Playing the Time Horizon Accordion

"The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever."
- Anatole France

The pendulum has seemingly swung back to an emphasis on getting things done. There are aa variety of good sources for help on this topic. David Allen is the latest of the productivity gurus to offer useful tips about how to be efficient and effective. I used to teach seminars for Franklin Covey and can personally vouch for the value of their approach.

It seems to me, though, that one of the most important decisions you need to make has to do with your time horizon. More important than what you get done in a day is whether you are living your day through the filter of the day-to-day or the filter of a lifetime. Are you going to judge your accomplishments by daily goals or by your goals for a decade?

Is your time horizon the week? This is a common orientation for businesses that seem to delight in the weekly status reports. I have found that this tends to feed a frantic feeling as people continually scramble to accomplish lots of activities before the next weekly report. Too often, the result is a series of weekly accomplishments that merely support the status quo, tasks done superficially and quickly. To be fair, it also helps people to "just do it!" A person can stack up quite the list of accomplishments this way; the question is whether any of the accomplishments so important at the end of each week will still seem to matter at the end of the year.

Is your time horizon the year? Are you sorting through task possibilities with the annual Christmas letter or your New Year's resolutions in mind? This orientation can profoundly change the focus of someone who has conscientiously worked to complete tasks each week. It can change your priorities to the extent that you actually neglect what once seemed important. If your goal is to visit Venice, for example, you might sacrifice your savings goals for this one year in order to accomplish a goal that might otherwise never materialize. If your goal is to get a new job, you may actually sacrifice some degree of quality in your current job in order to find time to hunt for a job that you would otherwise never find time for.

Is your time horizon the roughly 3 to 5 years it takes to start a business or complete a degree? Are you continually choosing what to do and what not to do through the filter of equity creation, choosing tasks based on whether you think that they'll add value to your business? Are you accumulating college credits with an eye towards a BA or MBA degree? If so, you will probably neglect a variety of things that are important to you; socializing, for instance, will take a back seat to homework or dealing with customer problems. Your goal for a balanced life may have to be deferred until you are through this phase.

Is your time horizon the roughly 20 years it takes to raise a child? Does your to do list revolve around the developmental stages of the child, choosing what to do and what not to do thinking about how that will impact your child's adult life? Again, making this choice will color all other choices; you may make sacrifices to your career because they conflict with your goals for your child(ren).

Is your time horizon a life time? Do you have a vision of what you're trying to do with your life, of what you want to have changed in the world? You are always giving up something - sacrificing something. The question is what are you sacrificing and for what cause? Are you giving up your future for now or are you giving up now for your future?

Neither short-term or long-term orientation is a panacea. If your time horizon is too distant, it is easy to justify a lack of progress every day; if your time horizon is too near, it is easy to become frantic about the daily signs of progress. The first orientation can make you lazy and the second can make you a nervous wreck. You can continually defer enjoyment in ways that ensure that you'll never experience it; or you can seize enjoyment today in ways that basically ensure that it'll be even harder to find in the future.

So perhaps the answer lies in playing your time horizon like an accordion - pushing out the time horizon at some points in your life and squeezing it down to the very near term at others, alternately taking the long view and then engaging yourself in the smallest moments of time. What is key, then, is to play the accordion of time horizon and not let it play you.