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Living In An Instant Gratification Society

Instant GratificationI want, don’t get. That’s what my parents used to say to me and whilst it may be referring to manners in general, I think its also a good representation of how society used to be 30 or 40 years ago. However, everything’s changed now and its turned into a world where if you want something, you get it – no questions asked.

So how did the original mentality come about? In life, there is general knowledge that you must work for reward. The more reward you’re after, the further you must go to attain it. 40 years ago, the only way you would earn a half decent salary was to study hard at University and take up a draining job which was strenuous but which would give you a good return.

But the rules have changed. The dotcom boom helped to fuel a rising trend for enterprise and business around the world. Whilst its easy to say that these CEO’s did little work, the reality is rather different. Michael Dell had to go through the stresses of starting his computer business “PC’s Limited” out of his dorm room. Richard Branson managed to launch Virgin despite his poor, East-London background.

But as a result of a boom in business and economic welfare, people can now afford to work less for the same amount of money. Not only this, but we expect instant gratification for any work we do, or for any money and time we invest. Consumer goods are a great example of this – want a Mars Bar? Go to your nearest newsagent, pay 40p and walk off with a nice chocolate bar. Now instead of saving this 40p, we’ve all become spending maniacs, wanting to live the high-life whenever possible.

Advertising hasn’t helped this at all. Big budgets for advertisers encouraging consumer spending is causing savings in banks to dwindle, and loans, overdrafts and cases of debt to soar.

Most entrepreneurs are different. We don’t mind investing money into that domain name. We don’t mind paying for a year’s hosting in advance. We don’t mind spending time writing articles when we’re getting no traffic in return. The difference here is that we can see the future return and benefit we’ll be getting after all the hard work. The hard part is retaining the motivation to persist at what we do.

Living in an instant gratification society is hard for us entrepreneurs. Every day, our minds are bombarded with messages that not only can we instantly get what we want, but that we deserve to instantly get it. This may be true for some cases, but if you want to expand and be the next Bill Gates then working for the long-term is vital to future success. Having an investors attitude, being happy with what you have in the present and making peace and harmony your goal with ultimately help you overcome short term gratification.

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