I heard Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, say something interesting about the projects he is working on.
When someone congratulates him on a good fiscal quarter, he thanks them but it doesn’t really make much of an impact on him. The results from this quarter were already determined by the work he did three years ago. He won’t know the results of the projects he is working on now until three years from now.
He called this a discipline. This is something you have to train yourself to do.
So . . .
What are you working on right now?
Will it still be relevant and useful three years from now?
Are you laying the groundwork for success three weeks from now or three years from now?
As Bezos says, this kind of approach to work changes how you spend your time, how you plan, and where you spend your energy.
Think about the long-term, lasting impact on the work that you do right now.
For example:
I know for me, personally, this mindset is reassuring. I am trying to create resources that are relatively timeless. The worksheets I am creating right now, for instance, should be just as useful three, five, even ten years from now.
I am revising an eBook that I wrote in 2010 as an email opt-in giveaway for my website. I am embarrassed by how many things I included that are mostly irrelevant today. As I revise it, I have to assume it is going to be another 8 years before I update this thing again. That kind of thinking really helps make the work better.
Source:
Bezos’s excerpt in the above video was from this longer, very thought-provoking interview:
