Most Unrecognised Source of Advantage
How anyone could gain an unfair advantage in life.
Let me be honest. In life, I don’t really want to compete against super talented folks.
Think about it.
If you could have it your way, wouldn’t you rather go up against regular people instead of the really talented ones? Why? Because you’re pretty smart as well. You want an advantage, but you know that these smart folks are tough to beat. It’s hard to find an edge when competing with amazing people.
Ideally, I’d just avoid competing with these people altogether. But I also live in reality, so I know that’s not possible.
Except there’s something about a lot of super talented people I’ve noticed that one could use to better the odds.
There’s a glitch in the system.
Leveraging it could not only give you an edge but even remove a lot of the competition.
The glitch is the time horizon.
Most of the smartest people I know have a time horizon of one to three years. Their planning and execution is usually geared towards working within that timeframe.
Now I know that if I compete with incredibly smart people on their playing fields with 3 year timelines, I’m probably going to lose. Maybe not always, but enough to not make any meaningful progress.
So instead of thinking about the next three years, I will think in ten year horizons.
And guess what? Not many people want to do that and therefore, there’s not as much competition there. With less competition, I have a better chance at winning.
Continuous effort over a longer time horizon gives it more time to compound unbelievably.
There are caveats to this of course.
- You got to have a north star, a goal you’re working toward with a singular focus throughout these years. Spreading your focus over different goals over the years doesn’t really lead to outsized returns.
- You need to be flexible with your execution though. The path may change a bit but the goal shouldn’t.
- You got to be patient.
- But most of all, you got to be resilient.
In a world of instant gratification, a longer time horizon might just be the most under-rated source of advantage.
