Benefits of Short-Term Thinking
If you focus on anything in your life with a future mindset – the kind of mindset that goes hand in hand with long-term thinking – you end up losing. And you end up losing a lot more than you might realize.
When you concentrate so hard on the long-term that you can’t see the short-term, this can have serious implications on your health, the relationships you care about and your freedom to have fun.
When you choose long-term thinking over short-term, you’re setting yourself up for future regrets. Another problem with people who lean toward long-term thinking is that they can focus so hard on the future that they give up doing what’s good for them.
While people who have a deep drive to succeed often do well because they won’t let anything stand in their way, they pay a heavy price for that success. This price is often paid in the form of ill health, insomnia from the stress of worrying about what has to get done, a poor diet and weight gain.
This all or nothing mindset pushes them forward but is slowly eroding the foundation that they’re standing on, quietly, subtly and in the end, it’s not worth it. When you want something, there can be a tendency to go all out – to push yourself in ways that you wouldn’t normally have done.
Long-term thinking can cause this inner call within a person to do whatever it takes – to work hours beyond what’s normal, to give a seventy or eighty hour work week or to skimp on meeting even their basic needs.
And what’s so sad about that is with just a few simple changes, you don’t have to give up long-term thinking in order to succeed. You just have to balance it with short-term thinking.
When you do that, you won’t carry the same heavy stress burden that you’ve been carrying. You’ll feel better and you won’t be giving up your health. Plus, you’ll end up getting more done.
You do this by learning to tell yourself no, by not eliminating those things that are good for you: healthy eating, getting enough rest, and exercising. You might feel like you’d get more done if you just focused on the long-term thinking and pushing ahead, but you don’t.
Your body and mind can’t handle a nose to the grindstone life for long. You have to take care of yourself and put what you need in the present over what you stand to gain in the future. Otherwise, you might not even reach the future.