The Barbell Strategy for Your Timeframes in Life

If you follow the self-help genre, you’ve likely been bombarded with waves of conflicting advice:

Stay present, but make sure you spend time thinking deeply about what you want out of life, setting goals, and creating checkpoints to measure progress.

Find a flow state in your work, but expand your perspective of time so you’re assigning things their proper weight.

Drive results today, but sharpen your strategic mind by thinking multiple steps ahead and considering higher-order consequences to outmaneuver your opponents.

All of this advice on what timeframe to orient towards becomes exhausting. Am I over-indexing on the future and paying too little attention to today? Am I making shallow decisions and not thinking far enough ahead? Am I setting goals that match the optimal timeframes?

Each piece of advice on its own seems intoxicating. But when you try to reconcile these ideas against each other, it’s easy to get stuck. No one tells you how to achieve balance or what that looks like. 

The reality is there aren’t just two timeframes in life—present-oriented or future-oriented. These are just the bookends, there are other timeframes that sit in between. But the bookends are the most powerful timeframes to operate in. And the middle proves to be the most dangerous. 

A few weeks back, I came across a post on Twitter from @john_j_brown that provided me with a framework that created clarity…

While this post is geared towards investors, a similar model can be applied to the timeframes in our lives.

There are four timeframes in life…
1) Immediate = today
2) Short = days/weeks
3) Mid-term = months
4) Long-term = years/decades

The most rewarding life is found by pursuing a balance of 1 and 4 and avoiding too much time in 2 and 3. The most dangerous timeframes in life are the short and mid-term.

What’s the barbell strategy?

The optimal balance for these timeframes can be framed similarly to Nassim Taleb’s barbell investment strategy which proposes that you be as hyperconservative and hyperagressive as you can be, instead of being mildly aggressive or conservative.

In life, the parallels are the immediate and long-term. Using the barbell strategy, we should spend 40% of our time focused on the immediate term, 40% on the long term, and only 20% of our time in the middle thinking about short or mid-term. Of course, this is just a mental model. No one is going to sit around and calculate how much time they spend in each category. But as a rule of thumb, it’s an effective way to keep yourself in check and balance the most effective timeframes to operate in. 

Why optimize for the immediate and long-term? 

1 and 4 are where I find fulfillment in the work itself and a connection to a more meaningful vision I’m working towards. 2 and 3 are where I become impatient, anxious, and scattered—anticipating that presentation next week which distracts me from putting in the work today, fueling unrealistic expectations before reaching sustainable growth, or making shallow decisions that optimize for comfort.

The immediate-term (1) allows you to be fully present and immersed in your work. It helps you remain focused instead of anticipating any sort of future payoff or conflict. This is what allows you to achieve a relaxed state of concentration. The gratification is in the work itself. 

While longer timeframes (4) allow for calmness, perspective, and compounding. Thinking in terms of years or decades connects you back to the bigger picture. It also combats the tendency to exaggerate the magnitude of conflicts we face on a shorter time horizon and guards you against deceiving yourself into short-sighted moves that favor comfort and predictability. The long term is what smooths out the anxiety and steadies the waves that can break your knees.

It’s when you become consumed by the short and mid-term (2 and 3)—the days, weeks, and months ahead—that patience and focus give way to restlessness and anxiety. In this timeframe, you’re anchored to unrealistic expectations of linear, short-term growth which compromises strategic thinking and your connection to your ultimate goal.

When you’re focused on the moment in front of you, you’re not anticipating. You’re absorbed in your work. When you’re focused on the longer term, you connect to something larger than yourself and expand your perspective of time. Ego is what operates in the mid-term. It breaks your flow state by anticipating rewards, results, and external validation. It’s what scares you into seeking predictability and comfort to protect yourself—limiting your available upside.

The allure of the short and mid-term is so strong because it’s easy. People who are better at talking than doing thrive in these timeframes. It allows them to create the illusion of progress through seemingly intelligent observations without putting in the work or holding themselves accountable to the long-term results. These are the politicians, the academics, the suits, and the startup flakes who prove unable to stick it out.

Many people live their entire lives here. They’re simultaneously distracted and not thinking long-term enough. They’re living for the weekend, their next vacation, or the comfort of their annual bonus. It’s the most comfortable place to operate, but the least rewarding because the short and mid-term are the most shallow timeframes.

