In our lifetimes, we will see many things. Of these are two near-certainties:

Incredible technological innovations will revolutionize our day-to-day lives, and
The world will continue to be short term.

Taken together, this means:

Instead of becoming more productive because of driverless cars, the world will have a new place from which to text.

Virtual and augmented reality: not a tool to learn and communicate, but another distraction from our longer term selves.

The Internet of Everything: not a way to preserve resources for more valuable actions, just henchmen of our baser, shorter term instincts. “Alexa, put on Real Housewives,” instead of “Alexa, what’s my next task?”

While we cannot change the path dependency of the short term world, we can change the path dependency of our long term lives.

We can be the ones who take advantage of the opportunities that result from these technological advantages:

We can turn commuting time into a side project.

We can conduct virtual meetings with colleagues from the comfort of our home office. (And, soon enough, we can augment our pajamas with dress clothes.)

We can use Alexa, Siri, and whoever else comes, to help us be long term versions of ourselves.

But we have to start now.

The longer we wait, the more entrenched the dependency becomes. Before you know it, you will be one of the many on the sidelines, wishing they’d played. Or worse, you will be one of the many lying in their last bed, wishing they’d lived.

When you pursue your long term interests, you are being your authentic self.

Becoming a long term person is nothing more than becoming who you are.

This was primarily sourced from How to be a Long Term Person in a Short Term World, available on Amazon.