How to Be Patient in an Impatient World | Mark Manson

A Skinner Box works like this: A rat or some other unsuspecting small animal is placed in this box which has a lever and a little feeding bowl. The rat sniffs around the box, and not knowing what the hell is going on (on so many levels) it will, eventually, push the lever by chance. A sugary little treat is then delivered into the bowl.

If you learned anything from Pixar movies, it’s that rats really love to fucking eat. The Skinner Box is no different. The rats quickly figure out that pushing the lever = getting a delicious snack, so they keep doing it. Over and over and over.

But then, at some point, you stop giving the rat the treat. And this pisses off the rat. It will hit the lever over and over and over, frantically trying to get the treat it feels it so desperately deserves, until finally, after exhausting itself, it will give up and resign itself to fate. That life is shit. The treats are shit. Everything is a lie. The rat will then smoke cigarettes and write bad French philosophy about its terrible disappointment with its own existence.

The Skinner Box demonstrated something fundamental in animal behavior: if something feels good, we will do it again and again and again, and we eventually grow a sense of entitlement to that pleasurable thing. We deserve to feel that pleasure. We deserve to be…