Real depth is found in the immediate and distant—putting in the work today and building up the endurance to sustain for years. 

Certainly, you need some balance of the short (2) and mid-term (3) as checkpoints and it’s important to have things to look forward to. And of course, there are obvious exceptions. But sustainable results don’t appear over the course of weeks or months. They appear through years and decades of hard work and a constant connection to what you find meaning in. 

Growth is nonlinear

Remember, growth is nonlinear. People tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term and underestimate what they can accomplish over the course of years. The power of small, calculated decisions grows exponentially over time. Especially if you have a clear vision that you’re working towards. Start small and let compound interest run its course.

Focus on the short and mid-term is what interrupts this. Because growth is not always observable in comparison to the previous week or month. When you expect linear results equivalent to the effort you’re putting in, you’re bound to give up too early or make short-sighted decisions that create the illusion of progress at the expense of sustainable long-term growth.

If you’re playing the long game, 1 and 4 are where you build up the resilience and endurance required to contribute your best work. This is what allows you to continue showing up or making difficult decisions that sacrifice comfort for growth. 

Optimizing for this balance of immediate and long-term timeframes allows you to persevere. To find meaning in the moment and the work in front of your face, while continuing to come back to your underlying strategy. One that extends beyond the weeks and months, but that you can advance in the moment. Dedicating more of your energy to 1 and 4 allows you to bring your best work to life by ignoring the distractions and noise that sit in between.

What’s in it for you?

When you adopt the barbell strategy for investing your time, you’re able to accelerate your trajectory and outpace those operating in the mid-term. Those who spend 80% of their time focused on the short and mid-term often end up stuck in dead-end careers. They’re prisoners seeking comfort and predictability in the weeks and months ahead. Their trajectory and growth are limited as a result.

The barbell approach encourages a deeper connection to your work and an understanding of what kind of life you want to live. If you know what you want out of life and you’re willing to put in the work, the competition crumbles. It becomes a race against yourself.

But you must never trick yourself into believing you are above the work. The work is where you find solace. Pairing this with the long term and what you’ve defined to be a meaningful life is what allows you to create enduring work and transform yourself. In both the moments you have today and in the decades ahead.

“As one achieves focus, the mind quiets. As the mind is kept in the present, it becomes calm. Focus means keeping the mind now and here. Relaxed concentration is the supreme art because no art can be achieved without it.”

— W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis

Immediate, distant, but avoid the in-between

When you’re focused on the moment in front of you, that’s where you begin to hone your craft and unlock a flow state so you’re able to do your best work.

When you’re immersed in a longer time horizon, that’s when you’re connected to something bigger than yourself and tap into your strategic mind, allowing you to drive towards your vision. 

But when you’re stuck in the middle, that’s where anxiety, anticipation, and ego take hold. Because it’s too soon for most results, distracts you from putting in the actual work, and leads you to cling to the comfort of the familiar in order to avoid the discomfort of introspection—who you are, what you want, the challenges you’ll face, and the work you need to do today to get there. 

The sweet spot is found by immersing yourself in your work, achieving a state of flow, and appreciating the moment. But also remaining connected to a greater sense of meaning you find in your life and harnessing the power of your strategic mind. 

The best endurance athletes in the world demonstrate this. Consider your strategy, focus on the mile in front of you, and dig deep to stay connected to the reason that keeps you going. The mid-term serves as a hydration station on your path, a place to refuel. But it’s nothing more than that—a brief checkpoint. Then it’s back to putting in the miles and honing your strategy. Leave nothing on the table.

10 Lessons on the Road to 33

Birthdays and New Years serve as two natural checkpoints for me. Birthdays act as a time to reflect on what I’ve learned and consider lessons that have resonated strongest over that year of my life. Whereas New Years signal it’s time to set five primary goals and assess how well I did against the previous year’s goals. Most years I publish these reflections, the following are 10 lessons that stood out most over the past year. 

1) Show up, even when it’s inconvenient 

Fighting through canceled flights, delays, and traffic jams to show up for someone when they need it most, even if you’re only there for an hour, matters. Regardless of what plans you might have made for your evening or weekend. The timing of events beyond your control might be inconvenient. But the universe isn’t on your agenda. And there isn’t some perfect version of the future where your life is free of challenges. The challenges and obstacles are what give life meaning. You can point to those as your excuse, or you can show up anyway when it matters most. 

