The experience of Steem time

I just got a reminder of the 2-year anniversary of the Steem All Time High and found it fitting to another conversation I had over dinner with my wife last night. In that discussion, I was talking about the potential for Steem to do well and she of course has heard it all before in one sense or another and is likely tired of waiting. But, as I said to her, what does the time really matter? If it is 1 year or 5, as long as it eventually moves significantly it is going to be well worth the time, money and effort invested.

I think this is one of the problems with the limitations of our human minds to appreciate the future value of something, as while we can imagine the future, we aren't very good at being patient to get there. Looking forward, it always seems to take longer, but looking back it was really a blink of the eye - once the reality of experience has tempered the view.

When I was 20, being 40 seemed like a very long way in the future, but now that I am there, being 20 doesn't seem all that long ago. And, the older we get the faster time moves as relatively, one year is significantly less percentage wise than it was when young. 1 year for my daughter is 1/3rd of all of her experience for 33%, 1 year for me is 1/40th meaning 2.5%. That makes a difference to our outlook and understanding.

This likely plays a role in the way younger people invest and why many older people wish they had invested much earlier than they had. There is always tomorrow runs out of influence when the sense of tomorrows ending can be felt. I believe that this perspective and understanding of the future is likely part of the reason at least why some people are instant gratifiers, while others can delay their gratification, with the latter much more likely to be successful in life. This isn't just for financial considerations of course, as skill development takes time also and possibly, people who can delay gratification might be more open to taking the time for skill development, which is not an overnight process.

I believe time on Steem is not like time on other social medias and it is easy to see since many people have already been on Facebook for something like 12 years now, without having the sense that a great deal of time has passed. Due to the investment state of Steem however and the opportunity for financial return, the risk, the cost and of course, the expectation of a result, time operates under a different quantifier. As Einstein indicated, time is relative and it depends on our circumstances. Time flies when having fun, it goes much slower when waiting for a desired outcome.

I have been on Steem for near three years and have spent more time writing and reading here than I have in all the other years combined, and I could read and write from four years of age and went to university. What we experience, the way we behave in our environment and what we react to is going to skew our perspective, which is likely why some people are happy to be patient and work toward the future, while others want to take shortcuts and demand immediate results. This is not just the Steem experience however, it is also heavily influenced by off-Steem life conditions also.

If a person is hungry, the mind is consumed by the hunger and the next meal can't come soon enough. But if a person is relatively content, there is no great rush on getting food into the mouth. The expectation of time when Steem or crypto in general is going to answer financial prayers is going to depend on off-Steem contentment, with those who have economic availability like savings or a job to pay the bills being in a better position. This also alludes to the propensity to take on risk as well, as those who have no rush generally have a little more disposable income available.

Desperation for outcome is going to skew time and likely slow it down when the outcome is positive, like a financial return, or speed it up when negative like a ticking bomb about to explode. Perhaps we become better investors or at least, more aware of investing once the sense of time weighs on our shoulders and maybe a lot of the impatience we have is when we want an outcome without having a good sense of time itself. A long time for a child is a year, what is a long time for an investor?

While everyone hopes to get rich quick, rarely will it happen and rarely will whatever it is that created the value will last. When it comes to building something that is lasting however, it takes effort and time to develop a foundation that can be built upon, and when that building requires a paradigm shift in thinking about fundamentals we have come to accept, nothing moves quickly.

Until we look back.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]