Posts Tagged ‘influence’

Could the ability to restrain yourself from eating one marshmallow make a difference between struggling through life and the ability to retire wealthy and early? Yes it can, according to a study done in the the 1960′s by Stanford University psychology researcher, Michael Mischel. The study tested 4-year old children’s ability to delay gratification. The researcher then placed a marshmallow in front of the child and gave him/her two options. The child could eat the marshmallow, or he/she could wait until the doctor came back from an errand and the child would receive two marshmallows. Only 1/3 of the children were able to wait until the researcher returned. I read the story in the book Influencer: The power to Change Anything (a book I would highly recommend by the way), but you can also find more details on the story here.

I know, it doesn’t really seem like a big deal right. Well, they followed these kids into their adulthood and it turned out that the children who were able to delay gratification and wait for the second marshmallow were more successful, had high paying jobs, and tended to be more happy people than the ones who choose to eat the marshmallow. Think about it. The ability to delay gratification means you can save and invest when others are spending money on various things they don’t really need, you can control what you eat, make yourself exercise, push yourself through school when others are partying. This one small behavior has the ability to completely change your life. I know, it is much harder than I make it sound. Luckily, according to the book, Influencer, this behavior can be learned. Since the two books have a lot of similar ideas, I would also encourage you to read Made to Stick.

However, in some cases it really is simple. Most people give up on investing and even saving because they feel it is too difficult. But put in the context of the marshmallow story, finance and investing is really not eating one marshmallow so you can have two. You don’t spend your money, put it in some type of investment, and then it becomes more. The behavior that has to change is the “not spending” part. But, as i mentioned in an earlier post, it gets much easier once you get used to it.

Related articles

• one marshmallow, or two? – the marshmallow study, conducted in the 1960’s by stanford university psychology researcher michael mischel,. demonstrated how important self-discipline is to lifelong success. he started his longitudinal study by offering a group of …
• The Marshmellow Test – [Editor’s note: This is an op-ed by Perry Wu, chief executive of BitGravity, a content distribution company, a long-time entrepreneur and former venture capitalist.] I was up in the mountains this past weekend, watching the kids run …

I recently went to see a presentation by Garr Reynolds, titled “Presentation Zen” and was quite inspired by the simplicity and innovativeness of his slides. You can view his website here. Though the slides were extremely simple, many times without any words at all, I was more moved then I had ever been by a presentation. After the event, I started reading (listening to) books about creativity and simplicity. The first of which was an audio book titled What is Zen by D.T. Suzuki. While listening to the audio program I was thinking how many times the best solution to problem is the most simplistic one. How many of the ideas the effective methods I have learned were truly simple.

Most seem to have forgotten this principle of simplicity. Even here in Japan, where the culture has been greatly influenced by Zen ideas. Tokyo is full of technology, complex railways, crowded shopping malls. Many Japanese houses are now over-filled with items and I think Japanese fashion is among the most complex in the world. People feel they need to be able to multi-task to be efficient. However, there are now many studies showing that it is much more efficient to focus on one task at a time. Try it at work and see if it is the case for you. It is hard to focus on one thing without being distracted, but I have been able to accomplish a lot more by doing so.

The other book I read was titled Creativity in Business by Michael Ray and Rochell Myers. This book was quite different than I thought it would be. It was focused mainly on creativity and how to allow yourself to be more creative. How to be creative in business was more of an afterthought. A main focus in this book was to keep things simple and rely on your “inner essence” or gut feeling. Things I generally didn’t consider when making work decisions. I realize now that my gut feelings have usually been correct if I listen to them, but many times I tend to over-analyse the situation. The idea is to let the idea come to you rather then trying so hard to force the answer

For the last few weeks I have been simplifying my work by breaking it into smaller sections and this has proved to be quite efficient. Allowing the answer to come has actually allowed me to solve problems much quicker. It has also relieved a lot of stress.