Immediate vs Delayed Reward

Frédéric Bastiat, a French economist, once said ‘It almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa’.

What he meant is that almost all good things that happen in the present have bad consequences in the future. And all the hard things that you don’t want to do in the present have a good consequence in the future.

This is what we call immediate and delayed rewards. What most people want is the delayed rewards but they wouldn’t want to put in the effort. So, they rather comply with the immediate rewards.

A general rule that you can follow; 

“The more immediate pleasure you get, the stronger you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.” 

This is a way to check yourself and understand the reason why some behavior is repeated and why others are avoided. 

A way to turn immediate rewards to your advantage is through reinforcement, which is the process of using an immediate reward as a reward for accomplishing a task that you don’t want to do. This method involves incentives to make it satisfying when you finish. 

Let’s say you want to read a book but you avoid it because it’s boring. What you can do is use incentives like candy or chocolate to reward yourself for reading 5 pages. 

• For every 5 pages I have read, I may eat one piece of chocolate.

And if you read more, you can allow yourself to get a bigger reward.

• If I read 10 pages instead of 5, I allow myself to eat 3 pieces of chocolate.

Reinforcement is a great way to keep motivation for the short term. 

But remember; “Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.”

You can also use this method to avoid recurring bad habits. 

So, to get rid of bad habits, you can use incentives to reward yourself for stopping before you start with your bad habits. 

Reinforcement can be powerful as it gives you visible rewards that makes it satisfying for not starting your bad habit.