Why Many People Think only in SHORT TERM Results and are Unable to Have LONG TERM Goals
A business owner deals with 1 million problems that happen at the same time on a daily basis. In addition, he cannot anticipate what the next day will bring.
The 1st factor (multiple problems) keeps him busy and the 2nd one (uncertainty) keep him WORRIED. As a result, the IMMEDIATE attention and focus are stuck only in TODAY, in the right now. The thinking is only SHORT TERM with a total inability to see in the future. Hence, there is no LONG TERM vision.
From here he gets the urge feeling, need to solve and deal with the multitude of problems. So, he employs multitasking, improvisations and combines them with high SPEED to handle the overwhelming and unpredictable reality.
So, any incentive to think or see about long term in terms of goals, a bigger vision or daring plan is rejected on the spot as he really doesn’t know what to expect from tomorrow, he cannot anticipate what is coming next in the SHORT TERM, let alone in 3 or 6, 12 months.
When we cannot anticipate most of what is coming in the short term (tomorrow or within a week), it means we treat most of our daily activity as NEW.
If it is right to approach every daily workload as NEW because it looks different and difficult to anticipate, then in general we wouldn’t recall PAST experiences in order to handle more or less similar or difficult problems and situations in the PRESENT.
If our daily workload was that NEW, VARIABLE and IMPOSSIBLE to reorganize, than we wouldn’t have to recall PAST experiences from different businesses or jobs in order to validate our point of view to be multitasking and handle the workload just the way it is with no intention to modify it because it shouldn’t be any similarity between the 2 of them (between past and present).
The point is that time is passing anyway and we always PROJECT our past experiences into our PRESENT ones, otherwise we wouldn’t LEARN at all and we wouldn’t make PROGRESS, we would stay children forever at the level of our understanding about the world within and around us, we would always look at our experiences with a sense of wonder as if they were something NEW.
Think about LIFE in general. If you compare your current situation to 5 years or 10 or 20 years ago, do you consider that you have more EXPERIENCE or that you are in better position than before?
No matter if this means: earning more money or you are in a better relationship, better health or able to solve more difficult problems, are more self-confident, have a better intuition or sense people better, or have particular skills etc.
In at least one area of your life, you are better off. This is because you have, what they call, a LIFE EXPERIENCE which is a series of happenings that keep accumulating that taught you to make progress in a way or another.
So, no matter what you do, time is passing anyway during which you accumulate a series of experiences from which, sooner or later, you learn particular things that help you move forward and make progress. You take with yourself some things from the PAST and apply them in more or less similar and different situations in PRESENT.
No matter how RANDOM, busy, different our activity looks like from day to day, no matter if I am just a commercial worker with no relevant business experience, ALL these SMALL activities that we do on a daily basis are ACCUMULATING and time is passing anyway, no matter what we do and no matter if we believe they are relevant or not.
Since past experiences are relevant to keep learning and make progress in life, it also means that in our daily ROUTINES there are factors, happenings that also have happened in the PAST (one day or one year before), they repeat themselves and that are relevant for the results we experience in the PRESENT. This means that when our daily activity seems difficult to anticipate or when it seems NEW and VARIABLE is actually REPEATING in a way or another, but our IMMEDIATE PERCEPTION cannot see the repetition, cannot distinguish patterns in a variable environment.
Our immediate attention cannot perceive repetitive facts because we haven’t kept track of their happening in the PAST.
As a result, different facts, information, happenings keep popping up as they were something NEW, as out of the blue.
At this point one is totally unable to see in the FUTURE, to think in terms of LONG TERM plans, goals and vision.
Your mind simply cannot imagine what could happen in the future, you cannot picture and you really dont know what to DO. Long term is just an abstract term that just doesnt exist. The mind doesnt have any context for it. This is because the majority of us are SELF TAUGHT, we have learnt everything we know from our own experience, through massive action, practice and constant adaptation and improvisation on the spot when things didnt go well. And everything happened in the PRESENT moment, not by thinking about the future.
By constantly improvising and handling things with multitasking, you always deal with a problem as it happens in the NOW, in present and hence, with the symptoms of the problem, with the effects.
Because you dont look in the PAST to retrace your steps, of different happenings and events, you are totally unable to identify the cause. You are not able to think in terms of CAUSE (something that I did in the PAST) and EFFECTS (something that will happen in the FUTURE) for your actions.
So, if you dont have the habit of thinking in terms of cause and effect for the things that you do and that are happening around you, it is unlikely you will think about LONG TERM results. This means you dont have goals in your life, no vision, no direction.
You will always be stuck in the PRESENT without making progress dealing with the same problems over and over again and you don’t even see it. Not being able to identify patterns from PAST leads to lack of vision for the FUTURE.
On the other hand, if you keep track of the small happenings from the PAST, you will be able to anticipate some of the facts, activities from TOMORROW and then in a week and in time, your anticipation ability will extend far faraway in the FUTURE. And this is called having a big goal, a vision, a direction for the work that you do right now, thinking, seeing and anticipating in the LONG TERM.
It is the ability of your mind to see in the future based on the natural process of learning by keeping track of past events and adjusting in the present accordingly.
When you are able to anticipate your activities from tomorrow, you will organize yourself better today in order to meet them. And the same applies for that LONG TERM goal: when you have that great idea in the mind, you will organize yourself better today in order to make it happen and in time, you wont feel so overwhelmed by your work anymore.
A long term goal, idea or vision gives SHAPE that could integrate the CHAOS in your work. As a result, the chaos would organize itself and in time it will lead to more HARMONY in the present moment.
Mihaela Dragan