Trusting in the Long Term.
I recently had a discussion about the uncertainty of undertaking initiatives that only have a long-term payoff, and it made me think there are a few ways of approaching this.
Most meaningful things take time, this we know. Getting fit, learning Python, growing an idea into a successful business, writing a book, etc.
But when you are at the beginning of your journey, you only experience hard work, and the results you see are likely to be uninspiring.
The first draft of anything is shit.
Hemingway
You won’t be able to do the exercise; your code will throw unexpected errors, you will fail to make the sale, you’ll get writer’s block and just stare at an empty page for half an hour.
This is because we are looking from where we are now to where we want to be. And there is uncertainty — perhaps I’ll never get fit, I’ll never write a piece of software, my startup will join the 95% of startups that fail, and my book will just stay an idea.
But we can also imagine where we want to be and then look backwards. When we frame things this way, our actions are obvious, even if they do not feel right in the moment.
If you want to write a book, then spending time each day to write, regardless of how you feel, is the obvious thing to do. If you want to get super fit, going to the gym regularly is crucial. A friend of mine has this beautiful idea of doing “shitty workouts”. Even if you don’t feel like going, you still do a really awful workout. You may not put much effort or spend much time, but at least you did something.
And that is something.
