Delayed gratification, also known as deferred gratification, is the ability to delay an immediate reward in the hope of getting a greater reward later instead. One example of delaying gratification is living in a smaller rental property so you can save up money for a house deposit, instead of renting a more expensive place. Another is choosing to go to university even though it will cost you money, because your earning potential will be higher later.

Being able to delay gratification is a form of self-control. It enables you to do what you know you should do, instead of what you want to do, which is not necessarily the same thing. The ability to delay gratification is an important life skill, because it enables you to put aside the moment, and look to the future. This page discusses how you can develop that skill.

Understanding Delayed Gratification

Most of us have what economists call a ‘time preference’ (also known as ‘delay discounting’).

It means that given a choice, we will take a reward now, rather than wait. We are, in fact, generally prepared to pay more to receive something now, rather than wait for it later. You can understand this by thinking about the concept of mortgages and other loans. We know that they will cost us more by the time we have paid interest, but we are prepared to pay that additional cost for the value of being able to buy a house (or other goods) now instead of later.

This, then, is the idea that we will pay more for something if we can have it now instead of later.

The idea of delayed gratification is linked to this. It is the idea that we might be prepared to wait for a greater reward rather than take a small one now.

This is actually surprisingly hard to do.

Some academics have linked the difficulty of delaying gratification with evolution, suggesting that our ancestors did not know whether they would ever get a later reward. Taking a smaller ‘bird in the hand’ was therefore better than waiting for ‘two in the bush’. Now, though, we can be moderately confident about some rewards, at least—so why do we still struggle with delaying gratification? And more importantly, why does it matter?

Delayed gratification and delay discounting would really only be economic concepts had researchers not carried out a very interesting series of experiments at Stanford University in the 1960s and 1970s (see box).

Actually, of course, most of the outcomes that were measured in the Stanford follow-up studies are also the outcomes of delaying gratification. If you don’t eat too many snacks, or wait to eat until you get home instead of going through the drive-through, you are less likely to become obese. If you choose to delay your fun by studying instead of going out with your friends, you are more likely to get higher test scores.

Later experiments suggested that the children who were able to delay gratification grew up into adults who had better impulse control.

In other words, they were better able to control and regulate themselves: they had better self-control. Their brain activity showed that they were using techniques such as distracting themselves to avoid thinking about the reward, or deliberately thinking about an alternative. Those who found it harder to resist temptation were more likely to think about the thing that they wanted, especially focusing on its desirable properties.

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Developing the Ability to Delay Gratification

Self-control and self-regulation are skills that can be learned. It is also possible to learn to delay gratification. This is true even for people who are neurodiverse, and have conditions that make it harder to manage impulsivity, such as ADHD.

The issue is simply a matter of learning (or training yourself) that (1) delaying gratification brings a greater reward, and (2) you have the ability to wait or resist temptation.

In other words, you can learn—but you have to believe that it is worthwhile to do so.

There are some techniques that you can use to help yourself to delay gratification.

1. Distraction techniques

First, you can think about something else. The children who succeeded in the Stanford experiments did things like hiding under the table, playing, singing songs, or covering their eyes.

Second, you can change how you think about the potential reward. The successful children in the Stanford experiment reported that they tried thinking about the marshmallow as a ball of cotton wool, focusing on its appearance, rather than its likely taste and texture. This is known as considering the ‘cool’ (intellectual) aspects, rather than the ‘hot’ (emotional) ones. Other experiments have shown that thinking about the taste and texture of popcorn can make it easier to resist a reward of chocolate or sweets (candy). This is also a form of distraction.

What is interesting about this is that once you have learned these techniques, and become practised at using them, you will retain the ability into the longer term. Most research shows that children start to learn how to delay gratification by the age of around five. After that, their ability does not really change until they are much, much older—70 or 80 years old, when cognitive decline sets in.

2. Give yourself the right ‘later’ reward

Later research uncovered some other interesting aspects of delayed gratification, which also help to provide strategies.

First, being able to delay gratification absolutely depends on the value placed on the reward.

If you don’t want the initial reward, it is not at all hard to resist it. However, if you don’t want the end reward, it’s very hard to care about the importance of resisting.

That doesn’t really make sense with the marshmallow, but it makes more sense if you think about studying.

If you need to study, but you want to go out with your friends, you may need something really good to reward yourself with later. It’s no good saying that you’ll go out with your friends another time, because it’s not specific, and it’s no better than going now. Instead, you could agree with your friends that if you all study until your exams—and don’t go out socially until they are over—then you’ll do something really good together once the exams are finished: a holiday, perhaps, or a trip somewhere special.

Research also showed that the size of the required reward was highly individual.

When people were offered particular amounts of money as rewards, the threshold for delaying varied considerably between people.

3. Positive rewards work better than negative

Interestingly, positive rewards are much more motivating towards delayed gratification.

Experiments with an unpleasant noise found that people were more likely to turn off the noise rapidly even if it returned sooner. Thinking about the consequences of failing your exams is therefore less likely to be motivating than promising yourself a reward for studying.

However, there is a caveat to this. If the consequences of failure are likely to result in a very clear loss to you, such as the failure to get a particular job, or get into your chosen university, this can be very motivating. This is because we tend to be loss-averse: we are more interested in not losing something than in what we might gain.

4. Keep it realistic and timely

SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely) goals are not always motivating.

However, they do have some uses, and it turns out that they work very well if you are trying to delay gratification.

The two elements that are particularly important are being realistic, and having a very precise timeframe. In the Stanford experiment, the children probably didn’t fully understand how long they would have to wait, but they did know that it wouldn’t be very long. The fact that several children managed to wait shows that it was realistic.

Setting yourself a SMART goal related to deferred rewards works because you know exactly how long you have to wait, and what you have to do to get the reward. You also know that the goal is realistic and achievable—and probably fairly short-term.

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In Conclusion...

Fundamentally, to be able to delay gratification, you have to train yourself to believe that you can wait, and that the wait will be worthwhile.

To train yourself in this belief, the key is to start with small things. Make it easy for yourself to learn this new habit. Imprint it onto your brain in small steps, one chocolate bar (or marshmallow) at a time. Don’t try to make big steps, just focus on small improvements: a few minutes’ delay is still a few minutes. You can build up to longer delays.

All the techniques on this page will help—but you have to hold tight to this goal. Once you start working towards that, your ability will develop rapidly. However, you also have to remember that your environment, and your emotions, can derail your ability to delay gratification. That said, a single failure is no reason to abandon the effort to learn this important skill.

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