Distractions

So what makes you succeed? Delaying pleasure, if you believe the afore-mentioned marshmallow test. The key to being able to resist temptation and delay gratification is distraction. More fundamentally, it is distraction from feeling sad or thinking about death. Walter Mischel, 84, the guy who came up with the marshmallow test said in a recent New York Times interview:

“It’s to keep living in a way one wants to live and work; to distract constructively; to distract in ways that are in themselves satisfying; to do things that are intrinsically gratifying...Melancholy is not one of my emotions. Quite seriously, I don’t do melancholy. It’s a miserable way to be.”

Constructive distraction sounds good. But what does a man who never wants to acknowledge sadness mean by constructive distraction? 


Society frowns upon those who distract themselves by doing drugs, partying like crazy, or having too much sex.  Jumping off mountain tops in crazy flying suits or living with grizzly bears are extreme distractions, barely more acceptable than drugs. These can dEstrUct, if taken to the extreme, rather than dIstrAct.  (Oh what a few vowel changes can do...). Surely, Mr. Mischel wouldn't approve. But when very well-educated straight A students choose their distraction to be working 80-plus hour weeks at a prestigious law firm or bank performing thankless (and often pointless) tasks then society gives a lot of positive reinforcement. And you don't have the time or the mental capacity for almost anything else. Your distraction is complete. It doesn't even matter if you get a little bit destroyed every day.