2) Commitment adds meaning

Just as obstacles add meaning, so too does commitment—whether your relationships, career, hobbies, you name it. Directions in life are mutually exclusive. In my early 20s, I optimized for optionality and never committed to anything. Many of these things were unfulfilling and left me restless. But once I started to cross options off my list and double down on the people and things I cared about most, life became far more rewarding.

Getting married to my favorite person in the world this summer after six years together has continued to deepen our relationship. The same goes for my career and the way it has been accelerated by committing to problems I care about solving and the vision we’ve crafted around solving those. 

3) You don’t have to agree with the entirety of someone’s opinions

Almost everyone has good ideas and bad ideas. And you don’t have to agree with the entirety of them. One good idea doesn’t mean every idea that a person has is worthwhile. Just as one bad idea doesn’t mean the entirety of that person’s ideas are garbage. This lesson shows up frequently for me in books. When I was younger, I would take the entirety of an author’s ideas in a book as truth. Now I find myself more often disagreeing with certain aspects, and that’s fine. This ability to balance multiple opposing views and perspectives is what leads to improved critical thinking. This also speaks to the danger of ideologies and blindly accepting a docket of opinions without thinking for yourself. Guard yourself against this at all costs. 

4) More music, less everything else

During the pandemic, this got away from me. I didn’t have my regular outlets at coffee shops or commutes to let go and listen to music. It was all work, all the time. And in the brief moments when I wasn’t working, we were watching Netflix. But music is the thing that allows me to reach a state of relaxed concentration where I do my best work. Making more time for this, creating focus blocks throughout my day to tune everything else out, and starting my day with music while reading or writing in the morning makes me happier. And the same goes for evenings at home. Just turning on music instead of the TV feels more rewarding than whatever show we might be watching. 

5) Focus on what’s within your control

As long as I’m around, I don’t think I’ll ever shut up about this. Focus more on yourself. Every second you spend projecting or losing yourself in imaginary conversations consumed by others’ opinions is truly wasted. Focus back on yourself. Most people waste away consumed by distractions without ever searching within. If there’s any sort of secret in this life, it’s figuring out what you want out of life, reframing that as an internal goal you can actually influence, and pursuing it with everything you’ve got. 

6) Happiness is knowing less about what’s going on in most people’s lives, not more

Comparison is the death of joy. Most people are far too connected and could use more distance. I can only speak to my life, but I am far happier when I know less about people outside of my closest group of friends and family. And that’s a group of about 10 people. Beyond that, it’s just noise. 

Certainly, you must care for your community. But your capacity to give a shit is limited. You have to pick your battles. Anyone who claims they can keep up with everyone and every cause is virtue signaling. Instead, focus on yourself and your family, fight for your cause, and ignore the bullshit. There’s only one way out of the noise most people find themselves consumed by—distance yourself.

7) In-person interactions hold company’s together

I’ve worked fully remote at different points in my career. I’ve never actively sought it out, it’s just worked out that way and I was rather indifferent to it. But over the course of the pandemic, I’ve changed my stance entirely. If your intention is to create an enduring company of top performers who band together to overcome challenging moments, co-located teams will crush remote teams. Fully remote teams sacrifice camaraderie, morale, and meaning in the name of short-term productivity. My expectation is that most fully remote teams will self-destruct over the next few years because they won’t be able to absorb the higher turnover caused by a lack of human connection. 

8) Appeal to Your audience’s self-interest

Whether it’s a presentation, email, article, you name it, most people start by focusing on what they want to say. That’s exactly the wrong path if you’re hoping to land your message. Instead, ALWAYS start by putting yourself in your audience’s position and emphasizing the benefit from their perspective. Addressing the ‘What’s in it for me?’ question within the first 30 seconds is the only way to capture attention, disarm, and influence.

9) your first responsibility is to shut up and listen

I’m surprised at how common this problem is. A new hire joins the company, insecure and eager to prove their value, they immediately jump to providing feedback and solutions without having any context of the business, the product, or the team. And in doing so, they immediately erode any semblance of trust and have to work twice as hard to rebuild that over months. Seems like a fun way to start. This seems especially rampant in senior leaders who come into companies and should know this lesson better than anyone else, but they turn out to be the worst offenders. 

