Extend Your Time Horizon
Level 5: Master Player
Dear Future Guardian,
It can be said that TGA is all about learning how to get what you want in life the way you want to be getting it.
We like to say it's about become better people, better adults. About unhealing the damage in ourselves so that we can raise undamaged children into the world. About discovering, revealing, and using our greatest potentials to live our fullest and best selves.
Those things are all true.
But I'd say they are the path you walk to get what you want.
You can't get what you want if you are a broken person. If you haven't unraveled those demons. If you can't see or access your exponential potential.
And so,
Here we explore all of those ideas. Finding happiness in the now. Letting go of what is not ourselves and what doesn't really matter. Understanding what we really want so we can head in the right direction, etc.
All components of learning how to get exactly what we want.
In my observation,
There's a dynamic which runs through it all, which when leveraged right and well for yourself and your needs and interests, contributes more towards the likelihood of getting what you want than anything else.
(And it has the nice side effect of necessarily contributing to the betterment of YOU, of The Champions Mind1)
Before I get into all this,
There's a fascinating bit of a psychology which has really stuck with me for several years. Since long before I discovered The Guardian Academy and started practicing within myself conscious delayed gratification.
(My perspective on this may have influenced my resonance with TGA and how willingly I've jumped into the work here)
The Marshmallow Experiment
I'll spare you the details since you can google this if you're interested. The summary is pretty straightforward:
Researchers took young children into a room with a simple table and chair. They were asked to sit at the table. In front of them was placed 1 marshmallow.
Then,
They were told that if they waited to eat the marshmallow, someone would return and place a second one on the table for them to have.
Some of the kids straight ate the 1 in front of them, they couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't want to wait.
Some did wait.
But the real lesson came years and years later where, now grown, it was discovered that the children who had the capacity to delay their gratification were able to become *much more successful and happy in life later.*
(I'm sure I've butchered some aspects of the experiment, but that's the important part in my eyes)
Delayed Gratification
This idea has resonated with me for years and I've only ever been able to explain why on the periphery of the concept. Quite simply, I find more happiness and satisfaction when I delay getting the things that I want.
I could make arguments about it being a dopamine thing. That would be reasonable. About it being a "presence in the now" thing. That would also be reasonable.
But now I'm thinking that everything I've observed about that practice, and the reason this lesson has stuck in my mind so long ... have all be shadows being revealed by the true force.
It's not about delaying the satisfaction (I think the benefits of that are more a positive side effect).
It's about extending the time to the outcome.
There's an inexplicable magic in life that starts to appear the longer you are able to wait for an outcome to occur.
We can, and have, talked about this strategically.
Consider Time and Randomness.
These are the two forces in life which are both certain and completely outside of our control (curiously, I’d say at opposite ends of a spectrum).
They also play very well with each other.
The more you can put time on your side, the more you get randomness on your side.
Getting what you want in life becomes a process of becoming the kind of person who can naturally put time on their side and take advantage of randomness.
And what better way to do that than changing the question from "how can I make this happen?" ...
To how can I increase the time horizon for this to happen?
In other words, establishing and building on a base that lets you keep going as long as possible, because the longer you increase your time horizon, the greater likelihood that what you want to have happen, will happen.
Many of the stories and allegories we share here fit this.
There are two neighbors,
One neighbor says "I'm going to have the tallest trees around!"
The other neighbor says "cool man, I like tall trees too."
The first neighbor tries every day of his life to have the tallest trees.
The other neighbor doesn't care when it happens, and falls in love with the practice of growing and nurturing his trees.
That story originally is told as a lesson on loving the process vs the outcome and finding happiness in the now rather than anchoring it on some uncontrollable future.
But it just the same could be a story about time.
How long are you willing and able to give for the outcome to happen?
The second neighbor, who doesn't care about having the tallest tree right now, is probably going to end up with the tallest healthiest trees in the entire forrest ... because he loves the process and is most likely nurturing the best environment for that to happen.
Might happen long after he's left life. The trees can easily outlive him. But it's as inevitable as you can make something.
Extend the timeline ... increases the chance of the result.
Tripping over when we want the thing.
Is your goal to make it happen? Or is it to make it happen now? These are two very different things.
Sometimes we really DO need something now.
But if you really want to get good at getting what you want, nurturing the ability in yourself to honestly say whether you actually need it NOW, vs being able to wait, is going to give you this ability to leverage your time horizon to increase the likelihood of it all happening.
Back to the marshmallows.
Do you really need to eat 1 marshmallow now?
Or can you wait and double your return?
This dynamic becomes all the more complicated when we start tricking ourselves into thinking that we need it sooner.
Or perhaps more insidiously,
That when we delay the having of it, that means we won't get it.
Perhaps thats why many of the children choose to eat the marshmallow right away. Fear that they won't get it at all, rather than recognizing that waiting gets them even more of what they really want.
I think people are often AFRAID to intentionally extend their time horizon because it feels like they are willingly giving up something they "should" have now. Because more time also can mean more uncertainty. And securing a thing now feeds the part of our mind that wants certainty of getting it.
Regardless of whether we're able to actually get the thing we want.
We trick ourselves so much out of fear, doubt, and uncertainty that it's very easy to be in a state where your feelings betray you and keep you from recognizing the increased time horizon is actually beneficial and probably exactly what you need and want right now.
Funnily enough ... and not surprising at all in retrospect ... this applies very well to my writing.
Really ... it applies to everything.
