Those Who Wait
In the late 1960s, a group of children sat alone in a small room at Stanford University. On the table in front of each child sat a marshmallow.
They were given a simple choice:
You can eat the marshmallow now.
Or, if you wait fifteen minutes, you can have two.
Some children lasted seconds. Others negotiated with the air. A few covered their eyes, sang to themselves, or turned their backs to avoid temptation. And some—quietly, almost stoically—waited.
The experiment became famous as a measure of delayed gratification. The children who waited, researchers suggested, would go on to have better outcomes in life.
But later analysis revealed something deeper.
The children who waited weren’t necessarily more disciplined. Many of them came from environments where promises were reliably kept. They trusted that if they endured the wait, the second marshmallow would actually appear.
Patience, it turns out, is easier when you believe the future is dependable.
In 1386, the first stones were laid for what would become the Milan Cathedral.
The ambition was immense—white marble, soaring spires, thousands of statues carved into its facade. It would dominate the skyline of Milan and redefine the city itself.
What no one alive at the time would see was the finished structure.
The cathedral took nearly five centuries to complete. Architects changed. Political powers shifted. Wars interrupted progress. Funding surged and dried up. Styles evolved. Entire generations of craftsmen carved details knowing they would never stand beneath the completed roof.
Yet the work continued.
Each group trusted that the structure would remain. That the foundation laid decades earlier would still matter. That the effort would accumulate—even if the payoff belonged to someone else.
Today, Milan once again finds itself in the global spotlight as it prepares to host the upcoming Winter Olympics. Visitors gather in the piazza. Cameras tilt upward toward the intricate spires. Athletes and spectators move through a city shaped by centuries of patience.
Few pause to consider that the cathedral before them represents nearly 500 years of incremental progress. What appears magnificent now began as something that, for generations, looked incomplete.
That is the nature of compounding.
In its early stages, compounding is unimpressive. It feels slow. Sometimes invisible. The first stones of a cathedral don’t hint at soaring spires. They look like groundwork. Necessary, but unspectacular.
Personal finance feels much the same way.
The first contributions to a savings plan don’t seem life-changing. Growth appears modest. The temptation to redirect effort toward something more immediate—to eat the marshmallow—is constant and understandable.
But compounding only works if the structure remains intact.
Its power doesn’t come from dramatic bursts of intensity. It comes from continuity. From allowing small, repeated actions to accumulate over long stretches of time. From trusting that the future will cooperate long enough for the second marshmallow to arrive.
The Milan Cathedral stands not because of a single brilliant year, but because generation after generation chose not to abandon the project when progress felt slow.
Financial progress operates the same way. You rarely feel it while it’s happening. The early years test your patience. The middle years test your consistency. Only much later does the structure begin to resemble what you imagined.
Compounding does not reward urgency.
It rewards those willing to keep laying stones long after the novelty fades.
Because extraordinary outcomes are almost always the result of ordinary decisions—repeated faithfully, and allowed the time they require.