CeilingsWe are often motivated in life by short term incentives. We choose to do things for the short term benefits.
We are often motivated in life by short term incentives. We choose to do things for the short term benefits.
Contrary, we often think that we are optimizing for the long term by doing certain jobs, working hard in school, and making short term sacrifices to be successful.
In my mind, there are ways to do things for both the short and long term. It is not a binary state. You can do things you love and enjoy in the short term while still setting yourself up for long term success.
The hard part is that we do not know what the long term holds, so it is impossible to make short term decisions that perfectly help us advance further in the long run.
The one thing we can do, however, is think about something I call ceilings.
Every path in life has a ceiling.
The one thing you do not want to do with your short term decisions is make them in such a way that ends up diminishing your life ceiling.
Depending on your goals, you want to keep your ceiling as high as possible.
Every decision we make impacts how high our ceiling is.
The funny thing is that there are tons of opportunities out there that would seem like ceiling raisers that are often really ceiling limiters.
I think of it as if I were to be the best at that opportunity, where would that take me? It may be a naive outlook, but I want to have a huge impact on the world.
There are really smart and hard to get opportunities out there that even if I got, would not help advance my goal.
Starting a low impact company may be a low ceiling opportunity. Why? Because you may get stuck doing it for a really long time.
These thoughts are not totally coherent, yet, but…it’ll turn into something good.
Originally published at gonen.blog.
By jordangonen on June 16, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.