During your first 30 days at any company, just shut up and listen. Regardless of what level you’re coming in at. True confidence can look like keeping your mouth shut and simply listening. This will help you build deep relationships that will serve you far better than attempting to offer up empty feedback that lacks context and only draws attention to your attempts to overcompensate.

10) to command respect, be fearless

Timidity kills careers. Jump into the deep end. Raise your hand. Aspire to always have skin in the game and never act like you’re above the work. Regardless if you’re a middle manager, executive, or individual contributor, the work matters. You certainly have to know how to delegate. Otherwise, you’ll drown. But there will be occasional points where you must go deep on the subject and fight alongside your team in the trenches. If you avoid this second piece, you will never command respect from your team. 

Using a Growth Mindset to Overcome Your Obsession with Perfection

“We’re ditching you.” I stopped in my tracks, engulfed by a sea of classmates rushing towards the buses lined up alongside Cherry Tree Elementary. This was the drama of fourth-grade in my class of abnormally social ten-year-olds. After I “broke up” with my girlfriend at the time, I was deemed not cool enough to continue hanging out with my current circle of friends. 

We were a strange group of kids, as our parents will likely attest. We did our best impression of teenage life—watching Total Request Live on MTV after school with Dunkaroos and Mountain Dew. We were all new to the dating scene, which at that age consisted of writing on a paper note your “Top Five,” ranked in order of who you wanted to date. If you matched with another person, that made if official. The carousel of dating remained in constant motion, as one’s “Top Five” was subject to change on an almost hourly basis.

While the entire situation seems decidedly stupid now, my friends ditching me was traumatic at the time. Kids are ruthless. And at that age, it felt like the end of the world. It was an early lesson that taught me to keep my ass down. 

I learned to quit drawing attention to myself and found ways to block myself off from criticism and rejection by limiting my exposure to situations where I might fail. This was a defense mechanism driven by my need for acceptance and belonging. It helped me create a sense of safety—however false—as I navigated adolescence.

This became most obvious at school where I was afraid to speak up because I didn’t want to be wrong. Despite being a strong student, this trapped me in a low-learning state for years. The only way I was able to combat this was by reaching for depth outside of the classroom.

In my late teens and early twenties, I largely escaped this by channeling my contrarian nature. Fortunately, I’ve never struggled with peer pressure or listening to myself. But old thought patterns—especially those from childhood—require a deep awareness and years of work to overcome. It’s not an overnight thing. And without having done the self-work, I fell back into this mindset at the beginning of my career.

During big meetings I would feel myself sinking into a corner. I worried the room would judge my every word. Who was I to volunteer my opinion and ideas when everyone else in the room held years of industry experience? 

As author, Carol Dweck points out, this is the hallmark of a fixed mindset which traps you into a low-learning state. The way this reveals itself is through a judge-and-be-judged framework. Your mind projects judgments of others and fuels your own fear of being judged. And this becomes your baseline.

But the antithesis is a growth mindset which shifts the emphasis to learning. Instead of a judge-and-be-judged framework, everything becomes based on a learn-and-help-learn framework. And this is how you better orient yourself towards a high-learning state.

Once you establish self-awareness, it will continue to take years of hard work, patience, and commitment. I still keep this written down in my journal as one of my top areas to focus on for the year. This reminds me to read and reflect on it on a weekly basis so it’s always near the top of my mind. 

But the real benefits of a growth mindset are the threats it allows you to overcome and the bias towards action that it helps you create. 

A bias towards action

One of the biggest advantages of making a conscious shift towards a learn-and-help-learn framework is that it lowers the stakes. It allows you to step back, put things in perspective, and see that not every word has irreversible consequences to you reputation. This frees you to focus on advancing the conversation and exploring different directions, rather than holding yourself hostage to the perfect answer. 

I’ve found in my own career that there’s a tendency to lean on and look towards those with seniority. But everyone’s voice matters. You have a unique perspective that’s all your own. Your own experiences are just as valid. Besides, those who share your commitment to a growth mindset will appreciate where you’re coming from.

A bias towards thoughtful action accelerates the rate at which you learn.

“Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.”

— Carol Dweck

When you find yourself silently judging others, it’s a sign of insecurity and concern over being judged yourself. You become fearful based on the past or anxious about the future. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to remain present. And growth requires some degree of action in this moment or else you’ll never get started. 

