Make meaningful progress by balancing your perspective on timescales
By: Ethan Galowitz
Tags: Product Management, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Work, Motivation

The first time I set out to start a business, I was focused on the vision of what my idea could be. It was exciting, it was empowering, I was changing the world. But I wasn’t… I was being idealistic. I was stuck in long-termism — focused on the future at the expense of the present. I struggled to connect the dots and make progress because all I could see was where I wanted things to go.

I promised myself I wouldn’t be in that situation again, so I took a job as a product manager to learn the tactical work of building software. I wanted to learn to build 0 to 1.

In two and a half years as a PM, I built dozens of prototypes. I learned how to take a vision and boil it down to something I could execute on. Now my side businesses and side projects were going quite differently. I was making progress. I would come up with an idea and have a working prototype a day or a week later. I was so productive and always knew where to start. I was poised for success. But I wasn’t… I was being myopic. I was stuck in short-termism — focusing on the present at the expense of the future. I struggled with follow through on a project because the vision wasn’t big enough and the incentives weren’t there.

What happened? I wasn’t able to hold multiple timescales in my head at the same time.

To succeed in any large undertaking (think entrepreneurship, product development, writing a book, or even… having a meaningful life), giving explicit thought to your timescales can be really helpful

Long-termism has some important benefits.

Focusing on your long-term future or your vision can show you what the world could be if you succeed. This is highly motivating. When you encounter small setbacks, and you will, it becomes more palatable. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will whatever it is you’re building. When tackling a long-term problem, there will be times when you don’t have the answer. Long-termism enables you to wave your hands over some of those potential pitfalls as you can take a detour to your destination and either avoid or delay dealing with certain issues. There are risks here if you really ignore critical issues or assumptions. More on that in a second. Thinking on a long timescale can set you up to think about your strategy. This is the most important work in any major project (from running a business to running your life) as it is when you get to figure out why you’ll succeed.

There are also several drawbacks to long-termism. Especially in large doses!

When your goal is far off and massive, there are going to be countless routes to get there. This is great because it means if you hit a roadblock somewhere, you can re-route but if you’re too deep in your strategic mindset, it’s easy to get paralyzed by the many options in front of you. That, or you jump from one strategy to the next rapidly for fear of losing picking the wrong one and losing your optionality.

Long-termism can be pretty depressing. If you pick a goal that’s years (or even decades away) that means… you’re years or decades away. It can be demoralizing to think that you may work on your project for a year and still only be a tiny fraction of the way in. Often, progress looks like failure so it may not even feel like you’re getting any closer.

It’s not rocket science, if you’re a bit off in the beginning, you can wind up way off course. To pull an example from rocket science, if you’re headed to the moon and your launch angle is one degree off, you’ll end up missing the moon by 4,169 miles.

Remember how hand waving is a useful tool? Well, here’s why it’s not. If you wave your hands over potential problems early on, they may come back to bite you in a big way. Addressing your biggest assumptions upfront is critical to avoid getting burned down the road. Unfortunately, this can be more art than science sometimes.

There are some advantages to exercising a short timescale as well.

When you working on the short timescale, you can see your progress. A small win goes a long way when you’re focused on single day, week, or month goals. Just be careful to pick something that is achievable on that timescale.

Short-termism helps you take action by reducing your options. There are a limited number of things you can do in a week compared to 5 years. Constraints like this can be freeing.

You stay grounded and humbled when you focus on the immediate. Your goals become smaller and this helps keep your head the right size! Although small wins hype you up, it’s much easier to keep things in perspective.

Like long-termism, there are a few drawbacks to focusing on the short-term.

As Yogi Berra said “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” If you are hyper-focused on what you can achieve now, it’s easy to get lost in the false productivity and lose sight of where you want to end up.

Although small wins are motivating, working on something small isn’t. Too much of a short-term lense means you might lose motivation based purely on the pie being too small to keep you engaged.

Even when you’re focused on the short-term, you will experience setbacks. These can be especially demotivating since you’ve already set your goal lower. It’s natural to get discouraged after one (or a few) of these.

What’s the moral of the story here? Balance your short and long timescales to stay motivated and make progress. It helps me to signpost what I’m doing to myself. Take some time for long-term planning and hold off on thinking about this week or month. If an idea comes to you for an MVP or a task you need to do, write it down so you can revisit it and then move on. This long timescale work usually involves a lot of thinking, writing, and (for me) walking around talking to myself.

Once you have your long timescale in a reasonable spot, set aside some time for the short timescale. Work backwards here. What can I accomplish this month? What are the daily or weekly things I need to do to achieve that month-long goal?

The key to being effective at compartmentalizing the short and long frames is to be explicit about your timescales.