“The Plans of the Diligent”: Patience and Delayed Reward

Proverbs repeatedly contrasts the diligent and the hasty, and the steady gatherer and the get-rich-quick schemer. The ant prepares her food in summer (Prov. 6:6–8). The diligent man plans. The hasty man grabs. What Proverbs describes is a habit of patience: giving up a smaller reward now for a larger one later.

The marshmallow test, then and now. In the famous studies led by Walter Mischel, preschoolers chose between one treat now and two later. Casey and colleagues (2011) brought back about 60 of those original participants, now in their mid-forties. Those who had struggled to wait as preschoolers, and had shown low self-control in their twenties and thirties, still had more trouble holding back a response to appealing cues, such as happy faces, though not to neutral or fearful ones. In a subset of 26 who were scanned, the prefrontal cortex distinguished more clearly between when to act and when to hold back in the high delayers. A reward region, the ventral striatum, was more strongly engaged in the low delayers.

But the effect is smaller than once claimed. Watts, Duncan, and Quan (2018) repeated the marshmallow study with a larger sample, focusing on children whose mothers had not finished college. They found that waiting longer at age 4 did predict achievement at age 15, but the link was only half the size of the original findings. After accounting for family background, early cognitive ability, and the home environment, it shrank by two-thirds. Links to behavior at 15 were small and rarely significant. Self-control matters, but a single test at age four is not destiny. The larger Dunedin cohort study described in Addition 15 found that a broad measure of childhood self-control predicted adult finances and health (Moffitt et al., 2011).

What the studies cannot tell us. These studies measure a trait, partly shaped by family circumstances, not diligence as a moral habit that can be grown by grace and practice. The convergence is with the proverb’s direction, not its certainty. Patient, planned effort tends to lead to advantage, and haste tends to cost.

Practice

Living it out

Five practices drawn from this passage. Each says how strong the research behind it is. What the labels mean.

1. 1

   Make a plan before you spend or invest

   Write down a monthly budget and a savings goal with your wife.

   ModerateModerate that childhood self-control predicts adult finances (Moffitt et al., 2011). Budgeting itself was not tested.
2. 2

   Wait before you grab

   When an opportunity promises quick gain, wait a week and ask a wise friend.

   EarlyEarly, by inference from the delay research above (Casey et al., 2011). The practice is untested.
3. 3

   Reduce the pull of “hot” cues

   Self-control struggles were strongest with appealing cues, so keep those cues out of sight: the shopping app, the betting site, the snack drawer.

   ModerateLow delayers had trouble specifically with alluring cues (Casey et al., 2011). Fits Addition 15.
4. 4

   Don’t write off a child, or yourself

   Early self-control predicts some outcomes, but much less than once thought, and family environment matters a great deal.

   StrongStrong that the marshmallow effect is smaller than first reported (Watts et al., 2018).
5. 5

   Build diligence in small, daily steps

   Pick one task you tend to rush, and do it slowly and well each day for a month.

   ObedienceObedience. Commended by Scripture (Prov. 6:6–8; Col. 3:23). The paper’s habit research (Bonus section) is related.

Studies cited on this page3

1. ↗ Casey, B. J., Somerville, L. H., Gotlib, I. H., Ayduk, O., Franklin, N. T., Askren, M. K., Jonides, J., Berman, M. G., Wilson, N. L., Teslovich, T., Glover, G., Zayas, V., Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (2011). Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(36), 14998–15003. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1108561108
2. ↗ Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Poulton, R., Roberts, B. W., Ross, S., Sears, M. R., Thomson, W. M., & Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 2693–2698. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1010076108
3. ↗ Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the marshmallow test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159–1177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661