The Long Game jordanmarsh6, March 23, 2021April 5, 2023 When I was a 10-year-old kid, I went to my dad and asked him if we could get a video game. It was one of those EA Sports NCAA football video games. If you know, you know. They were a big deal. They also cost a hot $50. My dad, fortunately (and kind of unfortunately) is a financial advisor and decided to teach me a lesson about what that $50 could become if I would just invest the money instead. He wrote out a table where we assumed that that $50 would double every 7 years until I was 70. For those interested, this is based on something called the rule of 72 in finance. For those not interested, forget the last sentence. Anyways, we marched through that chart. By the time I was 17, it’d be $100 (whoop-dee-doo dad). At 24, $200. At 31, $400. At 38, $800. I’ll skip the specifics and just say by the time I reached 73 years old that $50 would become $25,600. You see, my dad teaches classes on personal finance to both college students and working adults. He has told this story over, and over, and over again to his classes because of what my little 10-year-old self said the second I saw $25,000 on that piece of paper: “Well, could I put in $100 instead?” My dad SALIVATES over this story. He tells it literally all the time. Unfortunately for him and my future retirement, I think he ended up getting the game for me anyways. But the impression made on my mind was very real. Here’s a quick little chart of that exact fortune I sacrificed by prioritizing fake college football: This is a classic exponential curve. The reason why I tell you this story is largely because of the activity of that curve from age 10 to age 40. For thirty years of my life, that investment I made at age 10 would not amount to much. I would have to resist the urge for thirty years of my life to pull that money out and instead go buy a xbox so that I could play many more fake college football games. I’d have to be persistent enough over time and trust that the exponential growth of that money would eventually occur. When we’re making plans to change something about ourselves, can you see how having this curve in mind might help our expectations? We’re all familiar with how impatient our society is: Get-rich-quick schemes are everywhere, our pockets hold computers that make information available to us immediately, workout programs promise results “in just two short weeks!”, and ready-made food is not just available at a fast-food window but can also be ordered and sent to our door within an hour. These are all great things, but when it comes to changing our habits, progress is often much slower than we have grown accustomed to. In a previous article, I wrote about how Strava did some research to show the most common date that users stopped using the app after January 1 (New Years resolution) day: Jan 19. That means that people often made goals they intended to pursue for an entire year but ended up giving it about two and half weeks. That’s a really significant lesson for all of us. To see the results we intend to see, we’ll have to plan for the long game. For example, how do you see yourself pursuing this goal in three months? Six? One year? Knowing we have to plan for the long game, we’re going to have to learn to accept that we’re not going to be perfect. Rather than planning to hit the gym 100% of the time, what if we planned to go 70% of the time? Rather than planning to never eat dessert ever again, what if we planned to eat dessert just three times a week rather than three times a day? These are just examples, again using exercise and fitness as that is something we all have probably wanted before. The main idea: we need to plan for the long game and leave room for our weaknesses. I’ll dive into some more examples in the next post. Self Improvement