Urgency and Longevity
Everyone knows the stories of fast outwardly success.
Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire at 23. Alexandr Wang almost outdone him by reaching that status at 24.
Feeding into our inherent greed to get all the things we could ever desire quickly and easily, these stories are worshipped and perceived not as outliers as they truly are, but as norms.
It’s easy to think “well if he did it, why can’t I”?
With the AI craze only adding more fuel to this fire (and surfacing more stories of “getting rich quick”), I have a latent level of stress: the ambiguous feeling that I’m falling behind.
I can’t really put a finger on it. It feel like an invisible weighted blanket burdening my shoulders as I go about my days. It whispers the expectations of striking riches at 26 or otherwise be an abject failure.
I know it’s illogical and goes against statistics. The average age of a tech entrepreneur is in the mid 40s.
A founder I know in real life is in his late 30s and has experience working in many different companies, several of which he worked at longer than I had a career for.
Coming into tension with this stress of achieving everything now is knowing the utter importance of time.
I written many times about the effects of exponential compounding. The largest jumps only occur after long undefined and unbounded periods of slow growth.
Moving fast now and having long term thinking appear to be in tension with one another.
On one hand, moving fast optimizes for the short term.
Expectations and deadlines all push for short term decision making and intense sprinting, which does not support long term compounding nor shield against burnout, which needs to be avoided for uninterrupted consistency.
On the other hand, long term time horizons leave many details ambiguous.
No one can predict the future, especially if it’s that far out. Laziness and procrastination are easy to get trapped into. It easy to convince yourself that you can “flip a switch” and get it done whenever you want.
I know the solution is fairly simple.
It involves setting long term goals and breaking each down into manageable pieces with deadlines that can be pushed towards on a week to week basis.
To support goal setting, there’s periodic check ins—solitary stand up meetings to see what needs to be tweaked in order to stay on track.
Emotionally operationalizing and sticking to it is much more difficult.
Perhaps writing this is a first steps towards unknotting the entanglement of wanting the long term goal now and still thinking on the order of years.
Psst… here what I’m consuming this week:
I will always have the competing latent stress of wanting the long term goal now and the uncomfortable self assurances that it’s ok to relax for a day.
It’s all part of the course of having high expectations for yourself whilst being ambitious and introspective.
In music, Justin Bieber was scouted at 13 and released Baby at 15. Rihanna was scouted at 16 and released her first hit at 17.
Yet I wonder if thinking too much about the long term in the order of several years will ever blunt the hunger and effectiveness I have now.
How do I move fast with urgency now, not accumulate the stress of needing to accomplish everything now, and angle for a long time horizon for compounding?
Moving fast now and long term thinking appear to be in tension with one another.
Short term deadlines and expectations incentivizes for short term decision making and sprinting.
Long term thinking can readily inspire laziness and procrastination: the belief of being able to relax because “I can always get to it eventually”
how important longevity is for building everlasting
It doesn’t really break me and spurs a sense of urgency to move fast.
It doesn’t really break me. It acts as a
I don’t think I’ll get burned out by it and it definitely spurs a sense of urgency to move fast.
It’s somehow the expectation that I strike riches at 26 or otherwise be a complete failure.
This creates a certain tension with another
This is the stress that comes with the ambiguous feeling that I’m falling behind—that I should be living up to the “norms” and striking riches at 26,
There are positives in this. It enlarges my willingness to just put face to asphalt and work. Regardless of toxicity, it’s fuel to pull my rocket off of the launch pad.
drives a lot of action and enlarges my willingness to just put face to asphalt and work.
Worked at a single company longer than my entire career thus far
That I should be moving quicker and seeing the riches immediately.
that if I don’t live up to the perceived norm of quick outwordly success
When I pursue something, it feels like I should be doing it quicker and seeing the results now. If not, I don’t live up to the perceived norm and am an abject failure.
There is
On my own day to day, I find this causes a latent level of stress humming at the back of my mind.
Whenever I pursue something, I feel like I should be doing it quicker and seeing the results now and if not, I am an abject failure since I don’t live up to the perceived norm.
Projecting this on my own life, I feel there is a certain latent
It becomes easy to think of these people not as the outliers, but as the norm.
When we
things quick. We want all the
There seems to be a tension between two levers that drives success: urgency and longevity.
Urgency is the feeling of needing to accomplish something now.
Longevity is being able to work on something for a very long period of time.
Feeding into the natural greed we have for obtaining more with minimal effort, stories of sudden outwardly success quick have always been in pop culture.
In 2003, Chris Moneymaker, a no name accountant, won the $2.3 million World Series of Poker cash prize and sparked the poker boom overnight with people fantasizing of getting rich quick.
In tech, a young Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire at 23. Alexandr Wang almost outdone him by reaching that status at 24. Similar narratives of a “wonder kid” followed Sam Bankman Fried and Elizabeth Holmes prior to their collapses.
, becoming a millionaire starting the poker boom overnight.
Already popularized by the stories of a getting rich and reaching outwardly success quick— examples of 20 year old billionaires are rampant—
young Mark Zuckerberg becoming a billionaire by 23,
A decade is too far away. Now is the only time.
Longevity is being able to do something for a very long time.