Play Long Term Games, With Long Term People

This week’s newsletter is inspired by a couple things!

1. These thoughts from Naval on why all the best things in life come from long term thinking.

2. The fact that my wife left for the weekend and I’ve played 18 hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 in the last 2 days.

Hormozi had a concept a few months back that said, “Patience isn’t about waiting… It’s about figuring out what to do in the meantime.”

This is the best framework for patience I’ve ever heard. Nothing worth having comes quickly. Therefore, the majority of your life is spent waiting for things and as long as you don’t get so distracted that you change directions, you can have most of what you want given a long enough time horizon.

The kids who performed best on the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment found ways to distract themselves during the process.

Singing.

Dancing.

Mostly ignoring the marshmallow.

So then why do people get distracted and think short term?

Scarcity mindset. Loosely defined, it’s the feeling that you don’t have enough of something (usually health or money). This manifests in things like “YOLO”, which is great except the vast majority of people don’t die at 30 anymore so it helps to set yourself up long term.

Okay so how do you tie all these things together?

Hurry up and wait.

Hurry Up:

The earlier in your life you can set up healthy pillar habits the less time you’ll ultimately have to wait to reach your predetermined destination.

1. Investing a good % of your paycheck.

2. Healthy relationship dynamics (weekly date night, sharing responsibilities).

3. Regular exercise (gym, sports, long walks, active hobbies).

4. Eating healthy the majority of the time.

5. Set out time to build a side hustle.

6. Recurring time to see family and friends.

Wait:

Here’s where you can go all in on Hormozi’s method. Find out what to do in the meantime. If you’ve set up the majority of your life in a healthy way it doesn’t actually matter what else you do while you wait (just maybe avoid hard drugs 😂).

1. Binge watch your favourite TV show for a weekend.

2. Order UberEats a couple times a month.

3. Play 60 hours of a video game one week.

4. Take a spontaneous weekend getaway.

5. Enjoy a weekend with the guys.

As long as the things on this list aren’t impacting your ability to stay on track with your healthy habits, they are all fair game! In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m big on habits.

My addictive personality makes me go all in on random things from time to time. I know it’s okay that I play a video game a little more than might be healthy for the next couple weeks because in the grand scheme of my life it will make no impact!