TL;DR: Look at everything as a long term game, and delay short term pleasure to invest in your long term satisfaction.
What Is The Long Game?
“Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.” – J.R. Rim [1]
What do the Egyptian pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and the International Space Station have in common? They’re amazing, yes, but what else?
They took a long-ass time to build.
We all want to be successful. We all have dreams and aspirations, but how often do we achieve them? We start our January 1st workout and by the end of the month we’re back on the couch eating all dressed chips after work watching the third episode of the night.
Meanwhile, guys like Buffet and Musk are busy making millions and eyeing up Mars for their next mission. We like to see their results and their genius and think it’s luck, but there’s a lot of 10 year over night successes like these guys.
It’s not about effort, or motivation, or intelligence even. It’s about consistency. Focus.
It’s our desire for instant gratification, which is our mortal enemy in this long game of persistence. We fail because we want things now rather than wanting them later.
This article covers why one should play the long game, then gives one powerful method for how to get better at it.
Why Would I Play the Long Game?
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb [3]
The Unheavenly City
There is a list of attributes that anyone can come up with when asked the question, “What makes some people successful and others unsuccessful?”.
We could say intelligence, discipline, persistence, desire to succeed, courage etc., but if you were asked which one attribute makes a person become successful, what would you say? The key word here is become, because anyone can be born with money, good looks, intelligence etc., it takes no effort and it’s not something you can take action towards.
Dr. Edward Banfield at Harvard University asked himself this question in the 50s and spent a large amount of his career answering it. He was one of the leading scholars in his generation and was an advisor to three presidents including Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.
What he found was that the single factor that predicted success most was how far into the future a person looked when making decisions – time perspective, he called it.
“In a longitudinal study conducted by Dr. Edward Banfield at Harvard University in the 1950s and published in 1964 as The Unheavenly City, he studied the reasons for upward socio-economic mobility. He wanted to know how you could predict whether an individual or a family was going to move upward one or more socio-economic groupings and be wealthier in the next generation than they were this generation.
All his research brought him to a single factor that he concluded was more accurate than any other in predicting success in America. They called it time perspective. This was defined as the amount of time that you take into consideration when planning your day-to-day activities and when making important decisions in your life. Time perspective referred to how far you projected into the future when you decided what you were going to do or not do in the present.”
[6]
The Marshmallow Study
In a study from 1960, researchers set up an experiment to see how children delayed gratification and then followed the lives of these children over time to see how that predicted their future success.
In this experiment, they put a marshmallow in front of a kid (4 or 5 years old), and told them that they were going to leave the room and come back later, and if they did not eat the marshmallow by the time the researcher came back, the kid would receive a second marshmallow.
The researcher then left the room for 15 minutes.
What did they learn?
“The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures. (You can see the follow up studies here, here, and here.)”
[8]
Compound Interest
Playing the long term game aligns your actions over time such that they compound and allow much greater growth towards any goal than short term thinking.
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” – Albert Einstein [10]
To demonstrate the power of compound interest and how it relates to delayed gratification, consider two options: You can buy a $4 dollar hot dog at your workplace during lunch, or you could invest that in the S&P Index for 50 years making a modest 8% per year and end up with $188. [11]
Voila, a shitty hot dog at work is transformed into a three course meal at a fancy steakhouse because you waited. Of course, we can’t always wait 50 years to delay our gratification, but we can set aside $4 every once in a while.
If you were to improve yourself by 1% per day for a year, you would be 38 times the person you are now.
Make a small improvement today, and be content with the improvement at a modest pace. The turtle beats the hare because of consistency and not bursts of intensity.
“By far the best investment you can make is in yourself” – Warren Buffet [12]
Everyone wants money, and it’s easy to measure, which makes it a good example to use to measure the power of the long game.
The number one rule of investing is to start early.
Over the last 50 years, the S&P Index, which basically tracks the whole stock market, rose an average of 10.5% if dividends were reinvested. Currently, 50 – 65% of people have their money invested in the stock market, but not all of them are really investing for the long run, and many of them lose money because of lack of patience [14].
