Over and Under, Now and Tomorrow

In your experience, how true is this statement from @mikezillo:

Sometimes we overestimate what we can do in few months but we underestimate what we can do in 10 years.

At least for me, it is very true, and over the last decade, I have been trying to ensure that my future is made up of better habits that will affect that ten year position. As I wrote yesterday about zooming out on life a bit, focusing on the momentary drama is going to get us into all kinds of issues. However, in those moments we have a chance to act, but like Mike says, we tend to overestimate what we can do in a short timeframe. This just creates more drama, doesn't it?

I have overestimated a lot in my life, from how long it is going to take me to finish a school assignment, to how long it will take to renovate a kitchen. There are always so many daily hurdles that arise unexpectedly to throw a spanner in the works with some being minor inconveniences like a delivery not arriving on schedule, to more major ones, like a stroke that incapacitates for months on end and affects everything else going forward.

While it is possible to allow for some buffer for events, how much is enough and how many contingencies can be included, just in case? The average 40-year old isn't thinking about having a stroke, so the chances of allowing for it are slim, because the probability of it happening are slim. Leaving room for it ends up being a waste of resources, 98% of the time.

And then there is the long-term view to consider, which I also haven't planned well for in the past, but I am getting better. While most of us overestimate the short, we underestimate the long and end up procrastinating, or resting a little bit too much and not working a lit bit too often, as our potential drips away, leaking out through the cracks, often because we are so focused on the day to day, we don't even realize it.

All those daily dramas, all those irrelevant, attention-grabbing events in our lives that steal our time and energy, as they draw us away from what we could be doing instead. The opportunity is lost today, the cost comes later, down the road.

Compounding interest, or compounding tax.

No one really likes to pay tax, right? Yet we are effectively taxing our future through our actions today, as we fail to take advantage of what we could, underperforming now, justifying it through a range of excuses and then, down the road, perhaps realizing that we could have been a contender. At least, we could have done more than we did - been further along the journey.

So many of our regrets in life (we all have them - despite what some say) are due to what we *didn't do, not what we did. What we did do tends to be making the best decision we could at the time, even if it didn't work out. But, what we didn't do is often acting on a default, passively avoiding challenge, or actively justifying why why can't or won't, because we believe it will be too uncomfortable, take too much work, or get in the way of our daily routines - the daily focus on drama.

The tax is high on passive activity, but also an unknown. Too busy to learn a new skill, get a degree, spend a little extra time building a career, or reaching out to a friend. Too busy in the daily grind of habitual living that when we do finally lift our head, we haven't moved nearly as far as we could have, because we were on repeat, day in and day out, the same patterns played.

Justify, my love.

We can find plenty of excuses though, so we don't have to fully face the fact we missed so much opportunity, but in those dark moments, in the silence, we might just get the feeling creep in - I could have done a little more. A little more what? Well, that depends on each of us, but we all have the same 24 hours in a day to work with what we have available, even though our resources might differ drastically.

While we can complain at the level of opportunity inequality, the fact is that given the same resources, doesn't ensure that we all get the same results because, we differ as people - we differ in personality, temperament and intelligence. We differ in what we want today and for tomorrow and we differed in what we wanted in the past too. Some wanted the holiday, while another wanted to pay down the mortgage. Some wanted to try their hand as an artist, while another wanted job security.

Daily choices make a life.

There is no right or wrong in this, yet when we compare ourselves to the results of others, we will likely find that behind all the excuses, we had some opportunities we didn't take, whilst they might have. We don't know their story, and I get a sense that most of us don't even know our own, even though we were there. When we act on default, we are acting on a program that makes us blind to alternatives, or less likely to stray from the easiest path. We overestimate the value of what we are doing right now ad devalue what else we could be doing of we changed direction.

This is the world we live in. We can't do it all, so we have to make choices and come to terms with our results, but what we need to remember, is that we aren't qualified to judge the paths of others, or pretend that we know how they got there, even if we think we have a clear view. Rarely do we see behind the curtain of others, but if we draw back our own, we should recognize - we probably could have done something different too.

It is okay to miss out.
It is also okay to try.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]