Do you remember the marshmallow test? A child sits alone at a table with one marshmallow. They are told that if they can wait a few minutes without eating it, they will get two. The adult leaves the room, and a hidden camera records the most relatable struggles in human psychology.
The original studies, run by Walter Mischel at Stanford from the 1960s onwards, became famous because of what came later. Follow-up work suggested that the children who waited tended to do better in adolescence, academically and in other ways. Delayed gratification became a shorthand for success. Wait now, win later.
I believe in the principle completely. But the full story is more interesting, and more honest, than the version usually told.
What the Bigger Study Found
In 2018, Tyler Watts, Greg Duncan and Haonan Quan revisited the idea with a much larger, more diverse group of more than 900 children. They found the same link at first: children who waited did tend to have stronger results later. But the association was small, and it largely disappeared once the researchers accounted for the child’s family background and early environment. The Association for Psychological Science holds a clear summary of the findings.
In other words, waiting is much easier when you trust that the second marshmallow is actually coming. A child who has learned that promises tend to be kept can afford to wait. A child who has learned that what is on the table now may not be there later is being entirely rational when they eat it.
I find that deeply reassuring, because it means delayed gratification is not a fixed trait. It depends on trust, and on circumstances, and both of those can change.
Where I Started
When I first came to investing, I had plenty of enthusiasm and very little patience. I loved finance, and I wanted results quickly, because I wanted out of a working life that felt like an unequal exchange. That impatience cost me. I took early risks; I did not fully understand and lost real money doing it.
I even tried day trading for a while, convinced that watching the screen more closely would get me there faster. It did not suit me at all. What it taught me, expensively, was that my temperament belonged to the long game, not the next five minutes.
What Waiting Actually Looks Like
The popular image of delayed gratification is heroic restraint, jaw clenched, marshmallow untouched. In practice, on my own investing journey, it has looked far more ordinary.
It looks like sitting in cash for months at a time, doing apparently nothing, while I wait for an opportunity that justifies moving. It looks like leaving investments alone when every headline is urging me to do something. It looks like treating a falling market as a moment to look more closely, rather than a reason to run. And it looks like accepting that the payoff arrives on its own timetable, not mine.
Compounding is delayed gratification written as maths. The early years of investing are the dull ones, where growth is small, and it barely seems worth the effort. The later years are where returns begin to earn returns of their own. I explored the quiet power of simply staying invested in The Boring Basket That Beat My Best Idea. The basket did not win because it was clever. It won because it was left alone.
Discipline Is Built on Trust
The Watts research changed how I think about my own discipline. I did not become more patient through sheer willpower. I became more patient because I gradually built trust in the process. Each time I held on through a difficult period and saw the recovery arrive, the next wait became a little easier. The second marshmallow kept turning up, and so I stopped reaching for the first.
That is also why I think the most useful thing a new investor can do is build small, early evidence for themselves. A modest regular amount, left alone through at least one uncomfortable dip, teaches more about patience than any book. It turns an abstract promise into lived experience.
Still a Work in Progress
I will not pretend I have mastered this. Patience is the thing I am still actively learning, and there are weeks when I check prices more often than any long-term investor has any reason to. My impatience has not disappeared. It has simply lost most of its votes.
What I can tell you is that the waiting has paid me back. Not quickly, and never on the schedule I would have chosen, but reliably enough that I now trust it. The discipline did not make me rich overnight. It made me calm, which in markets turns out to be worth a great deal more.
The Jacqueline Brand — knowledge builds confidence, and confidence builds wealth. This is editorial commentary for information and education only. It is not financial, investment or professional advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any investment. The Jacqueline Brand is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The value of investments can fall as well as rise, and past performance is not a guide to future returns. Figures were correct at the time of publication. Always do your own research and consider speaking to a regulated adviser. Where cryptoassets are discussed, they are high risk and largely unregulated in the UK, and you could lose all the money you invest. The Collection
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