When you eat a donut or drink a beer, your reward is immediate.
The pleasure centers of your brain are hijacked and your reward for allowing the hijacking are gushes of dopamine.
When you scroll social media or give in to that incessant pull to pick up your phone, your reward is immediate.
The same hijacking and dopamine exchange takes place.
When your reward is immediate, your cost is delayed.
Build a life around immediate rewards, and the costs will vastly outweigh the short-term rewards that preceded them.
The solution is to inverse the equation.
Working out has an immediate cost of your time and energy.
Eating some eggs instead of the donut has an immediate cost of your willpower and an opportunity cost of the dopamine rush.
Picking up a book instead of your phone has an immediate cost of your willpower and an opportunity cost of the dopamine rush.
When your cost is immediate, your reward is delayed.
Build a life around delayed rewards, and the costs will seem nominal to the outsized long-term rewards that follow.
If you find value in the things I publish here, it’d mean the world if you’d share it with someone else. It’s the only way this space and community continues to grow.
✌️ and ❤️,
Adam Griffin