In this most busy of summers, few if any of us in the business community aren’t swamped with good problems. While we all wrestle, and rightly so, with the here and now it’s also always worth a few moments at the end of day to think about the long-term as well. In that sense, two good and fast mental models come to mind: One, in terms of long-term thinking, it’s probably just a great framing tool to think about the future and here it is--a friend of mine has always suggested that a great key to happiness is to never retire from something but to always retire to something. That way, we’re always excited about the future and time spent planning our "second act" is rarely wasted as it almost forces us to plan for the future.
Second, a great lady in the tourism industry named Sarah Bradford has a wonderful way of thinking about the future--she mentions in her fantastic podcast that, in many cases in our lives, what we give in slices comes back in loaves. That’s a great visual for comparing short-term “gives” to long-term “gets” and I think it’s a great quote to carry around in our minds this month as we give more and more in these busy summers.
Have a wonderful rest of your July and thank you for reading!
