我的成功源于25岁的一个决定

在1932年的世界赛期间，纽约洋基队球员贝比·鲁斯留下了一个传奇时刻——他指着看台，表示自己将在这个方向击出全垒打，然后他做到了。

2006年，埃隆·穆斯克发出了他自己的“全垒打预告”，公布了一项看似不可能的10年计划：

1. 推出一款小批量车，当然，价格很高；

2. 用小批量车赚的钱开发一款中批量车，价格较低；

3. 用中批量车赚的钱制造一款平价量产车；

4. 提供太阳能。

和鲁斯一样，穆斯克证明自己也是个预言家——2016年7月20日，他宣布上述4个目标均已实现。

能做到这一点就很令人惊讶，更何况它就发生在硅谷诸多现行教条的眼皮底下（让保持公司“精瘦”的观点鼓励着超短期思维——“商业计划？没有。它一进入现实世界就会过时！10年期计划？你怎么会想的那么远！？”）。

10年前，我是一位25岁的创业者，这种只关注眼前事物的做法让我觉得压力山大。相反，我做了一个决定，是它使我的成功有了可能。这个决定就是：做长线，而不是实施短期行为。我选择把目光放在10年以后，而不是3个月。当我建立起自己的公司IWT（教你致富网）时，我并没有把重点放在推出产品从而迅速赚钱上，我关注的是构建一个真正的终身式粉丝和学生群体。我把这种做法称为10年原则。

听起来很简单，对吧？错了。现实很残酷。这个决定带来了许多困难，如果不是它，我也不会做出其他有悖直觉的决定。这是我下的决心：

• IWT在三年时间里都没有推出任何产品；

• 多年来我每天都要阅读和回复一千多封电子邮件；

• 我们用了几年时间和数十万美元来开发课程；

• 我们停了一些利润很高的课程，因为它们给客户带来的效果不再符合我们的思路；

• 禁止负有信用卡债务的人上我们的旗舰课程。

这些决定让我们失去了数百万美元的潜在收入。这就意味着，我们不能像风投支持的初创公司那样迅速招募人手，并且只能推出少量产品。想象一下：有人提出要给你数百万美元现金，随后又反悔了。我们做的其实就是这样的事。

但日复一日，这样的策略开始带来回报。它帮我们构建了终身式学生群体，这些顾客买下了我们制作的所有新课程。如今，我们有了几十名员工，而且正在快速成长。

简单来说，你所做决定的时间跨度决定了你的逻辑。而在长期看来合情合理的事物在只考虑短期前景的人看来可能是疯狂的。

关键在于，虽然对目光短浅的人来说，长期思维似乎是疯狂的，但其实，真正疯狂的往往是短期思维本身。

让我给大家举几个例子……

短期思维的隐含成本

有一次，我把一个大西瓜放在了厨房的料理台上。每天经过它时，我就对自己说：“等会儿就把它吃了。”最后，我开始想：“好吧。等一会儿我就把它扔掉。”

一周又一周，我一直认真地做着这样的事。直到有一天，我走进厨房时看到地上有一摊液体。显然，静置了五个月后，西瓜液化了，变成了一种带着酒精味儿的析出液。

我没有疯，也不傻。那我为什么没有花点儿时间把西瓜拿起来然后扔到垃圾堆里呢？原因就在于我的超短期思维。那个西瓜又大又重，而我还有更好的事情要做，所以当时不去碰它是合理做法。我的行为完全符合逻辑。但过了一段时间，所有这些理性短期决定的结果就是一片狼藉而且令人恶心。

初创型企业也可能出现同样的情况。如果走的太远却没有考虑公司的长期前景，就可能很容易给自己留下一个烂摊子。

那么，怎样摆脱短期思维陷阱呢？

第一步是意识到：虽然做出短期牺牲时的感觉很糟糕，但这样做可以在今后带来更大的回报。

以著名的棉花糖实验为例。这是20世纪60年代末到70年代初进行的一系列实验，内容是让孩子们选择立即得到一个棉花糖，或者等15分钟后得到两个。在接下来的40年里，追踪结果表明选择等待的孩子更健康，上学后的成绩也更好。

大多数创业者的行为都像只拿着一个棉花糖狼吞虎咽的孩子。成功的创业者有更高明的见识。

比如说，杰夫·贝佐斯用7年时间来判断新的举措是否成功，而他的大多数竞争对手都把目光集中在季度业绩上；

马克·扎克伯格最近公布了自己的10年计划，他说：“如果我现在开始创业，我就会留在波士顿。（硅谷的）着眼点稍微短了一些，这让我心烦意乱。”

全球最大创业孵化器Y Combinator总裁山姆·阿尔特曼把长期思维比作“市场上剩下的为数不多的套利机会之一”。他还说：“考虑创业时，把它视为你愿意在很长一段时间里为之付出的东西真的很合算，因为这正是目前市场的空白点。”

我并没有说这样做很容易。如果容易，大家就都这样做了。但如果说穆斯克、扎克伯格、贝佐斯和阿尔特曼的职业生涯给了我们什么启示的话，那就是：耐心会有回报。

所以，要给自己空间和时间来思考公司的长期前景。在IWT，我把周三定为无会议策略日——不开会，不打电话，把时间都用在思考策略以及公司的发展方向上。长期思维需要眼光，而且就算每周只花一个小时也能带来巨大的影响。

当然，如果你还没有花点儿时间来构建长期思路，那就等于把钱落在了桌子上。（财富中文网）

作者：Ramit Sethi （Growth Lab和IWT创始人）

In a legendary moment during the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth pointed to the stands to show exactly where he was going to hit a homerun -- and then did it.

