The Long Game | LSW#47
Nuances to get better at long-term thinking
Hey! It’s Sheril Mathews from Leading Sapiens. Welcome to my newsletter, where I share strategies for getting savvier at the game of work.
In today’s edition, I highlight a key factor many folks miss or underestimate: playing the long game. Most of us intellectually understand this, but don’t always give it enough thought.
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Making time an ally
Thinking long-term is almost a cliche — we understand it, but at the same time struggle with it. The challenge is that given our evolutionary history, we are simply not wired to think in long time-frames, or to understand the exponential nature of compounding.
Exponential gains increase more dramatically the longer we leave them to compound.
Compounding is a crucial, versatile mental model to understand because it shows us that we can realize enormous gains through incremental efforts over time. It forces us to start thinking long term because the effects of compounding are only remarkable on a long timeline and most of the gains are realized near the end.
— from The Great Mental Models Vol 3
The authors’ emphasis on delayed outcomes is crucial. To reap the benefits of compounding, we have to be good at:
maintaining consistency of effort until we see results
thinking in time-frames much longer than we’re habitually prone to
Let’s look at how to get good at these two aspects.
Consistency of effort
One way to maintain consistency of effort is by focusing on simple, recurring patterns instead of difficult to execute, complicated prescriptions. See this edition for details.
The second is to understand what it really takes, which makes it more likely we’ll stick to the process. I wrote:
Our unsuccessful attempts at something probably have more to do with an inability to do mundane things for long periods of time, rather than the difficulty of what we are attempting.
Maintaining the mundane routines of day-to-day practice over extended periods is what gets someone to Olympic level performance. Most of us cannot cope with the boredom and associated psychological stress that comes with the repetition and mundanity.
Staying disciplined is essentially about making hundreds of small choices over the course of days, weeks, and years. The consistency of decision-making ends up being a key differentiator.
- from Greatness as Mastering the Mundane
Third, is a focus on process or what Ozan Varol calls input-mindset:
Inputs aren’t sexy. The word input might be better reserved for a boring database software. But an input-focused mind is the mark of anyone who has achieved anything extraordinary. The amateur focuses on getting hits and expects short-term results. The professional plays the long game and prioritizes inputs, perfecting them for years with no immediate payoff.
This is why the tennis player Maria Sharapova describes focus on outcomes as the worst mistake that beginning tennis players make. Watch the ball as long as you can, Sharapova cautions, and zero in on the inputs. By taking the pressure off the outcome, you get better at your craft. Success becomes a consequence, not the goal.This reorientation toward inputs has another upside. If you find yourself resenting the inputs, you might be chasing the wrong output. There’s a question that frequently shows up in self-help books: What would you do if you knew that you could not fail? This isn’t the right question to ask.
Instead, do as Elizabeth Gilbert does, and flip the question on its head: “What would you do even if you knew that you might very well fail? What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?” When we switch to an input-focused mindset, we condition ourselves to derive intrinsic value out of the activity. The input becomes its own reward.
With an input-focused mindset, you’re free to change your destination. Goals can help you focus, but that focus can also turn into tunnel vision if you refuse to budge or pivot from your initial path.
— Ozan Varol, Think Like a Rocket Scientist
The Systems Iceberg
One reason we’re bad at long-term thinking is because there is no direct correlation between effort and outcomes. One tool to help counter this tendency is the systems thinking iceberg model.
Essentially, we are constantly operating in, and tending to what the model calls “events”, and sometimes on patterns.
But most of our leverage lies in actions that are rooted in the lower layers of the iceberg: structures, mental models, and stance that eventually produce those patterns and events. These tend to be mostly invisible, and we have to develop a practice to unearth them proactively.
Look at your actions from this past week and ask the following:
Are your current actions reactive firefighting, or are you working towards creating a future?
Can you connect your actions from today to a desired future?
What are the underlying structures and stance driving your actions? Are those by design, or by accident?
If you want to dig more, here’s the main article on the systems thinking iceberg model.
Related Reading on long-term thinking
I’ve approached this topic from different angles:
That does it for this edition!
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