short-term thinking vs long-term success

Considering the times we’re living in, it’s easy to get trapped in the microwave mentality and go for short-term results over long-term dividends. But we have to gently steer ourselves so that we don’t make short-sighted choices that hurt our long-term growth. 

For example, in business, choosing an immediate return is a bad decision if you’re sacrificing 10x that amount of sales or profits down the road. 

Long-term wins always trump short-term gains. It’s better to pay now than pay later, and focus on long-term ROI opportunities, even if it requires short-term pain and struggle.

As Seth Godin wrote recently in his blog:

There’s always someone who is more willing to play the short-term game than you are.

Someone who is willing to cut more corners, send a more urgent text, borrow against the future, ignore the side effects, abuse trust and corrupt the system–somehow justifying that short-term hustle with a rationalization (usually a selfish one) about how urgent it is.

On the other hand…

There’s plenty of room to win as someone who takes a longer view than the others.

Either we can go for long-term success and growth or short-term profitability, we can’t have both.