In 2006, Elon Musk enacted his own version of pointing to the stands, publishing a seemingly impossible 10-year plan:

1. Create a low-volume car that, by necessity, would be expensive.

2. Use that money to develop a medium-volume car at a lower price.

3. Use that money to create an affordable, high-volume car.

4. Provide solar power.

Like Ruth, Musk proved himself a prophet: On July 20, 2016, he announced all four goals had been achieved.

This is amazing in its own right. But it’s also fascinating because it flies in the face of much of the current dogma in Silicon Valley. Telling founders to “fail fast” and keep their businesses “lean” encourages ultra short-term thinking. (“Business plan? No, it will be outdated as soon as it hits the real world! 10-year plan? How can you even think that far ahead?!”)

Ten years ago when I was a 25-year-old founder, I felt this intense pressure to focus on what was right in front of me. Instead, I made a decision that has made all of my subsequent success possible: I chose to play the long game, rather than the short. I chose to look 10 years ahead, rather than three months. When getting my company IWT off the ground, instead of focusing on launching products to make money fast, I focused on building a tribe of true fans and students for life. I call this approach the 10-Year Principle.

Sounds simple, right? Wrong. The reality was brutal. That one resolution led to many difficult, counterintuitive decisions I would’ve never made otherwise. Because of the decision:

• IWT didn’t launch its first product for three years

• I read and responded to 1,000+ emails every day for years

• We spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop courses

• We discontinued highly profitable courses that weren’t delivering the results we wanted for our clients.

• Banned people with credit card debt from taking our flagship courses

These decisions cost us millions of dollars in potential revenue. For example, this meant we couldn't hire as fast as a venture-backed startup. It also meant we could only launch a small number of products, increasing the pressure on us to make each one count. Imagine someone offering you millions of dollars in cash and then turning that down. That’s essentially what we did.

But day by day, the strategy started to pay off. It helped us build students for life: customers who buy every new course we create. Today, we have dozens of employees and are growing rapidly.

Put simply, the time frame in which you make your decisions determines your logic. Things that make sense in the long term might seem crazy to people who only think of the short term.

But here’s the thing: while long-term thinking seems crazy when you don’t understand it, short-term thinking often really is crazy. Let me give you an example…

The hidden costs of short-term thinking

I once left a big watermelon sitting on my kitchen counter. Every day as I walked by it, I thought to myself, “I’ll eat this later.” Eventually, I started thinking, “Okay. I’ll just throw this away later.”

I did this religiously for weeks until one day, I walked into my kitchen and saw a pool of liquid on the floor. Apparently, watermelons liquefy and turn into some kind of alcohol-smelling ooze after you let them sit for five months.

I’m not lazy. I’m not stupid. So why couldn’t I get around to picking that watermelon up and throwing it in the garbage? I was thinking ultra short-term. The watermelon was big and heavy and I had better things to do, so it made sense not to deal with it in the moment. I was being completely logical. But over time all these rational short-term decisions led to a disgusting mess.

The same thing can happen at a startup. Go too long without thinking about the company’s long-term future, and you could easily end up with a mess on your hands.

So how do you escape the short-term thinking trap?

The first step is realizing that while short-term sacrifices feel bad at the time, they can also lead to disproportionate rewards in the future.

Take the famous Marshmallow Test, a series of experiments in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which children were offered a choice between receiving one marshmallow immediately, or two if they waited 15 minutes. Follow-ups over the next 40 years showed the kids who waited were healthier and more successful in school years later.

Most entrepreneurs behave like the kids who gobbled that single marshmallow. Successful entrepreneurs know better. Along with Musk, many of the country’s top entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman are thinking more long-term than ever, not less. In fact, they look at it as their competitive advantage.

Jeff Bezos, for example, measures the success of new initiatives over seven-year time frames, while most of his competitors are focused on quarterly earnings.

Mark Zuckerberg – who recently released his own 10-year plan – reflected, “If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.”

Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, the largest accelerator in the world, refers to long-term thinking as “one of the few arbitrage opportunities left in the market.” He adds, “When you're thinking about a startup, it's really worthwhile to think about something you're willing to make a very long-term commitment to because that is where the current void in the market is.”

I’m not saying it’s easy. If it was, everyone would do it. But if Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Altman’s careers are any indication, patience pays off.

So give yourself the space and time to think about your company’s long-term future. At IWT, I have a no-meeting Wednesday strategy day: no meetings, no calls, just time to think about strategy and where the company is going. Long-term thinking takes perspective, and even a designated hour per week can have a huge impact.

If you aren’t taking the time to get this long-term perspective, you’re leaving marshmallows (read: money) on the table.

– Ramit Sethi is the founder of Growth Lab and IWT