Delayed gratification is a skill that is desperately needed…and it’s becoming more and more rare in the age of YouTube and social media. Why work first if you can do something fun now?

Well, I learned delayed gratification when I was young—and it was hard. But it prepared me to succeed in life in a way that nothing else could.

From Rocks to Riches

My friend Jeff Sandefer had a crazy experience when he was young that taught him the value of hard work and delayed gratification.

Jeff was inspired to start his first real business when he was 13 years old. All he wanted was to get out of the hot sun because his father made him work in the oil fields.

One day, his boss, Armando, said, “I want you to take all the rocks over on that side of the yard” – and they were big rocks – “and I want you to move them to the other side of the yard.” It was like a football field away. All morning, Jeff would take one big rock and carry it over to the other end of the field and then pick up another rock and do the same thing. Finally, about lunchtime, he finished.

Armando came out and he shook his head. He said, “Oh, I’ve made a terrible mistake. I have decided I liked the rocks back where they were.” So Jeff spent all afternoon moving rocks again. That day, he said, “I’m never going to work for anyone else again. I’m going to work for myself.”

Jeff’s job at the time was painting big oil and gas storage tanks out in the countryside. Armando would pay people by the hour, so they didn’t work very hard because the slower they worked, the more money they made.

Jeff had a different idea about how to motivate people to work more efficiently. He started his own business where he paid people for every tank they painted instead of paying them by the hour.

Armando’s group only painted one tank every three days. Jeff’s group painted three tanks every day, so they were nine times more efficient. The summer Jeff’s business started, they had 80% profit margins. There were four crews working, and Jeff and his partner took home $100,000. And that was in the 1970s—that would be like making around $500,000 today.

You see, Jeff realized he never wanted to work for someone else again after what Armando made him do. But he didn’t give up in the middle of moving those rocks. Instead, he pushed through that challenge and learned valuable lessons from it.

Finally, he came up with the idea to start his own successful business, and he reaped the fruit of his delayed gratification. If he had left his job when things got hard, he might never have had the opportunity to begin his first business.

Have Another Cookie

I gave two of my kids, a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy, a small cookie at the dinner table. I said, “Okay, guys. Here’s the rules. You can eat this cookie any time you want to. But if you can wait for three minutes, I’ll give you another cookie. Do you want to eat this one now or do you want to wait for the other cookie?

They both said, “I’ll wait for the other cookie.” I set the timer for three minutes and sat down with them. They were watching the timer and getting nervous and antsy. After a minute, they were staring at the cookie and struggling. I said, “You only have a couple minutes left. You can do it.”

Both of them had a hard time, but they got there. I rewarded them each with a second cookie. I said, “Congratulations! Good job having delayed gratification, kids!”

“Do you want a third cookie?” I added. “If you wait three more minutes, I’ll give you a third cookie.” My little girl’s eyes lit up and she said, “Absolutely! I want all the cookies. I’ll wait as long as I have to.” Her younger brother, on the other hand, shook his head and started eating his two cookies.

After the next three minutes were over, I gave my daughter a third cookie. My son looked at her and said, “I want a cookie!” I responded, “Sorry. You decided to eat your cookies instead of waiting for another cookie.” He almost started tearing up, realizing that all he had needed to do was wait a little longer and he could have had that extra cookie. Next time we play this game, he’s definitely going to wait.

This game was inspired by the Stanford marshmallow experiment. The 1972 study followed each kid for 40 years after the experiment and found that kids who were willing to wait 15 minutes in order to receive a second marshmallow wound up having higher SAT scores, lower likelihood of substance abuse, lower levels of obesity, healthier responses to stress, and better social skills later in life.

That shows you the power of delayed gratification.

Teach your kids delayed gratification by setting up scenarios where they can practice delaying their gratification. For example, set up a goal as a family, like going on a trip or going out to dinner or doing something fun. Inspire your kids to delay gratification by giving them money to contribute towards that thing.

Say your kids really want to go to Disneyland. Tell them to find chores to do around the house and offer them money for those chores, teaching them to delay gratification by saving it for Disneyland rather than spending it now.

It’s really great to give your kids free rein to find something around the house that needs to be done and then asking you how much you’ll pay them to do it. You can foster negotiation skills through this practice.

Another way to instill delayed gratification is to have your kids start a business. Instead of taking their profit and immediately spending it on something, they’ll begin to realize the importance of reinvesting in the business.

It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at doing something, and a lot of people quit too early or get distracted by other things. To become excellent at something, you have to spend the time. You have to persevere and work harder than everyone else. I go above and beyond in everything in my life in order to become excellent at what I do. I focus on delayed gratification because I’m building for the future.

In one of my businesses, I had a lot of investors bail in the first year and get double their investment back. Now, that investment in Apex is worth over 300 times as much. If those people had stuck it out for eight more years, they would have reaped the benefits. That’s the epitome of what delayed gratification can do.

 

What other critical life skills can kids gain from entrepreneurship? Click here to find out.