Achieving Goals, Immediate Gratification, Climbing Everest

How Time Measurements Affect Goals

Dr. Daphna Oyserman  is Dean’s Professor, Department of Psychology, and Professor of Education and of Communication at the University of Southern California. A recent study conducted by Dr. Neil A. Lewis and Dr. Daphna Oyserman shows that when we start to think of time in smaller units, we’re more likely to start planning earlier.

Immediate Gratification Versus Delayed Gratification

Kaitlin Woolley is a candidate at the University of Chicago school of Business. She joined the marketing faculty at Cornell University as an assistant professor in 2015. The importance of delaying gratification is universally recognized and being able to forgo immediate benefits in order to achieve larger goals in the future is viewed as a key skill. For example, consider the classic “marshmallow test” experiment: children’s ability to delay eating one marshmallow so that they can get two marshmallows later is linked to a number of positive life outcomes, including academic success and healthy relationships. But what about the importance of immediate gratification? Kaitlin Woolley discusses what separates goals we achieve from the ones that we don’t. 

Climbing Mt. Everest 

Bart Williams is a Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor from Salt Lake City. He is an avid mountain climber. Do you still have dreams and goals from when you were a child that you haven’t accomplished yet? As we get older and our families grow up, sometimes it seems like our life goals are just dreams of the past. But it’s never too late to do what you want with your life. Bart Williams is a great example of this and shares his experience achieving his dream of climbing Mount Everest at age 61.