About two months ago, I talked about this mobile app called Libby, which is essentially a digital library.
You need a library card to be able to use it, there’s a queue to borrow ebooks and audiobooks, and there’s only a limited number of digital copies lent out at once.
Anyways, I told my friend about this and how I waited about six weeks to get my hands on a digital copy of Dune.
And he asked me,
“Why didn’t you just buy the ebook on Amazon instead of having to wait all those weeks?”
For the life of me, I can’t remember what I told him at the time, but I want to share a more in-depth answer with you right now.
Sure, I can always buy a bunch of books I want to read from a bookstore or from Amazon.
Or if I really want to be stingy and a bit unethical, download PDFs from a pirated library.
But to me, that’d be a bit overwhelming.
I already have a list of reading materials that I’m currently working through. Adding one more isn’t necessarily going to do me any good.
So if that’s the case, why not just wait out those six weeks?
Plus, this is one of many examples of practicing delayed gratification.
Right now, we live in a world where we have almost everything at our fingertips.
We can access the Internet from anywhere using WiFi and our cellular data.
Our friends are within a minute’s reach through phone, text, and social media.
Not to mention fast food, online shopping and same day deliveries.
Those are just obvious examples of instant gratification, and we see instances of instant gratification in business as well.
There are those people who want that magic funnel that’s supposedly going to make them a ton of money.
They want to work with big paying clients without having to start at the bottom and go through the grunt work.
They want to build a six figure online business without doing the work of building products and building an audience.
Unfortunately, life just doesn’t work that way.
A lot of the things we wish to achieve take a lot of time, patience, and consistency.
Heck, if you want an example of delayed gratification, you’re seeing it right now.
Me writing an email five days a week to you.
I’m not expecting to make thousands of dollars every time I send an email. I’m far from that.
But what I am doing is slowly building a bond with you, one day at a time, one email at a time, while I’m growing my email list one subscriber at a time.
And I don’t expect to see any payoff until years down the road.
Ok, that’s it for today.
If you want to learn more about email copywriting, go to the link below.