Jomo, or the joy of missing out: Embrace it, we can’t all be a part of everything

There are two tragedies in life: not getting what you want, and getting it. But embracing the former can truly help us when consumption is the status quo, says Andy Martin

Excess baggage: sometimes it can feel like you need to follow the indulgent example set in 1989’s ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’ (Rex)

Here’s a chocolate for you. One of your favourites. The one with the nut in. Fancy it? But, hold on, rather than having that one right now, how about if you exercise self-control for let’s say, 15 minutes, and then you can have two of them. What would you do? Choc in the hand or two in the bush?

It’s a classic psychological experiment, first performed back in the Sixties, by Walter Mischel at Stanford University, using Oreos or marshmallows. The subjects were pre-school kids. It was designed to test and measure your willpower, or at least willingness to defer. Mischel described in detail all the techniques the kids used to try to distract themselves from the tempting treat, which was right in front of them all the time – covering their eyes with their hands, humming or fidgeting. Some managed to hold out, others not.

But the experiment only really sprang to fame much later, when the researchers revisited the same children, now grown up, and discovered a clear correlation between the results of the first test and their later achievements in life. For example, the longer you were able to delay gratification of your desires at pre-school, the higher your score in SAT tests (the university entrance qualification in the US). Maybe not surprisingly, “high delayers” early on were less prone to obesity further down the line. And they had greater self-esteem.