Daniel Bourke breaks down the gap between quick wins and lasting satisfaction. He warns against shortcuts that disappoint, then offers a framework: set a vague life goal, break it into specific time-bound tasks, and reward yourself along the way. Think of a 21-day fitness challenge as a 21,000-day commitment to a lifelong habit.
Chapters
What's going on, y'all? Episode 103 of The Daniel Bourke Show. Sorry it's been so long since the last one. I know I said I sort of wanted to do these weekly or fortnightly or something. I'm still trying to work out that routine. No excuses though. We're going to do one today. And what's the topic of today? Well, since it's a Friday, I figured I want to do something fun because Friday, F, fun, you know, you know how it goes. Everyone's happy on a Friday. I'm happy every day. Well, I try to be at least. Actually, speaking of that, I had an article published recently on Thought Catalog. It's called "How I Stopped Feeling Depressed." So, although I'm positive and optimistic and outgoing, fun, whatever, 99.99999% of the time, I still have those days where I feel down and sort of not wanting to do anything. So, I wrote an article on what I do to stop feeling down, stop feeling depressed, and Thought Catalog, the editors from Thought Catalog reached out. And republished it on their website. So, I was pretty happy with that. It's the first piece of writing I've actually had republished somewhere, other than Medium or my blog or something like that. So, I'll link it in the description or in the show notes so you can all check it out and show some love, show some hate. I don't mind, as long as you read it. But what's today's episode about? Yes, Friday, it's fun. We're going to make it nice and quick. I figured let's do 5 minutes of fire. Alright, how are we going to do this? Well, I've got my iPad here, which is a timer, and I've got a topic that I've sort of been thinking about, and my dog's interrupting me here, trying to get through my door. I'll be with you in a second. It's alright. So, I'll record this. I've got to be quick because she wants me to feed her or pat her or something like that. So, I'll be with you in a second, Seven. Yes, my dog's name's Seven, but that's another story for another time. So, today, 5 Minutes of Fire. What's the topic? Short-term versus long-term satisfaction, right? So, let's get started. Without any further ado, I'm going to start the timer. Podcast listeners, you won't be able to see it, but YouTube viewers, you can watch this. 5 minutes, let's go. So, I've been thinking about this for a few days, and I read somewhere once, and I've heard from a lot of people that if you think about something for a few days or a bit longer, you've got to write something about it, or you've got to These are from creatives, by the way, from people I look up to. And if you're thinking about the same thing for a long enough period, you've got to write something about it or you've got to make something about it to get out of your head. And this is what I'm doing today. So, I've been thinking about short-term satisfaction versus long-term gratification, or either way around, short-term gratification versus long-term satisfaction. You can put it either way. Now, why? Well, because— I've been, I've been trying to rework my life in the last few months. If you've, if you've been following along with the previous episodes, you'll know that, but if not, just take that into consideration. So, I've been trying to work out, okay, where am I getting short-term satisfaction and where am I getting long-term satisfaction? How can I find a balance in the middle? So, for me, I think short-term satisfaction is something like if you were to buy something, like you get that really gratifying feeling of buying something new. Or if you do it, for me, it's working out. Like, I find working out easy now. It's easier for me to work out than it is for me to not work out during a day. I get a really good feeling, I get a pump. I've been doing it for 6, 7, 8 years now, so I'm quite good at it. I still got a lot to learn, but it's, for me, it's a short-term satisfaction. Like, I get 45 minutes and I get a really good feeling. What I'm trying to get more of, or trying to think about how I can implement it more in my life is long-term goals, like long-term satisfaction. Now, what is long-term satisfaction? Well, it could be working on a project for an extended period of time or going to university, doing a 4 or 5 year course or something like that. It's these longer periods, starting a business, something that takes a longer period of time to actually get that satisfying feeling from. And why do I want that? I've always worked best with a long-term goal in mind. And how I mean is like, you have a long-term goal and then you'll be working towards that. But in the short term, you'll be incredibly fierce. You'll be working as fast as you can in the short term to hit your short-term goals, but incredibly patient over the long term. So, what's that look like for me? I'm just going to use myself as an example. So, a long-term goal for me could be, I want to start my own business or build my own company. And a lot of people, I think, like, including myself, like, there's a shortcut to everything, right? Like, I could build it in a week or in a day or something like that. And if you don't reach it in that time period, well, you get unsatisfied. And I've been there in the past, don't get me wrong. I've definitely sort of tried to do something a lot quicker than what I thought I could do and become deeply unhappy. So, now I'm sort of trying to delay gratification for a longer term as well as balancing it out with short-term gratification. I haven't quite worked out the full balance yet, but ways that I've sort of found that are best to do that is realise what your long-term goal is. So, say, or even if you don't have to have a long-term goal, right? Realise like what you're sort of working towards in the grand scheme of things. And maybe if you want to get fit, right? You want to be active and healthy. I had an email the other day from someone asking, "What's a 21 Day Fix?" Right? And I don't like that concept of— I relate everything to fitness and nutrition because it's what I know best, right? And so I got an email asking me, "What's a 21 Day Fix to jumpstart my diet and jumpstart my body and etcetera, jumpstart my weight loss process?" And I replied, think about, instead of thinking about the 21 Day Fix, think about the 21,000 Day Fix. So, what can you do for the rest of your life that's sustainable, right? And for me, that thinking about that is scary at the same time as, I don't know, liberating. And it's exciting, exciting and scary at the same time. And where am I going with all this? Well, how can I— what's a practical example? Because right now I've been talking so much meta. So, how can you How can you fix this? How can you, I don't know, put some steps into action, right? What are some action steps that you can actually do rather than me just sort of rattling off this whole spiel about how I'm trying to live my life? So, what I've learned from others and read and whatnot and practice myself is a reward system. So, look at your big picture, look at your big goals. What do you really want to achieve? Like, and if you don't have them, that's okay. These things come over time. It's only after trying a whole bunch of things that you realise what you actually want to do. No one's born with a passion. So, think about what the big picture is and then break it down into small little chunks. And this timer is about to go off, but I'm going to, I'm going to pause it so it doesn't, doesn't make a sound. So, yeah, think about what the big overarching goal is. Like, for me, it's I want to help the world move more and eat better, right? So, that's a very unspecific goal, but that's a big overarching goal, right? The overarching one doesn't have to be very specific. In my, in my opinion. But in the short term, make them ultra-specific, like, okay, I'm going to do this today, I'm going to work out this, I'm going to post a video on eating better, I'm going to write a post about how I lost weight. Like, that's what I've done just recently, actually. So, short-term goals, really specific, time-based, and I don't know, something you can complete within a shorter timeframe. Let's say less than a month, less than a month, or 3 months. Long-term goals, you're looking at 3 to 5 years or, and unspecific, like, have that sort of as the end goal and the pathway you're going to build it with these short-term goals. So, the final, the big long-term, the big moonshot will be, I don't know, the gate at the end of the road, and that each of the short-term goals will be the road that you're building towards to getting to that gate. Now, that was 5 minutes of fire. What's the daily challenge? Think about your short-term and long-term goals. I've got to go work out with some friends. I've got to get some of that short-term gratification, but over the next few weeks and months, I've got to keep working towards the overall picture, which is helping everyone move more and helping people eat better. But that was a new experiment for this episode, episode 103, The Daniel Bourke Show. You can check me out anywhere, MrDBourke.com. All my social media handles are @MrDBourke. Thank you so much for watching, thank you so much for listening, and have an awesome day!
