Play The Long Game

Keep On Keeping On

One Day At A Time

The gratest rewards in life are often delayed — the economic benefits of work & investing; the emotional benefits of marriage & friendships; the psychological benefits of creating something that matters. Meaningful outcomes take time to compound and grow.

I have shared this visual and quote from James Clear in the context of building habits in a post I wrote about 18 months ago.¹ This is the only way to build mastery — play the long game.

Morgan Housel made the same point differently — if Warren Buffett had retired at 50 and went to play golf in Naples, nobody would have heard of him. 99% of his wealth was accumulated after his 50th birthday and 97% after his 65th birthday.²

The long game provides exceptional returns. This power of compounding is something we all understand intuitively and yet find it hard to put into practice in our lives — in investing, in our careers, or in building mastery in any domain.

Great outcomes aren't built on great days, but on consistent ones.

You can't just count the days when it's easy. Each day moves you closer to the goal. No day is a hero; no day is a villain.

Perfect days don't compound. Consistent ones do.

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Wave Maker

Here’s another excellent example of the same idea in a very diferent era (2 centuries ago) and an altogther different domain — Art.

Late in life, the legendary Japanese painter and printmaker Hokusai summed up his work as an artist.

From the age of five, I had a penchant for copying the form of things. From about fifty, my pictures were frequently published. Yet of all I drew prior to the age of seventy, nothing was worthy of notice. At seventy-two, I finally understood something of the quality of birds, animals, insects, fish, and the nature of grass and trees. Therefore at eighty, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at ninety to penetrate even further into the underlying meanings of things. At one hundred years I will have achieved a truly marvelous state in my art, and at one hundred and ten, each dot and every line will surely possess a life of its own.

This philosophy, this lifelong pursuit of progress, is perhaps best reflected in the evolution of Hokusai’s ability to depict water, a theme he stayed with for decades, culminating with The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (1831), one of the most iconic and widely reproduced works of art in history.

        Consistency compounds, occasional brilliance fades.

Press on, folks. Keep on keeping on is a great attitude to have.

1. The Habits of White Rabbits

2. Morgan Housel X Tim Ferriss