Part of playing the long game is understanding that you can’t always immediately jump into the ring. Moving slow may feel like wasting time. But every moment you spend understanding the nature of the game, and how it works, makes you stronger once you do get in.

The whole point of playing the long game is understanding that ridiculous goals are ridiculous right now—not forever. When we force ourselves to take our goals to extremes—What would ultimate success look like?—we can create an honest road map for ourselves. It might take five years, or ten, or twenty. But that time will pass anyway.

In playing by his own rules, T. J. didn’t just become interesting: he became a beacon to others who longed for some of that magic in their own lives.

Think about reframing what it means for people to be busy. The less we see it as “They’re in demand,” and the more we see it as “They don’t even have control over their own schedules,” the less appealing it will be.

As Aikido master George Leonard notes, “In the land of the quick fix it may seem radical, but to learn anything significant, to make any lasting change in yourself, you must be willing to spend most of your time on the plateau, to keep practicing even when it seems you are getting nowhere.”

Jeff Bezos, in his 2018 letter to Amazon shareholders, tells an unusual story about handstands. “A close friend recently decided to learn to do a perfect free-standing handstand,” he recounted.4 She took a handstand workshop at a yoga studio, but wasn’t progressing as fast as she wanted, so she hired—yes!—a handstand coach. Bezos recounts what the

If a goal is worth pursuing, it’s worth pursuing the version of it we actually want—not one that’s watered down to protect our ego. Big goals on their own might feel paralyzing. How do you even start to write that novel? But big goals coupled with small, consistent efforts can be exactly the galvanizing force we need to achieve something powerful,

The first step is understanding that the key to a meaningful life is to set our own terms for it.

We’re stuck in permanent “execution mode,” without a moment to take stock or ask questions about what we really want from life.