It’s not as important to try to time the market and make some money next week as it is to invest early and patiently wait. As they say, “Time in the market beats timing the market”.
Compound interest works both ways. A drug addict would be on one end of the scale – or any form of addict, will consistently choose to play the short game. An smart long game player like you would be on the other, like Warren Buffet, who became a millionaire in his early 30s and a billionaire in his 50s.
The hardest part of the long game is that you don’t get to feel good now, and it’s hard to put in work and get no reward for so long.
Hence…
How Do I Play the Long Game?
Look, the long game is hard, there’s no way around it.
You have to fight instant gratification in the form of sex, drugs and other quick hits, being lazy, and now even food scientists, advertisers, and social media companies that try to steal away your attention [15].
These things will really slow you down if you let them, so you have to have a strategy.
Understand Neural Plasticity
Brain plasticity is like paths in a forest, the more traveled the path, the clearer and more taken it becomes by the next travelers. This also means that you have to clear a path first by walking through the forest. Let’s learn about some basic rules of neural plasticity before applying it so that we understand what we’re doing.
Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together
The first rule of neural plasticity is that, as Donald Hebb discovered in 1949, “neurons that fire together wire together”. This is pretty simple to practice. You may associate waking up with brushing your teeth, so why not also associate waking up with meditating each morning? Think of Pavlov’s dogs.
Emotion Makes More Neurons Fire
Furthermore, “The more emotion you engage, the more neurons you activate to form well-worn pathways.” This means that you should engage some passion into what you’re doing by understanding why you’re doing it. There must be emotion to fuel your reason. Those dogs are hungry.
Forming New Pathways Weakens Old Ones
There is also good news on your journey, which is that as you create new pathways, you weaken old ones. So, once you start a new habit and get it going for a while, maybe 30 days, the rest is cake since you have channels in your brain directing you automatically towards the right decision.
Stress Follows the Path of Least Resistance
Stress puts pressure on your body and tells it to survive rather than prioritize the long game.
Stress pushes your brain down the path of least resistance, which means that you won’t be taking any of those nice new paths you are just beginning to form in the forest.
Think of this like a bear chasing you through the forest. The new pathways you have formed are still a little crowded; you’re not going to take a chance on them you’re going to take the nice big open ones. You will rely on old habits in stressful situations.
Meditation helps greatly with this to reduce perceived stress by activating the prefrontal cortex, which helps the body shift from sympathetic (fight or flight) mode to parasympathetic mode (rest and digest mode).
Read more on neural plasticity.
Consistency
From the marshmallow experiment mentioned earlier, there was a follow up experiment that aimed to determine why some kids delayed gratification and others didn’t.
The researchers for one group of kids made their environment much more consistent than for the other group of kids. They did this by building trust first by saying they would deliver something, and then following through. In the second group, the researchers did not follow through.
Here is a quote from the study:
“Children in the reliable condition waited significantly longer than those in the unreliable condition (p<0.0005), suggesting that children’s wait-times reflected reasoned beliefs about whether waiting would ultimately pay off.” [22]
This implies that just like the researchers built small confidence successes with the kids, you should build small successes with yourself, consistently.
When you are trying to achieve something in the short term and you succeed, you get rewarded quickly and your brain thinks, “ok, great! Let’s do that again”. However, when you are trying to achieve a long term goal, you don’t get any reward right after and your brain thinks “boring, no reward, I’m not doing that again”.
So, next time you put in a little work on your long term goal, treat yourself. Right after you finish your 30 minutes of reading, splurge on an amazing meal. Maybe even make it a nightly routine. The only note here is don’t give yourself a destructive reward like having a whole cheat meal. Make it feel good and align with your goals. Read more on building habits here.
Do a Dopamine Fast
Neural plasticity is a double-edged sword because you can be manipulated by social media, junk food, and other dopamine-releasing stimulants, or you can rewire your brain through forming good habits.
According to author Michael Merzenich, a new habit can potentially change hundreds of millions of connections in the brain thanks to the well supported theory of brain plasticity [24].
