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We thrive on immediacy these days.

Amazon Prime next day delivery.

Grub Hub can deliver any food you want to your house in less than 30 minutes.

Text me back RIGHT NOW.

Watch whatever you want on Netflix RIGHT NOW.

Like this:

1. I can’t stress enough how much I LOVED Drunk Uncle making an appearance on last week’s SNL. One of the best! 2. This blog post either makes a good point, OR I’m just being a crotchety person complaining about “people these days.” You let me know which it is!

This immediacy is awesome.

And I’ve also found myself wondering if it’s killing our goals.

Hear me out.

Does the fact that we’re living in a society/time period where immediacy is so highly coveted, and delivered on, impact our willingness to put in time and effort into getting results?

There are so many things we can get at the touch of a button, with the snap of our fingers, right away, that I think it’s made (some of) us unwilling to put in long term time, effort, and work to see results.

Here are some examples of how I see this playing out:

-I didn’t lose any weight on my current food plan THIS WEEK, so it must not be working for me anymore. *Quits instead of sticking with it to see what happens next week.*

-I don’t see abs popping out after 2 weeks of this fitness program, so it must not be working for me. *Quits instead of recognizing that fitness and movement is positive and beneficial for other reasons than having abs after 2 weeks.*

-I got a new job and my schedule shifted. *Can’t prep food in the exact same way they did with the old job, so throws all nutritional priorities out the window instead of adjusting to figure out what can fit now.*

If we look at the other end of this, the immediate satisfaction piece, it makes sense that we eat 12 piece of Halloween candy in one breath because they taste good RIGHT NOW. The concept of how they fit into or impact the bigger picture is not necessarily top of mind.

Are these examples the kind of thing that happens for everyone? No.

But, I imagine the “Immediacy Effect” sometimes makes it hard to choose consistency and continued work even when things get challenging or you don’t see results every single day.

What can we do to help ourselves navigate this want for immediacy?

Keep our eyes on the big picture. Keep your goals and the reasons why you’re doing the things you’re doing in mind. This can help us make decisions that reflect those desires.
Understand the timelines and expectations of what you’re working on. If the clear and agreed upon deliverable of the fitness program is visible abs in 2 weeks and it doesn’t deliver that, then fine, quit. Otherwise, make a commitment to a program for a certain amount of time, understand the progress you can make in that time, and only after that time decide how/if to continue or what adjustments to make.
Pause before making indulgent/rash decisions and make sure we understand how they impact the big picture before diving in.
See where you can make shifts in your efforts before quitting anything completely. Certainly some things just aren’t right for us and don’t fit our lives… then quitting might be merited. But many times we quit simply because we were presented with a challenge and I don’t imagine all of us take time to think about how we CAN make that thing work, or adjust around that challenge, before we walk away.

Don’t get me wrong. I love streaming services and Prime next day delivery. I’m not trying to hate on the perks of immediacy.

I am, however, trying to bring some perspective into view. Some things are worth taking the long term view about. And we have to actively decide to continue to work on those things and practice consistency, daily. That can be hard, but if your goals are really important, it’s worth it.

Okay, rant over.

What do you think of the idea that immediacy might be killing our goals? I’d love to hear your perspectives! Share in the comments or send me a message at sara@nutritionforlifeproject.com!

As always, thanks for reading!
xoxo,
Sara

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