“Marshmallow Experiment” is an amazing study conducted by Walter Mischel, a professor of psychology at Stanford University in the late sixties. This study attempted to evaluate the ability of four year old children to delay their gratification. The children were called to a room and were offered a piece of marshmallow. They were told that they could eat it immediately or if they were willing to wait till the researcher came back in a few minutes, they could have two pieces.
Some kids ate the marshmallows immediately, some waited for few seconds and few of them could wait more than 15 minutes for the researcher to return so that they could claim their prize for delaying their gratification. Walter was trying to study the mental process of this delayed gratification. After a few years, he attempted to track the performance of these children to see if there was any correlation between ability to delay gratification and their subsequent performance. The results were exceedingly surprising. He observed a very high degree of correlation between self control and performance parameters, including SAT scores. This and the related studies have shown that performance was more dependent on self control than IQ.
It does not mean that self control is an inborn trait and cannot be learned and improved upon. There were children in the original sample, who had shown poor self control as children but grew up to have high degree of self control. (Look up this excellent article which discusses this issue in detail)
Let us take this learning to an adult, rather corporate context. Most of our jobs places two kinds of demands on us. These can be described as maintenance roles and developmental roles. Maintenance roles are usually clearly defined, they need immediate attention, the results are immediately visible and no doubt they are urgent. Developmental roles less defined, results are uncertain, results take long time to materialize and often not urgent.
Some of us let ourselves to be caught up with these urgent matters day in and day out. We practically have no time even to breathe. We have hundreds of reasons why we cannot take up any developmental activities now; whether it is reading up on related subjects, taking up a process re-engineering exercise, experimenting with a new technology tool or even finding some time to build relationships.
On the other hand, some of us will find, rather cheat, some time from our busy schedule to take up some assignments or experiments which may not be in the radar of priorities. An idea has caught our attention and we are willing to chug away at it; finding few free moments from our busy schedules. We are not sure what will come out of it. But we know we are searching for a possible tool, working on an idea that in the long run could make a difference.
If we look around we will see that most of the time people who have build something substantial, made a difference and provided visionary leadership are those who had the determination to see beyond what is urgent and willing to search for and toil for ways to make a difference. This also is nothing but a matter of self control. That may be why “Lead us not to temptation” is a key element in the Lord’s Prayer.
“There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud” -- Carl Sandburg, American Writer, Editor, and Poet
As usual well written article. Easy to relate to and understand the depth of it. Feel like sharing something here. The possibility of taking up a lower priority development work and seeing beyond what is urgent and cheat the schedule to accomplish the same is far more if such thing originates out of something that interests the one pursuing it. Many a times, while such things are being done, we expect others to co-operate with us. However, we completely miss the point that others may also have something else in their mind and want to pursue that which would clash with what we consider as developmental activity and set our agenda. While they have same passion for their ideas and developmental agenda, we feel that they are disinterested beyond catering to the urgent issues.
ReplyDeleteCould think in this details because of the article. Thanks.
That was a very interesting post. All religions stress on the importance of self control and we now have scientific evidence to prove its efficacy, right?
ReplyDelete