![]() ![]() Playing the long game means paying a small price today to make tomorrow easier.įrom the outside, the long game looks pretty boring: The long game is the opposite of the short game. Only when the costs become too large to ignore, do people realize they played the wrong game. Just as the accumulation of tiny advantages makes the future easier, the accumulation of tiny disadvantages makes the future harder. On any given day the impact is small but as days turn into months and years the result is enormous. The longer you play the short game, the harder things get. Having an opinion on something you don’t know anything about.Taking every last penny you can from a customer.Not taking care of your health or relationships.The seduction of the short game is visible and immediate benefits. The short game is spending more than you earn. The short game is taking advantage of your counterparties. The short game is putting off anything that seems hard. The longer you play the better the rewards. The long game allows you to compound results. It’s as if Sisyphus, pushes his huge boulder halfway up a steep hill, gets tired, lets it roll down the hill, and says to himself “I’ll come back and do this tomorrow.” This is the human condition. The tiny advantages that accrue aren’t noticed until success becomes too obvious to ignore. In fact, from the outside, the long game looks boring. The long game isn’t particularly notable. The most successful people in any field all play the long game. She was playing a different game than you were. We tell ourselves, the school teacher that left millions was just lucky. Too often, we convince ourselves that success was just luck. It’s easy to overestimate the importance of luck on success and underestimate the importance of investing in success every single day. We want different outcomes. Different outcomes come from doing different things or doing things differently. The problem is we don’t want the same outcomes as everyone else. There is an old saying that I think of often, passed to me by my friend Peter Kaufman, “If you do what everyone else is doing, you shouldn’t be surprised to get the same results everyone else is getting.” Unless you’re lucky, doing what everyone else is doing ensures average results. In a world where most people play the short game, playing the long game offers a huge advantage.
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