6.15.26 - Bar Prep Day 5: It's time to LOCK IN
I'm going to be fine and pass the bar. But lowkey I have to lock in.
Thought of the day: My ability to delay gratification has rationally diminished as (1) the future becomes far less certain (2) I have acute data points where I delayed gratification a lot and had nothing to show for it (3) I refused to delay gratification and it led to exceptional outcomes.
Delaying gratification is generally good, and sometimes presented as an unqualified good to young people. i think this is increasing as the world gets more competitive. "If you focus on school now, girls etc. will flock to you later when you're successful." "If you study now, you'll have time for fun later." "Bro if you just lock in in your twenties, your thirties can be a blast, a man's life really starts at thirty." ( I really hate the last meme that I've been seeing go around the "manosphere").
I personally just never bought into any of these narrative, and have generally been present-oriented except for acute bursts here and there. I am, as economists say, pretty high time preference. I would say that when I was young, this was a problem of temperament/discipline/ADHD. I couldn't be more conscientious, long-term in my thinking even if I tried. By age 22ish, I would say I was capable of delaying gratification if I believed it was necessary. I said no to social outings plenty of times to study for the LSAT, did hard work at a job I didn't necessarily care about because I knew it would pay off as far as references, etc. For the most part, these paid off. Hard work generally pays off. After this point, it wasn't so much a matter of ability to delay gratification but whether I really thought it was worth it.
This is because I have noticed a lot of areas where people delayed gratification and didn't see benefits. People who studied more/harder, only to get to the same place as crammers. People who didn't do certain fun things in college because they wanted to focus on studies, avoid getting into trouble--only to see friends get into pretty extreme trouble (like going to jail) with little to no long-term consequences. Our own president is evidence that grit, impulsiveness, and intuition can thoroughly beat foreward planning and careful risk management (I think this is especially true in foreign policy, where a lot consequences are externalized, and brinksmanship gets you to substantively the same place as careful diplomacy in many instances--I think about his whole episode with North Korea a lot, and how he usually converges to a more institutional position through a different decision-making mechanism--see, e.g., Ukraine, Israel, etc.).
This is all to say, I am skeptical of delaying gratification as a baseline rule, and I get more skeptical the older you get. LIfe is like rolling towards a cliff. It's a long road, but the speed is unpredictable and the ground may also fall out under you. But the ultimate destination is locked in regardless. You obviously don't want to a period past the cliff. Like oversaving for retirement and then just dying of prostate cancer. That's really stupid.
Also, your capacity for positive utility in a lot of areas falls off really fast. There are things you just can't do at 40 that you can do at 26.
So the older you get, every day, delaying gratification makes less sense. This is a bit funny, because your capacity for delaying gratification increases (because frontal lobe development, more to lose, more risk aversion with age) as it makes less sense. The best time to delay gratification is when youre a kid. Very high RoI to not playing outside and spending hours becoming a piano prodigy or a gymast or a ballet dancer. There are short windows to become the world's best at these things. But your capacity to do so is very low so it has to be imposed on you. But what you miss out on (watching Power Ranger, doing nonsense) for a few years are not irreplacable experiences. I would have traded whatever the fuck I was doing at three years old (rewatching VHS tapes) to doing intensive gymnastics or something.
College it makes sense to delay gratification, but its more debateable. Simply because a lot of very high RoI interactions and conncections and discovery of self happens when doing the opposit.
Now mid to late twenties, I actually think delaying gratification makes less sense than it did in college. A lot of your future trajectory is more baked in, your floor and ceiling have narrowed quite a bit. That's just how life is. Potential transforms to reality. This isn't a sad thing, it's good. Now obviously there are huge exceptions--but I'm talking the average Joe here. A few hours in college extra studying for an exam can appreciably change opportunity sets available to you. A few hours when your career is set in your 20s usually does not.
So I think its good to rebalance towards cashing in on hard work a bit more, rather than continuinally investing in the future.
Why do I say all of this?
