A league with 30 intense competitors requires a culture of finding new, better ways to solve repeating problems. In the short term, investing in that sort of innovation often doesn’t look like much progress, if any. Abraham Lincoln said “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
The short-term crowd is always too distracted to notice the long-term crowd slowly compounding.
An investor obsessing over daily economic data misses the big picture. A teenager chasing fleeting popularity neglects to develop genuine interests and skills. A co-worker stops paying attention to the details to chase attention. All chase false stimuli... See more