to the store and we got the we got the orange glasses. And I remember caring about them so much because I thought they were so cool and I was so afraid of losing them or scratching them that I would like look at them and then I put them in the case and I would look at them and I put them in the case and over time, you know, I I didn't put them on. And it was years later that I actually found those glasses when I was cleaning out my room.

2:35Um, and I had never actually worn them. And at the time and when I by the time I cleared them out, me wearing orange glasses as like a 17-year-old probably wasn't going to be the look that I was going for. Um, and so I ended up never actually truly wearing them. And so it was this really interesting lesson for me where it's like it's good to delay gratification, but not forever. Um, and so I think that a lot of us have these moments. Once you become an achiever, you like once you've tackled the first level of like I can, you know, I can I can save more than I spend and some of the basics like I can count my calories and not not get fat and I can eat less than I than I expend through the day, right? I don't have to eat a cookie right now. Once you learn the basics of that, um, I'm not a baby. I can control what I put in my mouth. Um, then you at some point have to say, well, when is it worth having some ice cream, right? when is it worth uh you know like I went to I'll tell you another story. I went to France when I was a junior in college um or between my sophomore and junior year I did a legal internship in France.

3:35So I was doing French to English business contract translation. Tons of fun. Um, but when I was there, I was like really into fitness. And this is embarrassing to say, but when I was in France in Paris, I didn't eat any croissants or any baguettes while I was there for the whole summer because I thought that carbs were bad. And think about how dumb that is. You know what I mean? like it's one you can always lose the weight later but I was so obsessive with you know being disciplined about these things that I I didn't imagine a world where I could like have a baguette and still like keep living my life um or just compensate with other food and so um I do think there's obviously a very important role for delayed gratification but you cannot delay it indefinitely because then what you delay you never get if you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling road map that I've used to go from 0 to 1, 0 to 10, and 0 to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out. Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, appreciate you. And uh enjoy.