I feel that under current optimiziation culture, this wisdom has been lost--particularly among yuppies. Gen Z is working out more, drinking less, credential-maxxing. It feels like people are bracing and preparing for a later season.
This tweet captures it best:
https://x.com/youngwerther123/status/2063734125979136487?s=42
I think this shift in the culture doesn't make a lot of sense, and it would actually make more sense for something like slacker-culture to make a resurgence.
First, because the future is incredibly uncertain right now. Mainly because of AI. No one has any fucking clue what the labor market will look like or how society at large will be structured. So it makes sense to invest in relationships, fulfillment--things that I generally don't associate with delaying gratification. These are things that will make you resilient against future shocks. Not trying to prevent becoming part of the "permanent underclass." Again, we're living through an industrial revolution scale transformation, and I think what will matter the most is your network and a coherent sense of purpose.
Second, there are way too many data points where people delay gratification with nothing to show for it. I have personal anecdotes, but we can talk about boomers more generally. A lot of them lived pretty stupid 9-5 jobs, and a great deal of them delayed gratification until retirement. But, I'd bet most of their wealth come from housing value increases which wasn't the fruit of their labor efforts but some massive policy failure that vew of them were involved with. I'm sure there a tons of examples of people who would have been just find working 75% as much as they did because of the cushion housing value gave them.
Also, when you have people being too future oriented, worrying about money and future security, they neglect the prsent and don't engage in stewardship. As a result, boomers destroyed society in the meantime while they were working their nine to fives. They didn't slow down enough to look around and ask, what the hell is actually happening? Oh, my kid is in his room all day playing video games? Ah, kids these days. What are you gonna do. Oh well, time to get back to work.
And what can they do now? Go on cruises? Travel? Its fucking dumb. They delayed gratification and the world they're leaving us is poorer, more unstable, les happy, and all they can do now is consume in their old age.
Being too future oriented has real costs.
And thirdly, again, there are far too many examples of people refusing to delay gratification and it leading to exceptional outcomes. People who didn't do things as a means to an end, but just did things they wanted, did things their way, and where every one of their decisions was justifiable in terms of present utility, and it worked out. I think the President is a good example of this (not a role model in other respects). There are others. Like most really successful artists. Tarantino. Louis CK. Nardwuar. Dave Chappele. Uhhh, probably some athletes but I don't watch sports. People who just did what they love and refused to do anything else even when it didn't make much sense. We usually call these people who "don't give up on their dreams" but really I think of them as people who just cannot delay gratification--they have to do be doing what they want to do right now--they're PRESENT-maxxing. Their work is a form of consumption. And it works out handsomely for them.
These are not typical inspirations for attorneys and white collars professionals. But I think we should learn from artist types. I try and ask myself with everything I do, is this good on its own terms, is this something valuable to me now, or is ONLY for the future? If its the latter, I do not do it. See exercise is something that has present consumption value (I enjoy doing it), AND its good for future me. Studying, similarly, is both consumption and investment. This is the golden spot. But too many people I know do things that are only future investment. LIke my friends who are doing law, hate it, but want to do it for the money. That's retarded! What if you died tomorrow!
Everything you do, should be at least a LITTLE bit a form of consumption. By consumption I mean, you would pay to do some element of it, you gain some personal pleasure out of it. In the absence of me becoming a lawyer, and wanting to make money in the future, I would probably pay some money/time to learn about the law. Like, I watch YouTube videos on particle physics and shit right now, and I bought and read that book "The Elegant Universe." That's pure consumption. That has no instrumental value to me in the future. I will not work in particle physics. If I went into computers, I would probably pick up a book on legal history at some point, or watch Legal Eagle videos. That's evidence to me that studying for the bar is a form of consumption, in part, that's why I'm okay with it.
I guess that's my thesis. Everything you do ever (that's for your self, things change and this whole essays premises change when youre doing things for OTHERS...that can justify truly negative utility. Like I don't think jesus being crucified was a form of consumption) should be a form of consumption, it should be a little bit present-oriented. I think I'm comfortable that practicing law will be a form of consumption for me.
Back to bar prep.
knxnts