A Recipe For Domination — Long Term Thinking

Isn't it weird that as our society experiences more abundance we become less happy and healthy?

We live in an age where we have temperature controlled shelter and an unlimited supply of food.

It's never been easier to find a mate — all you need to do is swipe on your phone in your pyjamas.

Yet despite it being easier to meet our basic needs — the lives of the average individual is getting worse:

• Obesity is on the rise

• Anxiety and depression is on the rise

• Loneliness is on the rise

The reason for this is overconsumption.

Overconsumption of food.

Overconsumption of social media.

Overconsumption of TV.

It's not your fault. Your brain is wired for overconsumption.

Your brain is hardwired to optimize for survival rather than optimize for happiness.

• You struggle to exercise because your body is trying to conserve energy for survival.

• You binge eat high calorie foods so that you can survive a long time without eating when food becomes scarce.

• You give into peer pressure because not being accepted by your tribe would mean death.

This hardwiring of short term thinking was necessary for us to meet our basic needs and survive.

But now that we have our basic needs met — we have to find some sort of higher purpose in order to keep making progress in life.

This is what Maslow's hierarchy of needs is all about. Once you have your basic survival needs met — you have to strive for something higher to keep making progress in life.

Otherwise you will be stuck. Which is what happens to most people.

Most people fulfil their safety needs and their lives don't really progress from there.

Solving your basic needs requires short term thinking. But in order to fulfill the higher rungs of the pyramid — you need to adopt long term thinking.

Each level of the pyramid requires you to adopt more long term thinking than what was needed to fulfill the previous rung. This is why people get stuck.

I know this might sound like I'm getting you to join my pyramid scheme but if I could summarize everything in a few sentences it would be this:

If you continue down this path of overconsumption — every area of your life is going to get worse.

Life compounds.

The actions you take today determines whether it compounds for you or against you.

So how can we change that?

The antidote is long term thinking.

Long Term Thinking

One thing I've noticed is that the most successful people are long term thinkers.

People like Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger and Jeff Bezos. They care more about optimizing for the long term rather than the short term which allows them to blow past the competition.

Long term thinking is very rare.

Jeff Bezos spent $42 million building out a clock in a mountain in west Texas that ticks once every year for the next 10,000 years.

It's a reminder for long term thinking. This clock is telling us that one year isn't that long. Yet most people can't stick to their habits and goals for longer than a few months.

Imagine how much progress you would be able to make if you stuck to something for a year? 5 years?

What we're able to accomplish becomes nearly limitless if we adopt long term thinking.

Now let's talk about some frameworks and tips that you can use to become a long term thinker.

Your Future Self

Every action you take now will affect your future self in some way.

Exercise now and your future self will be more fit. Binge eat junk food and your future self becomes fat.

Read a book and your future self becomes smarter. Mindlessly scroll social media for hours and your future self becomes more anxious.

Reading this may not inspire you to change. Instead imagine that all the actions you took today affected a future version of someone you loved.

Imagine your overeating made your friend fat instead. Or your mindless scrolling would make your friend more anxious.

Would you still do it? Chances are the answer is no.

The truth is the actions you take today also affect those around you. If you took more care of yourself you would show up as a better person for those you love.

• You would be a better father and husband.

• You would be a better leader.

• You would be a better friend.

Get in the habit of reminding yourself that your future self exists and it's your job to make that person's life better.

To take it a step further get clear on who that future self is. Is that person jacked? Married? Has their own business?

Think about what you genuinely want your future self to be. This will help you gain clarity on the actions you need to take today to make that happen.

Getting clear on your future self creates a filter on what's no longer allowed in your life.

Ultimately you deicide the future you want for yourself through the actions that you take in the present moment.

Second and Third Order Consequences

Remember how I said that the actions you take today also affect those around you?

That's because of the second and third order consequences of your actions.

Here's an example to illustrate this:

Let's say you start the habit of working out every morning and eat healthier.

The first order consequence will be that you will look better. You will be leaner and have more muscle.

The second order consequence is that you'll be in a better mood and have more energy. This allows you to get more done at work while also having energy to play with your kids.

So not only does working out improve your health. It also improves your performance at work and the relationship with your family.

The third order consequence is that with the improved performance at work you get promoted and you make more money.

All this happened because you started working out. One positive habit can have such a powerful downstream affect to other areas of your life.

The scary thing is that it can also work the other way around.

Let's say you're addicted to social media. You spend hours mindlessly scrolling on TikTok.

The first order consequence is that you feel anxious from spending hours on the couch flooding your brain with dopamine.

The second order consequence is that it damages the relationship with your family. You're no longer present with your wife and kids.

This leads to more arguments and fights with your wife.

The third order consequence is how all this added stress affects your concentration at work. All the doomscrolling makes you live in a constant state of brain fog. Your performance at work suffers.

Things can get dark really quickly if you don't turn things around.

This example may seem dramatic but it clearly lays out why anxiety, depression and loneliness is on the rise.

People fail to acknowledge the second and third order consequences of their actions.

This shows how important every action you take is. We have limited time on this planet. We must use every precious moment wisely.

Changing Your Environment

The easiest hack to change your actions is to change your environment.

When I lived with my parents — it was very hard for me to eat a healthy diet. Everywhere I looked there was chocolate.

Tons of chocolate.

I have a notorious sweet tooth. So being in that type of environment is dangerous.

Once I moved out — I make sure to mainly have healthy foods around me.

I still have some chocolate around but not enough where I end up bingeing. This made it a lot easier to cut down my sugar consumption without using any will power.

That's the power of your environment.

If designed correctly — adopting good habits and removing bad ones becomes effortless.

Here are ways that I designed my environment to help you think things through:

1. Little to no junk food at home so I'm not tempted to Binge

2. I also have healthy snacks that can help satisfy cravings without ruining my health

3. I never keep my phone with me at home. If I want to check it I would have to get up and grab it. This is enough friction for me to not want to mindlessly check.

4. I go to a gym that's walking distance. So there's no excuse not to go.

5. I used keep my phone across the room so when the alarm went off I would have to get out of bed to turn it off. I never hit the snooze button once I started doing this.

Take time and start thinking about how you can make adjustments to your environment so that you can increase friction for bad habits and decrease friction for good habits.

As an exercise — I recommend that you write all of your biggest distractions in your environment. Then for each distraction think of ways you can increase friction or completely eliminate it.

This is something that you only have to do once and will pay dividends down the road.

Imagine the second and third order consequences of making these changes.

Now you have the tools and frameworks to become a long term thinker. Time to go out there and dominate.

Thank you for reading.

— Ashvin