The Agony of 1 and the Ecstasy of 5

Sailors have many sayings that we can apply to our daily lives.  One of the simplest is their cure for sea sickness:

Look at the Horizon, not the waves!

They mean that to lower the incidence of sea sickness, you should look far from the boat you are on because it is more calming to look at the unchanging horizon and therefore more calming for your brain and stomach.  Looking close to the boat at the waves is much more unsettling and can make you sick.

This is an excellent metaphor for our lives.  In the short term there are many bumps we will have to face, but over the long term, if we keep our eyes on the horizon, we can smooth out those bumps and not let them affect us as much.

Long-term Thinking

It takes quite a bit of practice and mental fortitude to be able to look and think long term while living our daily lives.  It is not easy to think about achieving a long-term goal, like saving for retirement, when we have daily expenses that drain our cash flow.  Retiring in 20 years sees very far away when your mortgage payment is due in the next little while.  Add to this a couple of quarters of bad investment returns in your retirement account and even the strongest of us will begin to have concerns.

The same could be said for our physical health.  Thinking about being in good shape and having more energy and self esteem are great long-term goals, but there are many exercise sessions and food choices between today and your ideal body and weight.  Couple that with missing a few workouts and eating some things that may not be entirely within our ideal dietary choices, things that happen to all of us, and the difficulty of the goal is readily apparent.

What is the solution?  First, let’s establish that these concerns are as normal as spending more than your budget for a new purse or eating cake for dessert when you are working on a new exercise and health program. 

As we have already said, there are going to be obstacles in life that we must face.  If success were a straight line upward, many more people would achieve their goals.  Also, the goals would be much less satisfying to reach if they were that easy. 

Another interesting quirk that we have is that we continually overestimate how much we can do in the short term while underestimating how much we can do in the long term.  This is simply because the short term is close enough for us to be able to relate to, while the long term is nebulous and hazy and may not even occur.

1 Year vs. 5 Years

So, instead of overestimating how much we can do in 1 year, we can make a plan for 5 years into the future.  All of the sudden we give ourselves more breathing room and less anxiety when things go wrong (which we know they occasionally will).

Instead of trying to pay off our debts in one year, we can make a realistic and achievable plan to pay them off in 5.  That way if there is some obstacle, like an unforeseen expense that affects our cash flow, it will have a much less serious effect on our final outcome.  If we pay them earlier, which often happens with that kind of long-term planning, then that is an even better result.

Instead of trying to lose 50 pounds in a year, we can plan to lose 1 pound a month for several years until we reach our goal.  This is a much less aggressive goal, but a more manageable one that we are more likely to achieve.  Plus, if we miss our goal occasionally, it will be much easier to get back on track and recover.

Lock It In

The other tremendous result of a long-term view is you are much more likely to lock in the behaviors you want because they are not as drastic. 

Losing 50 pounds in year would require a relatively strict eating plan and some form of exercise, and any missteps for a week or 2 could seriously affect your achieving the goal.  Losing a pound a month is one quarter pound a week.  The eating and exercise plans would be less taxing to follow and if you had a setback, it would only be for a relatively small amount.

The same could be said for paying down debt or saving for a goal such as retirement.  If you give yourself 5 years to do it, the steps leading up to the completion of the goal are easier to achieve and much less daunting.  If, for any reason, you have a setback, you can look at the plan you laid out and probably see that it will only affect it to a small degree.

So, instead of overestimating what we can do in 1 year and underestimating what we can do in 5, we can create a long-term plan, using goal setting, and implement the plan.  If there are any setbacks, we can look at the plan and see what the effect will be and then move on and continue towards the goal.

So, let’s embrace the 5.