Are You Really Playing the Long Game?

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In America at least, most young adults don’t start investing for retirement, even though the impact of that investment in their older age would be monumental. Why? The future is so far ahead…and there is plenty to think about and do in the present.

We have “present focus bias,” otherwise known as the immediacy effect, and it hinders most people’s ability to have the future they truly want. What’s wild is that this bias is not only supported by society — and the dopamine hits of social media or other things — it’s wired into us as humans. As research has shown, “parts of the limbic system are preferentially activated by decisions involving immediately available rewards.”

It’s funny how this biased perspective carries into adulthood in small but important ways, especially into business, our work, and our lives.

The most successful people I work with operate against this bias — and in a place where they deny those immediate cognitive rewards. Operating against these more ingrained and natural biases that throw most people off track puts them in a position to reap much larger rewards…like financial rewards, a certain scale of business, or an impact that far exceeds what most people will ever reach. 

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I wonder how you are operating, or if you even have taken the time to examine it. In this edition, we’re going to pull this apart in a way that is both psychological and tactical. We’ll examine what it looks like to really play the long game and how to set up some elements of it — and I’ll challenge you to operate against the systems driving for immediate rewards…for much larger wins ahead.