A few days ago, I watched the short TED talk below on the key to success. Simply put, an experiment was done several years back with a group of 4 and 5 year olds. They were left alone in a room with one marshmallow. Their task? Do not eat the marshmallow for 15 minutes. If they could wait, they would get a second marshmallow. Simple, huh? Well, guess what?
One third of the children waited. Two-thirds of the children could not wait. No big surprise, right?
Let’s pan forward about 15 years or so. The researchers went back to look at these kids again. The 1/3 that waited were the most successful in school. The other 2/3 of the students were mostly mediocre at best. Delayed gratification has now been realized as an extremely important element in what we define as “success.”
Great. So what?
Well, we are now in a society that does not allow room for much delayed gratification. We’ve gone from snail mail to email to instant chat. We no longer have to go to the mall to buy those new Sean Jean jeans. Just click online. Memorization is out the window. Google it.
I watched the video and thought about my 6th graders this year. The smart ones, the ones who need no external motivation to be great, would look up from their word problems in math and say something like, “Mr. Childers, this is toooo haaarrrdd! What’s the answer?” (You have to imagine that in a really whiny voice). My response was always the same, “You’ve been working on it for less than 30 seconds. Keep working.” These kids have not learned the skill of working through things, thinking, problem solving, or struggling. Everything has to be instantaneous or they are not interested.
Delayed gratification? Fuh-geta-bout-it.
So, does our instant oriented technological savvy next generation spell the obsolescence of Success? I guess we can check back in 10 or 15 years.
(NOTE: This short video is worth the watching just for the video of one little girl toward the end. You will know her when you see her.)