Omar Usman – Playing the Long Game Sam Kyle 3 Things I Learned
AI: Summary ©
In this video, the speaker discusses three lessons learned from playing the long game. The first lesson is to anticipate the action and be patient to get the most out of the long game. The second lesson is to understand the consequences of one's actions and avoid the second order effects that lead to loss. The third lesson is to focus on the second order effect and avoid the loss of the Pyrrhic victory.
AI: Summary ©
The worst feeling
is when you put a lot of work
into something
and you get some benefit, you get a
win, and then in the long run it
ends up being a loss. We've all felt
that before, and we've all heard that phrase,
the operation was successful
but the patient died.
Sam Kyle calls this a Pyrrhic victory,
and his book Playing the Long Game
talks about the mindsets needed to overcome or
to prevent having a Pyrrhic victory. And so
in this video, I'm sharing 3 things I
learned from playing the long game by Sam
Kyle.
The first lesson is to skate to where
the puck is going. That means not being
caught up in the same place where everyone
else is, but anticipating
where the action is going to be. In
order to do that, that requires vision. It
requires being able to see a couple of
steps ahead of everybody else.
It requires patience to execute on that vision,
and it also requires a strategy in order
to get there. Now when people play the
short game, they're playing the same game as
everybody else, and they're trying to get those
same small wins as everybody else.
But the problem when you focus on the
short game is that there's a much higher
cost of failure. So if you put all
your eggs in the basket of what we
can immediately get right now, if it doesn't
work out, the stakes are much higher. But
when you play the long game, if you're
skating to where the puck is going, so
to speak,
a short term setback isn't as catastrophic.
When you play the long game, that cost
of failure gets is much lower.
The challenge, of course, is that playing the
short game is a lot easier and there's
more immediate satisfaction.
Think about something like consuming
information over social media versus sitting and reading
a book. One has immediate gratification,
but the other one we know is more
useful and more beneficial in the long run.
The primary challenge to skating where the puck
is going is that if you've been playing
the short game for a long time,
changing
requires a lot more effort. For example, if
someone's been accustomed to eating junk food, then
it's going to be much harder to eat
healthy food. That healthy food is going to
taste bland,
it's not going to have all that extra
salt and sugar, and so it's not going
to be as satisfying when you eat it,
even though you know in the long run,
it's much more important for you to have
that. So the resistance to
change is much stronger
when you're playing that short game.
The second lesson I learned is that consistency
is the most important element of playing the
long game. We've all heard all of the
cliches.
Eating an elephant starts with one bite, the
journey of a 1000 miles begins with one
step, Rome wasn't built in a day, and
so on and so on and so on.
And these cliches have a powerful element of
truth.
No matter what that long term goal is,
you have to chip away at it consistently,
and when you consistently do something day after
day, you start to build momentum.
And one thing that Sam Kyle will point
Sam Kyle points out in the book is
that
momentum
can be more powerful than even big wins
in some cases, because a big win might
give you a sense of satisfaction. You might
take your, you know, take the pedal off
the gas,
but consistency
that builds momentum keeps you going even on
the slow days, and over time, over the
months years, there's a huge compounding
effect that leads to disproportionate amount of results.
Also,
because we live in a society where speed
has become such a premium, speed has become
such a value.
It used to be that patience was the
ultimate virtue, and Kyle says in the book
that, now speed has overtaken patience as the
ultimate virtue. So if we take that idea
that you're probably familiar with the zig when
everyone else zags, you get a competitive advantage.
Well, in a world where everyone is valuing
speed,
there's a competitive advantage to being patient
and being consistent.
The third lesson I learned is the idea
of second order effects. Now that's a fancy
way of saying the consequences of the consequences
of your actions. So for example,
you know that if if you buy something
that you can't afford,
you get a short term win or a
first order consequence, which is that you're able
to buy something
that you want to get.
The second order consequence or the consequence of
the consequence is that over time, you may
end up paying a lot more money in
interest payments. So there's a lot of situations
where there's a short term benefit,
but in the long run, you have that
pyrrhic victory. Right? You end up having a
larger cost in the back end, that second
order effect is negative. And so the key
becomes, how do we avoid those second order
effects?
The first thing is to understand
that first order effects and second order effects
are often the opposite. So that means in
order to play that long game and get
the the bigger payoffs
at the end, it might mean that you
have to do some more painful things in
the short term.
If we take that example of social media
again, there's a first order consequence of engaging
with content,
connecting with people, you know, consuming all this
useful stuff,
but there's a second order consequence that we
sometimes don't think of when it comes to
our ability to focus,
problems with attention spans in the future, even
issues with mental One thing that he mentioned
in the book that I found to be
particular particularly interesting
was the idea that the person who is
a superior thinker
is the one that know that can best
accurately predict
the cons the first order and second order
consequences.
So the one that's able to cast the
best vision and understanding of the long term
effects
of a certain business strategy, of a certain
plan, of a certain project, or a certain
course of action.
The one that can best predict those second
order consequences
has the most superior mental model or way
of looking at things and making sense of
them, and adds the most value to a
team or to an organization.
And so by focusing on that second order
effect,
you prevent that Pyrrhic victory
where it looks like you got a win,
but it ends up being a loss. So
hope you enjoyed this video. Please make sure
you like, subscribe, and please leave a comment.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. What's an
example of a long term win that you
got that you were forced to maybe take
a short term loss? Please share that in
the comments. See you in the next video.