At any given time we have a choice to be playing a long game or a short game in life.
The short game looks for instant gratification and immediate results. Goals are short sighted and morale is dependent on what’s happening right now.
In my youth this was the way I looked at business and a lot of life decisions. I was spontaneous to a fault and if I didn’t get an immediate payoff I was apt to give up quickly. It took me a long time to realize that this meant little to no progression, never getting to the goal, and endless self sabotage.
When you switch to the long game your focus changes, and so does everything else.
You are constantly looking at the big picture and where you are heading. You make choices that align with that instead of choices that simply take the heat off in the moment.
You celebrate small wins instead of looking for big payoffs. The small wins are what you build on, and you begin to realize it’s the consistent day to day small wins that take you where you’re going. The big payoffs happen over time and sometimes without even realizing it until you look back. Get rich quick schemes don’t work. If it’s too good to be true, then it is. These big payoffs only distract you. Slow and steady always wins the race. (See tortoise and hare blog)
You think about making decisions your future self will thank you for, and you become aware that short term thinking can bring consequences which only slow you down or hold you back in the long game. The long game becomes the only short cut.
You always consider what you’re building and working towards and the question you ask along the way is, “is this working?” Quite often I’m surprised to find out that what I’m doing is working, but in a totally different way than I first thought it would.
You see the difference between tactics and strategies. Tactics are meant for short term movement within a long term strategy. You realize that when a tactic doesn’t work it doesn’t mean the whole thing is a bust. Giving up and switching gears used to be an option that now seems completely ridiculous in the long game.
Doing what matters is critical in the long game.
In the long game you are building a reputation, you are building trust, you are showing up consistently.
You are building a legacy dependent on every life you touch.
“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.” –Thomas Merton