The Marshmallow Test

The Marshmallow Test is said to be predictive of a person’s lifelong success, an indicator of self-discipline, forward thinking, and common sense. The basic principle of the original experiment was this: You sit a child at a table and put a marshmallow in front of them. You tell them, “I am going to leave the room. When I’m gone, you may eat this marshmallow, OR if you wait until I come back, you may have two marshmallows.”

Can a person sit in discomfort, the urge to claim a reward, when it’s in their best interests to do so? That’s the crux of it.

Spring is a time for base miles. Many of us will just be glad to be out on the bike, maybe with the sun on our faces, not cold for the first time in a few months. And unless we’ve been hard at work in a basement or at spin classes, we’ll feel in ourselves not quite as fit as we’d like to be. It’s time to put some work in, patiently, consistently.

It’s the same kind of test.

When I’m not fit, the first marshmallow is just stopping. Base miles can be boring. Alternately, going hard to speed up the process is…um…hard. My first urge is just to stop. There’s nothing wrong with that either. I don’t have to be bored or tired to have fun. One marshmallow is fine. That’s enough to make a s’more.

There’s a whole test-within-the-test thing with s’mores, by the way. Do you have the patience to toast your marshmallow just so, or do you jam it in the fire and burn it? Do you eat it before it’s properly toasted? Think about it. This is a digression, though.

The second marshmallow I get once I’m fit, and getting fit requires the ability to delay gratification. Ride and wait. Ride and wait. Toast the marshmallow. Don’t burn it. Place it gently but firmly on the slab of chocolate. Squeeze the graham crackers together. Pull the marshmallow off the…oh, you’ve done it. You get it.

You’ve probably trained yourself into fitness, too.

I can imagine the kids sitting there in that room, by themselves, though. They don’t know when the experimenter is coming back. At first they think, “I can wait. I’m gonna get that second marshmallow.” But the longer the wait goes on, the harder it gets to resist. Five minutes can be an eternity. Fifteen is beyond imagining. To be fair, 15 minutes is a bigger percentage of a kid’s life than it is of mine, but simultaneously, I probably have the patience of an eight-year-old.

When you hear about the Marshmallow Test, you probably think, like I did, that you’d be one of the winners. You’d get your two marshmallows and move on to whatever of life’s trials come next. But the truth is, a lot of days I just get the one marshmallow. I’m imperfect and inconsistent.

A lot of days I can imagine the experimenter walking back into the room and asking me if I’d made the right choice, if I’d earned another marshmallow, and I’d smile and say, “I ate it. I don’t even really like marshmallows, but I ate it. I’m only human.”