I noticed that in western culture most people are into instant gratification. In capitalist cultures entertainment takes up most of an average person’s day. Social media, extensive amounts on the internet, prolonged hours of videogames, etc.
I’ve learned about a few things that would cut down on this, such as mostly listening to nature sounds and ambience rather than stimulating music, going outside and connecting to nature, and deleting social media. What other tips and advice would help reduce instant gratification?
Also, what cultures aren’t dominated by instant gratification? How is there way of life, and what sources could bring more information about them?
Don’t try to eliminate instant gratification outright, try delaying it instead. Between preparing a meal and enjoying it, clean up the kitchen first, go for a short walk, prepare a coffee, and eat a salad or a raw vegetable before starting. Before you reach for social media, exercise just a little, read a few pages from a book, solve a puzzle, or do a language lesson. At the start, allow just 3 minutes for each of these routines, if one of them ends up satisfying or captivating you, or you just need more time for it, take it. Don’t try imposing a hard time limit on the gratification that follows because you will end up breaking it, instead make it a rule that you only engage with the gratification itself once your checklist of conditions is all met. As time goes on, queue up more and more of the things you want to learn or accomplish inside that checklist, and your day - and eventually your week - will begin to become exhausted through meaningful or at least useful activities and structure itself, and this structure will depend less and less on the promise of an actual instant gratification at the end.
This is actually brilliant! It reminds me of the WPP method, it gets work done without feeling guilty about long hours of entertainment, and it makes the gratification so much sweeter. You’ll always get that feeling of relaxing after work.