Playing the Long Game: How to Create Long Term Success in a "Right Now" World
by Sam Kyle
all those people and products that promise you rewards without work. These supposed shortcuts are everywhere: ● Book summaries and sped-up audiobooks promise us the same benefits in minutes as hours spent reading a work that someone took years writing. ● Fad diets and exercise “boot camps” offer impressive short-term results with no real behavior changes in the long term. Supplements supposedly make up for an unhealthy diet but can actually do more harm than good. ● Easy-to-access credit and loans invite us to take on debt. ● Crash courses insist we can learn a complex skill in a few days. ● Books proclaim they contain the secrets to lifelong happiness. ● Social networks claim to offer connection without the effort of face to face contact. ● Political candidates look and sound impressive, with policies that won’t provide benefits beyond making their poll numbers go up, or which will have unintended negative consequences. ● Get-rich-quick schemes (or rather, scams) promise to teach you a secret stock market hack or give 200% returns on your money if you just pay $500 now. You need to find a deeper reason that isn’t contingent on outside rewards. These are only effective in the short-term because they continue to reinforce the idea that instant gratification is the priority. So the second skill for playing a successful long game is developing your ability to internally motivate ourselves. Keep a journal to chronicle your journey and the choices you are making. Reflect on your progress. And when you put in some first-order negative work and realize a second-order positive result, take the time to enjoy it. Recognizing your own accomplishments is one of the best ways to grow and maintain your internal motivation.
People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification. ― Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
The time is going to pass anyway. The only question is how you use it and where you are going to end up at the end of the weeks and months that pass. And where you end up is largely a matter of the amount of consideration you give to the likely consequences of your actions in the short-term.
People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification.
Each day you simply aim to make the best possible choice as much of the time as possible. There are no mistakes. There’s just learning and adjusting. You don’t fail, you just have better and worse days as you progress towards your goals.
The beauty of playing the long game is that it changes how you view failures and setbacks. They’re not disastrous because the long-term progress is what matters. There’s no urge to give up after a minor setback.
"all those people and products that promise you rewards without work. These supposed shortcuts are everywhere: ● Book summaries and sped-up audiobooks promise us the same benefits in minutes as hours spent reading a work that someone took years writing. ● Fad diets and exercise “boot camps” offer impressive short-term results with no real behavior changes in the long term. Supplements supposedly make up for an unhealthy diet but can actually do more harm than good. ● Easy-to-access credit and loans invite us to take on debt. ● Crash courses insist we can learn a complex skill in a few days. ● Books proclaim they contain the secrets to lifelong happiness. ● Social networks claim to offer connection without the effort of face to face contact. ● Political candidates look and sound impressive, with policies that won’t provide benefits beyond making their poll numbers go up, or which will have unintended negative consequences. ● Get-rich-quick schemes (or rather, scams) promise to teach you a secret stock market hack or give 200% returns on your money if you just pay $500 now."
"You need to find a deeper reason that isn’t contingent on outside rewards. These are only effective in the short-term because they continue to reinforce the idea that instant gratification is the priority. So the second skill for playing a successful long game is developing your ability to internally motivate ourselves. Keep a journal to chronicle your journey and the choices you are making. Reflect on your progress. And when you put in some first-order negative work and realize a second-order positive result, take the time to enjoy it. Recognizing your own accomplishments is one of the best ways to grow and maintain your internal motivation."
"What does it mean to play the long game? To borrow a sports metaphor, it means skating to where the puck is going, not where it’s been. In a more concrete sense, it means thinking ahead on a scale of years, decades, or even longer. It means understanding the extraordinary power of compounding—how tiny steps can add up as time passes. It means being willing to delay gratification today in favor of a bigger payoff later. It means understanding second-order effects and unintended consequences."
"Many of the benefits of the long game come from compounding and gradual refinement. Money compounds. Knowledge compounds. Relationships compound. The outcomes of healthier habits compound. Not all results are linear; some are exponential. Save a dollar a day at 4% interest, and in ten years you will have turned the $3650 you put in into $4557.52. Some ways of spending our time and other resources have superior payoffs."
"People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification. ― Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts"
"The time is going to pass anyway. The only question is how you use it and where you are going to end up at the end of the weeks and months that pass. And where you end up is largely a matter of the amount of consideration you give to the likely consequences of your actions in the short-term."
"People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification."
- →The time is going to pass anyway. The only question is how you use it and where you are going to end up at the end of the weeks and months that pass. And where you end up is largely a matter of the amount of consideration you give to the likely consequences of your actions in the short-term.
- →People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification.
- →The beauty of playing the long game is that it changes how you view failures and setbacks. They’re not disastrous because the long-term progress is what matters. There’s no urge to give up after a minor setback.
- →So this is the first rule of the long game: don’t expect fast results. If anything, be wary of them. Run from them! If I start doing something hard and find it easy, I get suspicious.
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