Not next year, but 20 years from now

The short-term is tempting. We like validity, we hate uncertainty, so we compress our future to within our reach. But this is suboptimal. We want to optimize for the long-term, and we can do so with a 20 year window. 

In the stock market, people will say the wise thing to do is invest in an index fund and forget about it. Short-term volatility doesn’t matter in this case, whether your investment goes up or down next year, or even in the next 5 years. What matters is that your investment will ultimately go up in the long run. 

While not a perfect analogy, we can use a similar lesson for how we project our own lives forward. The goal is not to hit a home-run this year, or next year. The goal is to build over a long period of time. Why? Because a long period of time – say 20 years – gives us the luxury to absorb volatility. Absorbing volatility means we can afford to take risks. Being able to take risks is what frees us to explore, experiment, and ultimately pursue things that offer us our greatest reward. 

If your goal coming out of college is to be somewhere, doing something, being someone, at 45, then you shouldn’t be so concerned with where you are, what you’re doing, and who you are, at 25, right?