40 Years of Stanford Research Found That People With This One Quality Are More Likely to Succeed. The experiment began by bringing each child into a private room, sitting them down in a chair, and placing a marshmallow on the table in front of them. Published in 1972, this popular study became known as The Marshmallow Experiment, but it wasn't the treat that made it famous. The interesting part came years later.

40 Years of Stanford Research Found That People With This One Quality Are More Likely to Succeed. The experiment began by bringing each child into a private room, sitting them down in a chair, and placing a marshmallow on the table in front of them. Published in 1972, this popular study became known as The Marshmallow Experiment, but it wasn't the treat that made it famous. The interesting part came years later.

The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures. The researchers followed each child for more than 40 years and over and over again, the group who waited patiently for the second marshmallow succeeded in whatever capacity they were measuring. This series of experiments proved that the ability to delay gratification was critical for success in life.

Success usually comes down to choosing the pain of discipline over the ease of distraction. And that’s exactly what delayed gratification is all about. Did some children naturally have more self-control, and thus were destined for success? Or can you learn to develop this important trait? You can imagine the impact these experiences had on the marshmallow test. The children in the unreliable group had no reason to trust that the researchers would bring a second marshmallow and thus they didn’t wait very long to eat the first one. Meanwhile, the children in the second group were training their brains to see delayed gratification as a positive. Every time the researcher made a promise and then delivered on it, the child's brain registered two things: 1) waiting for gratification is worth it and 2) I have the capability to wait.

The child's ability to delay gratification and display self-control was not a predetermined trait but rather was impacted by the experiences and environment that surrounded them. In fact, the effects of the environment were almost instantaneous. Just a few minutes of reliable or unreliable experiences were enough to push the actions of each child in one direction or another. (note: So important.)

Success in nearly every field requires you to ignore doing something easier (delaying gratification) in favor of doing something harder. The key takeaway here is that even if you don't feel like you're good at delaying gratification now, you can train yourself to become better simply by making a few small improvements. By promising something small and then delivering over and over again until your brain says, 1) yes, it's worth it to wait and 2) yes, I have the capability to do this.

The creator economy is in crisis. Now let’s fix it. But just as the gig economy mode of work brought about negative consequences, strong parallels are emerging between the gig economy and creator economy, rooted in the commoditization of work and erosion of worker leverage. There is an immense power imbalance between platforms and creators, who are reliant on platforms for distribution. But unless we radically change the foundation of the creator economy—how creators find and connect to a community in the first place—these solutions are incremental at best and don’t create a fundamental unlock for the issues plaguing the current creator economy.

As we’ve traveled up the adoption S-curve, social media platforms have shifted from supporting creator individuality to commoditizing creators in order to maintain their grasp on user attention, a necessary ingredient for advertising-based business models. Today, with the shift to platform-mediated work, capital is evolving once more to ownership of data that enables productivity. The creator economy is marked by the rise of a small number of firms that have accumulated capital and effectively control the means of production and distribution. While online platforms have unlocked the traditional gatekeepers of the creative world, they also serve as the access chokepoints of a new type of capital. The dominant centralized creator platforms own the data, social graphs, and end-user relationships—all of which creators need in order to access audiences and income. Furthermore, in the majority of cases, this type of capital cannot be easily ported over to external, creator-owned properties.

Parallel problems in the gig and creator economies include over-supply and competition between creators, exploitation of creator labor, insecurity and volatility, and intermediation and taxation. These problems hinder the organization and activism among creators and contribute to burnout and job insecurity. However, there are actionable steps we can take to build a healthier creator economy.

1. Ownership and portability: Creators should prioritize owning a neutral channel of communication with their audiences and owning the direct monetization relationship with end-users. Additionally, platforms should respect creators' rights to their content and allow easy portability to external, creator-owned properties.

2. Credibly neutral creator mechanisms: Mechanisms that govern creator communities should be open-source, publicly verifiable, simple, and have minimal changes. This ensures fairness and transparency in decision-making processes.

3. Creator-friendly business models: Platforms should offer more direct monetization models that empower creators to align their content with what end-users value. This can create a middle class of creators and reduce the active effort needed to maintain financial success, mitigating burnout.

Furthermore, turning stakeholders into shareholders through creator- and user-owned platforms can better align the interests of platforms with creators. This confers economic and governance rights to creators and users, giving them a say in product strategy, leadership, and profit allocation.

Creator DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) are another solution that can foster creator interdependence and solidarity. These organizations allow creators with a shared mission to come together, pooling their resources and harnessing collective intelligence for decision-making.

In conclusion, both delayed gratification and addressing the issues in the creator economy require a shift in mindset and a commitment to long-term success. By training ourselves to delay gratification and making systemic changes to empower creators, we can create a more equitable and sustainable future for both individuals and the creator economy as a whole.