But on something tangible ...
The more time I can give a piece to come to fruition, the better that piece will be ultimately. Time for ideas to get on and off the page. For me to use the writing as a mirror to see around corners I can't right away. Time for something new I haven't seen to show up. Time for perspective to shift and find better more succinct routes.
When I'm stuck on a piece, I know that if I just give it a bit more time, something will show up.
Even when I've completed a piece, I know that if I give it a bit more time, something better will show up.
Time gives the learning process2 an opportunity to happen, and to happen more. Writing for me is the learning process. Every time I write it's a hypothesis I'm putting into action and the words coming out are the result of that action. I finish an article and I look back and reflect.
Now I am different. And so is the river.
There's hardly anything I've written and "finished" which I don't want to immediately write differently, or better, or to add to, etc.
Because I walked the path of putting the words together it's changed me. Because I gave the time to do so, it changed me.
Probably obvious to look back on.
It might also be arguable that the longer you take to make something happen, the longer it lasts or the greater the impact of the ultimate outcome.
Weight loss for example. It's been argued that the longer you take to lose weight, the longer it will stay lost. That isn't a rule so much as it is a pattern and observation of behavior. Time adds an imperceptible yet powerful element to the equation of getting what you want.
The more time you give yourself to change a system, the more likely you get the result you want.
It's all there.
But, we can do more than just recognize that extending our time horizon is beneficial.
We can intentionally engineer our lives and make decisions in order to extend the time horizon as much as possible.
Many of the frameworks we use in The Guardian Academy are actually made to support extension of that time horizon - I can't decide if it's a side effect of those systems, or if it's the purpose.
Either way, I'm going to show you a few in the context of extending your time horizon, so that when you are making decisions, planning, taking action, you can do so with the conscious effort to bias toward extending that time horizon ... if you wish.
I'll start with this conceptual idea which will help you determine if extending your time horizon is the right thing to do for a particular decision.
(As previously mentioned ... sometimes there ARE situations where you need to move now)
Finite and Infinite Games
Ah yes. Those of you who've been reading TGA for a long time will have run across this concept.
If you're interested in the resource, it's Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse.
Again, without diving too deep into the details ...
A finite game is one which has an end and has winners, and an infinite game is one which does not. A basketball game is a finite game. There's a timer. There's a score. There are winners and losers.
Life is an infinite game. There's no score. There's no timer. Your only limitation is how long you get to play in that game of life.
So the goal of the finite game is to score and win, within the defined bounds of that game. The goal of the infinite game, is to not die. That's the only way to "win" the infinite game - keep playing.
And thus you can apply this to any aspect of your life.
There are those (myself included) who see business as an infinite game. The goal is to not lose. To keep the systems and the machine going so that we can stay in business as long as possible.
Within infinite games there can be finite games (but not the other way around).
So in the infinite game of business, I can have a project with a client, that has goals for outcomes, set deliverables, payments, and a time table. My goal is to win that finite game, because it is defined. And to do so in a way that keeps the infinite game going.
That is my quick summary of finite/infinite games.
Now,
In the context of extending your time horizon ...
Recognize the game you are playing.
An infinite game benefits from extending the time horizon.
However, a finite game may actually be hurt by extending the time horizon. Since the finite game and thus victory is defined by the end point, the more you string out the end point the more you limit your ability to declare victory (and ultimately support the infinite game).
I feel like I'm in danger of opening up a whole new conversation, so I'll wrap up the finite/infinite point there by saying that in the event I start thinking that extending the time horizon might help a finite game, my perspective on it is to break apart the finite game into separate structures, and allow the infinite game in between to leverage the time horizon.
(In the business project scenario, in other words, tighten the project scope and create multiple projects rather than stringing along one singular project ... but there's too much nuance to speak succinctly and completely on THAT matter)
So,
Identify the game you are playing in order to best apply intentional extension of time horizon.
And then ...
You can use the following to extend your time horizon:
What is Enough?3
Figuring out your "enough" may be the greatest contribution to time horizon. IF you lean into just getting enough to keep going, then you can keep going far longer than if you over extend yourself. It's got time horizon extension built into it
Raise the Floor4
Raise the floor is a similar impact as figuring out enough, but more directly impacts extension of the time horizon. As you raise your floor your average increases, getting you closer to what you want, providing more resources, and naturally making it all the more possible to have a longer time horizon to the ultimate impact
The Microstep5 and Immediate Constraint6
Both of these, with respect to time horizon, come in around the concept of resource management. The fastest way to reduce the amount of time you're able to take to get to a result *is to run out of resources*. Both the microstep and identifying your immediate constraint are moves which focus on using minimal resources to unlock further resources available to you on the path towards what you want.
Explore/Exploit7
This is another in the concept of resource management ... in this case, if you can master the explore/exploit barbell, using that which you can exploit to achieve enough and raise the floor, will make it much easier to give yourself a much longer time horizon to explore.
Becoming adept at properly assigning aspects of your life to either side of this barbell gives you the greatest opportunity to leverage longer time horizon where it matters most.
You may already have been thinking about your life and your goals in this way without realizing it. But I think you'll find that consciously*applying extension of time horizon to your goals and processes not only doesn't delay the outcome, but also dramatically increases the chance you get it.
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy
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Really appreciate these reflections. Life is an infinite game and it is meant to be played on your terms with and for others. Embrace your inherent sufficiency and readiness. Step into the arena and engage the field. It’s worth it. Onward.