This is great news because it makes sense of addiction: Instant gratification is hard to beat because it’s hard wired in. We have to re-wire our brain pathways, and an awesome way to do this is a complete reset using a dopamine fast. The difficulty pays off. No pain no gain!
Practice identifying instant gratification in your life, and now apply it by avoiding your drug of choice for a certain set amount of time.
Good vices to start with are: sugar and junk food, porn, masturbation, social media, weed, alcohol, other drugs, and video games. Perhaps some of these are not bad in moderation, but if you lose your control over them for long periods of time they compound against you.
Vice: Social media, or video games
Dopamine Fast: One full day with no electronics of any kind, and an immersion in nature of some kind even if this just means sitting outside on a balcony.
Vice: Junk food
Dopamine Fast: 30 day whole food challenge (you will likely have to cook all meals at home. Pro tip: bring a thermos for travelling)
Vice: Porn, or masturbation
Dopamine Fast: No-fap challenge 30 days, no masturbation, no porn.
Vice: General
Multiple fast: Fast for a day while spending the majority of your day in nature without any electronics or drugs. Meditate at least once that day for 10 minutes. Allow yourself to be still, and allow feelings and thoughts to rise without grasping for anything or overthinking.
Author’s Motivation
Instant gratification has been one of the most important determining factors in my successes – and my failures. If you are able to resist instant gratification, there is very little chance that you will fail at anything you decide to do in the long term.
I believe that if everyone could do this one thing well, the world would be a much better place.
Summary
The long game is where you see the importance of paying things forward on a daily, consistent basis. You should do this because it is strongly correlated with success, and you can do this by rewiring your brain for long term and lasting happiness rather than instant and fleeting happiness.
A helpful tip for this is some sort of fast, whether it be from masturbating, junk food, food in general, or social media.
Next time you think to reach for that first marshmallow, remember: All things come to those who wait.
References:
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/game-theory
[2] https://www.convergemagazine.com/practice-patience-9-tips-ease-anxiety/
[3] http://investingwinner.com/2006/10/23/favorite-quotes-chinese-proverb-best-time-to-plant-a-tree/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Sherman_%28tree%29
[5] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newswire.com%2Ffiles%2Fx%2Ffb%2F84%2F4d8170079dc74637b152568577cd.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
[6] https://www.briantracy.com/blog/general/5-reasons-why-most-dont-become-wealthy/
[7] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.simplypsychology.org%2Fmarshmallow-test.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
[8] https://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification
[9] https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-data
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/31/billionaire-investor-warren-buffetts-best-advice.html
[10] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/76863-compound-interest-is-the-eighth-wonder-of-the-world-he
[11] https://www.fool.com/premium/stock-advisor/coverage/18/coverage/updates/2020/02/11/the-simple-truth-to-multiplying-your-savings.aspx?source=ipeemleml0000004&utm_term=118547&utm_medium=email&utm_content=commentary&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=sa
[12] https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/warren-buffett-says-this-1-investment-decision-will-by-far-be-best-youll-ever-make.html
[13] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.artofmanliness.com%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F07%2FPower-of-Compound-Interest-1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
[14] https://finance.zacks.com/percentage-americans-invest-stock-market-6880.html
[15] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/facebook-designed-exploit-brain-chemistry-12238575
[16] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.baltana.com%2Ffiles%2Fwallpapers-9%2FForest-Path-Widescreen-Wallpapers-25687.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
[17] https://nisiandlisi.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/classical-conditioning.jpg
[18] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimage.freepik.com%2Ffree-vector%2Fbusinessman-happy-get-money-reward-flat-design_27794-4.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
[19] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F6erxg60qvo1qvjha44jrgpan-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2Fthe-path-less-travelled.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
[20] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alcumusgroup.com%2Fgetattachment%2F958df6cd-e8b5-4e57-b256-38cf1539c155%2FWorkplace-Stress-Awareness&f=1&nofb=1
[21] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcityscoop.us%2Ffiles%2F2012%2F01%2Ftortoise_hare_03.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
[22] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23063236
[23] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fvl-44jDYDJQ%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
[24] https://www.authenticityassociates.com/neural-plasticity-4-steps-to-change-your-brain/
