It seems these days that people decorate their homes, choose their friends, food and clothes, determine their career path and employer, and organize their lives all in terms of what looks good on Instagram.

Doesn’t matter if the meal tastes good, as long as it photographs well. The same for everything else.

As long as a story can be spun and curated to impress people who aren’t known, and probably never will be, people will do/buy it.

And if an experience isn’t documented with pictures and posted online it might as well not have happened.

No kidding.

I actually overheard a guy say as much. Apparently his phone’s camera stopped working and he was grousing that the money spent on the trip was wasted.

What a strange world these people live in.

Is it your world?

I’m so glad it’s not mine.

Image credit: Aleks Grynis

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Roy F. Baumeister’s research showing how decision fatigue affects hiring, self-control and is tied to ego-depletion.

Self-control and will power aren’t traits you as much about as you did when I was a kid; these days the focus is on instant gratification, whether it’s a child demanding a treat, an adult looking for a new job or you-name-it.

The question really boils down to whether self-control really offers significant long-term benefits?

Benefits that are substantial enough to stand up to the embarrassing tantrum your child pitches when she doesn’t get what she wants?

In experiments beginning in the late 1960s, the psychologist Walter Mischel tormented preschoolers with the agonizing choice of one marshmallow now or two marshmallows 15 minutes from now. When he followed up decades later, he found that the 4-year-olds who waited for two marshmallows turned into adults who were better adjusted, were less likely to abuse drugs, had higher self-esteem, had better relationships, were better at handling stress, obtained higher degrees and earned more money.

Impressive; certainly enough to at least get parents to think about showing some backbone and helping their kids learn self-control.

But what about those of us who are Millennials, Gen Xers and Boomers? Is our situation hopeless? Are we destined/doomed to careen through life without those benefits if we don’t already have them?

Fear not. According to other research by Baumeister your self-control, AKA, will power, can be toned by exercising it, just like any other muscle—and he wrote a book about it.

In recent years the psychologist Roy F. Baumeister has shown that the force metaphor has a kernel of neurobiological reality. In “Willpower,” he has teamed up with the irreverent New York Times science columnist John Tierney to explain this ingenious research and show how it can enhance our lives.

Wow; buff self-control.

How cool is that?

UPDATE: I just read this article about SpongeBob, which adds an interesting kicker to the research.

In another test, measuring self-control and impulsiveness, kids were rated on how long they could wait before eating snacks presented when the researcher left the room. “SpongeBob” kids waited about 2 1/2 minutes on average, versus at least four minutes for the other two groups.

Image credit: Kirkus Reviews

I’ve written a lot about the problems and difficulties with Gen Y, but I want to make something clear.

Gen Y didn’t raise themselves to feel entitled, require constant praise or expect success for trying their hardest.

Jan left a comment a few weeks ago and I think she speaks for a large number of her generation, “There is a great amount of pressure to earn good grades and gain a GREAT career, as if somehow that is the only way to gain success in our lives. … The present often does not matter, including learning the subject. Students live under this constant pressure to make good grades, with that fear of failure programmed into the back of our minds.” (Please take a moment to read her entire comment.)

Decades ago after my sister had her first child she said, “I know that I’ll do things that mess up my kids, but they damn well won’t be the same things that messed us up,” and they weren’t.

This is normal life, with the previous generation screwing up their kids in some way and the kids eventually sorting it out—or not—and then moving on to the next generation, but it’s changed now.

Greg Jayne is the Sports Editor for my local paper and he summed it up nicely in a column about the people’s attitude towards performance enhancing drugs.

“Last year, Major League Baseball drew 78.6 million spectators to the ballpark… The sport generated about $6 billion in revenue, nearly twice what it generated in 2000 and roughly $20 for every man, woman and child in the United States. … The baseball-watching public simply doesn’t care that much about players who cheat the game. … We live in an era in which style trumps substance, and the superficial is held in such high regard that we all are diminished. Is there any reason to think that baseball should be different? Is there any reason to express moral outrage when somebody is trying to improve his performance and help his team win? That is, after all, the ethos of the time.”

