To effect any change in something, I believe it requires a suitable amount of thinking time. The phrase "getting what you want" often comes up, but I think it's because one has spent an appropriate amount of time in thought that things actually turn out the way they do.
The World's Perfectly Cause-and-Effect System
Laws may be broken, but causality is always upheld. Smokers might evade regulations by skirting the law's eye, but ultimately, they accumulate harmful substances like nicotine and tar in their bodies, resulting in irreversible and significant harm to themselves.
In that sense, living in accordance with causality is more rational than anything else. However, most people likely don't understand why such causality occurs in the first place.
Living habits are often mentioned, and it's true that doing something every day makes its effects more likely to manifest in the long term rather than the short term. The benefits gained from long-term persistence are often likened to a "ripple effect." Therefore, when considering long-term effects, ignoring the causality of those effects renders any effort to improve oneself or a situation futile and off-target from the outset.
So, when undertaking anything, considering long-term effects is not only crucial but an unavoidable factor.
The Phase of Absolutely No Effect
When starting something new, there is often a period of a few months or even days when nothing seems to change at all. This phase of no effect, which applies to almost all efforts, indicates that those things not affected by it are likely to have less significant long-term effects. Can we expect something to grow at a rate exceeding 100% from today to tomorrow, and then continue growing at the same pace thereafter?
During this phase of no effect, simply enduring it, or in other words, exercising patience, becomes necessary, but being told to just endure can be mentally challenging. Therefore, what should be introduced is strategy. This is a kind of strategic patience, used to navigate the many failures and stagnations that occur in the early stages.
In the book "The Long Game," the effectiveness of this strategic patience is extensively discussed. While long-term goals lead to larger results, it also requires proportionately long-term patience to achieve them. Strategic patience becomes important as a way to overcome the extremely boring times when the effects are not apparent.
Immediate Pleasures
Of course, immediate pleasures are not necessarily good. However, humans cannot definitively determine which is better. Patience is sometimes considered a virtue, but at the same time, the immediate indulgence in pleasure can also be considered virtuous. Simultaneously, some may detest meaningless patience, while others may view indulgence in immediate pleasure as evil.
Long-term success cannot be said to be absolutely good, but for example, when proposing something new, saying something off the top of one's head from what is immediately visible doesn't necessarily have superiority in novelty.
Interestingly, in the world of scientists, sudden ideas like serendipity can occur, and instant wit is sometimes highly valued. Hearing this, you might think it's absurd to look down on immediate discoveries.
