The time horizon question
The time horizon question
Are you optimizing for the day and the week, or the decade?
Lately I've been talking about time horizons and how there's frequently a tension between what's optimal in the short term versus the long term: when you're thinking about an action, set of actions, program, program of study, etc., it’s useful to consider “right now” “tonight” “this week” “this month” “this year” “this decade” “these two decades.” Some guys can have great days, or great weeks, that don’t add up to anything, a topic that arises due to the thinking in “The curious, cautionary fates of many of the guys who go deep into game and Internet.” The question is, can guys get different time horizons in alignment, despite those time horizons being in tension with each other?
A great night tonight might mean this, but, if you do that every week, that’s catastrophic. A great decade might mean a lot of grinding work, but without any of the things that can make life worth living… so you can win the decade but lose most days (this is where things like “burnout” often come from). Guys who make a lot of money but “forget” to have families are often not correctly setting their different time horizons. Many top guys figure out how to balance their time horizons, and many ineffective guys focus exclusively on the short term… girls of course do the same, but girls face a different set of game constraints than men do. Sugar is short term, measured in seconds or minutes, as are video games, measured in hours. Eating sugar is antithetical to being in great health.
But developing special and unique skills might take years, and yet you won't develop them if you don't put the work in every day. On a day-by-day basis, it might be fun to f**k around, and then watch as months or years pass, that time put into a video game machine or bong, instead of something lasting, sustainable, and meaningful. Many other vices fit into the short time horizon.
When I speak of how “there is no easy way, there is only the hard way,” I'm saying that top guys usually have to focus on doing this today that might not bear fruit for months or years. It's easy to misinterpret red quest as a work and philosophy because you only see the tip of the spear: you read a work that's the result, often, of decades of work. Top guys manage to think short and long term: a great experience right now, but also a set of activities and strategies that'll help guys "build wealth slowly", as xbtusd likes to say. What's great in the short term may be poisonous long term.
I can't tell you how to optimize your life, but I can tell you you should be aware of this principle. In sexual terms, I've tended to optimize for short-term activities: hours to months. In the last year or two, I've been trying to change that, and instead focus on years to decades… which may mean moving against my feral player instincts, and the high of laying new girls. Can I lay the foundations for a good life, long term, or will I be waylaid by my desire for carnal sluts? Tune in next year to find out.
Some Internet can be good, too much is bad. I've been doing too much. What? I'm not perfect, I make mistakes.
If there’s a message in red quest besides “group sex is fun and people should try it out, and here’s how to do it” it’s “things are complex and resist simple / easy answers.” Most of us want easy answers, most of us have limited attention spans, most of us are ineffective… with the results seen everywhere. This post isn't immediately actionable in a universal way, like "lift" or "don't eat sugar" or "call your mom" is, but it applies to many of us, if not most.
Most people never seem to think about their primary time horizon. Maybe it’s time to be different, in order to really win.