Yet there are still supposed to be areas that are sacrosanct, people we assume will work for the good of our kids; people to whom we don’t give a second thought—until their actions blow up in our faces.

Priests/ministers/rabbis. Teachers. Family. Judges.

It’s terrible when people are driven by their own inner demons, but somehow it’s even worse when they ruin kids’ lives out of plain old fashioned greed.

“…two judges pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud in a scheme that involved sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks. … Virtually all former colleagues and courthouse workers would not allow themselves to be identified because the federal investigation into the kickback scheme was continuing and they feared for their jobs if they alienated former allies of the judges.”

Obviously, it’s not just individuals, but the laissez faire attitude prevalent in a large percentage of all generations that’s driving the problems to levels not seen previously.

Enough is enough. We need change—but where to start?

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: drinksmachine on flickr

I received a call from a reader, I’ll call him Doug, (I love calls, you may reach me at 866.335.8054, 9 AM to11 PM Pacific time.) who wanted to know why I kept harping on the need for long-term this and long-term that. He said that he’s 26 and part of “the online generation” and used to “instant gratification.”

We talked for quite awhile and I found him to be intelligent, well-spoken and, in his own way despite what he said, thoughtful—but also impatient.

Influencing others is always stressed as a major trait of leadership—maybe the most important trait. But to lead on any level requires an understanding of the larger picture, along with strategic understanding of what’s coming down the road.

Neither one of those offers much instant anything.

I’m not saying Doug speaks for his entire generation, but in a post last summer I linked to several books and articles discussing changes occurring in brain functions as a result of the digital world.

One of the links is to an essay in the Atlantic Monthly by author Nicholas Carr in which he says, “the net is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation”. He cited other high-powered thinkers and online commentators: what if the way I THINK has changed? asked one. “I’ve lost the capacity to read War and Peace any more,” said another, whose current best effort was to stay with a three or four-paragraph weblog entry.”

Another article talks about Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of a new book, iBrain, “who cites a Stanford University study that for every hour a person spends on a computer, personal interaction with others drops by 30 minutes.

“With the weakening of the brain’s neural circuitry controlling human contact,” Dr. Small writes, “our social interactions may become awkward, and we tend to misinterpret, and even miss, subtle, non-verbal messages.”

You can think of it along the scale of Asperger’s syndrome, which is a mild form of it, where there’s not social connectiveness and difficulties with eye contact.”

And this isn’t just about the so-called digital generation, “Scans of the more practised internet users [55-78] during those search tasks showed increased activity in the front of the brain, where reasoning, complex decision-making, short-term memory and the processing of sensations and thoughts all originate. … Within five days though, the digital newcomers were showing the same neural activity.”

Along with greed, is it possible that this new style brain affected the people who ran the banks, hedge funds, and other businesses that played fast and loose with your money?

How will these new brains lead as they move into the workforce and the world?

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: sxc.hu

A newspaper article 30 years ago talked about the initiation rites of girls who joined gangs. Previously, girls hadn’t been active members of gangs and I remember thinking then that equality was happening in the wrong places.

There was a time when attitudes and actions moved from older to younger.

But it seems that more and more, instead of children learning from their grandparents, the grandparents are adopting the attitudes of the kids and, as with girls in gangs, it’s not the good ones that are moving—it’s the worst.

Entitlement. Instant gratification.

There are thousands who knowingly bought homes they couldn’t afford (as opposed to buying out of financial ignorance and/or mortgage chicanery) because they wanted it now, not in three to five years when they could actually afford it.

When I was young I thought the same way, but there were all kinds of adults who, by example, showed me that that wasn’t the way the world worked.

Now, with these attitudes spread throughout the generations, where are the everyday examples that show a different way? Worse, the examples that are out there are often ridiculed as being out of step with the current world.

I know that some of you reading my Thursday posts wonder what they have to do with leadership, managing and business.

The answer is simple; these are the people who work for and with you; they are the people you hire now and the people you’ll be hiring for decades.

Can you build a successful business or non-profit of any size on attitudes of entitlement and instant gratification?

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: sxc.hu