By learning how to recognize and navigate this fear, you create more room for action. To perform at your best, you want to achieve a relaxed state of concentration where you’re focused on the task in front of you and what’s within your control. Not the externals and surrounding noise. 

Top performers who take risks in their work certainly face their share of doubts. And if we’re being honest, a fear of judgment that ebbs and flows. But the difference is that they don’t allow that to dissuade them from creating and putting themselves out into the world. A bias towards action wins out because they better align themselves with a growth mindset that favors the impact of doing and learning over the fear judgment. 

This also manifests itself in how we teach others. One of the easiest ways to identify those who are trapped in a fixed mindset is how they react when someone doesn’t know something they deem to be obvious. It becomes a joke and an opportunity to soothe their own ego at the expense of someone else.

Those who focus on a learn-and-help-learn framework see this as a learning opportunity to step back, provide context, and test their own ability to articulate the idea in a simple way. Rather than teasing that person, they appreciate the fact that they spoke up to ask the obvious and gain clarification. 

Feedback isn’t a threat

For the same reason that a growth mindset encourages healthy risks and a bias towards action, so too does it help you reframe the feedback you receive along the way. 

There’s a difference between feedback and criticism. The more sensitive you are to judgment, the more that line becomes blurred. Feedback is constructive and the more important of the two. Criticism is destructive and often comes from those without skin in the game who don’t have your best interests in mind. 

But a fixed mindset takes everything personally. A person trapped in this state considers mistakes a reflection of their character. Everything is an attack, regardless of its source or validity.

Feedback is only a threat when you’re locked into a judge-and-be-judged mindset. 

With a growth mindset, you disarm this threat. Feedback no longer feels threatening to your character and the stakes don’t feel insurmountable. You don’t have to be perfect or know the right answer every time. You’re able to contribute and push the conversation forward because you’re curious and driven to better yourself, rather than being consumed by the risk of judgment. 

The learn-and-help-learn mindset views these as lessons that are just part of life. They don’t mean you’re any better or any worse of a person. Instead, the missteps, unknowns, and difficult feedback become an opportunity to learn and grow. 

When you come to this realization, you’re able to properly sort between criticism and feedback. The criticism loses its sting. The feedback becomes actionable. 

Reinvent and try new things 

This mindset also manifests itself in how you explore new interests and allow yourself to evolve. With a bias towards action and the ability to reframe feedback, you create an openness to try new things. There’s less anxiety about failing when testing a new approach or exploring new interests.

Every data point, especially failures, are an opportunity to discover more about yourself—what’s worth doubling down on, improving, or moving away from. 

Those who view learning favorably as a chance to grow, rather than obsess over the failure or perception it could create when they stumble, are far more inclined to find their niche during each chapter of life. They’re able to go wide, reassess their interests and reinvent themselves when things get stale. Because they don’t allow a fear of being judged or laughed at dictate every move.

With a growth mindset, your deepest fear becomes reaching a plateau in what you’re learning and your own abilities. Life is motion. Attempting to stand still and preserve an identity, worldview, or set of interests that made sense years or decades earlier but no longer resonates with you will leave you empty. Escaping a fixed mindset also allows you to escape the confines of comfort. 

“The secret to happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the thing and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.”

— Bertrand Russell

A fixed mindset locks you into a place of hesitation. If you’re only concerned about consequences and people’s interpretations, you’ll learn at a fraction of the speed. You’ll be less inclined to jump into action or try new things that you might suck at.

This is not just relevant to your twenties when you’re trying to find your place in life. It’s relevant in each decade. As your sense of authenticity and identity evolves, you can’t expect to remain still. Finding harmony in that motion requires growth of your own and trying out new things. You’ll never be able to find meaning in new areas of life if you’re unwilling to put yourself out there time and time again, regardless of age. 

An opportunity to grow

A shift into this mindset begins with awareness—being able to step back and recognize when your instincts are pointing you towards a fixed mindset and operating within a judge-and-be-judge framework. Once you train yourself to identify this, you can create a buffer before acting and nudge yourself back towards a growth mindset. 

This allows you a moment of reflection to remember that feedback is a learning mechanism each step of the way—rather than something to be feared. Whether you’re in your twenties or sixties, each moment you face is an opportunity to grow. You don’t need always need to have the perfect answer. 

With a mindset built upon a learn-and-help-learn framework, what might have seemed like a sign of failure before becomes a positive sign that you’re putting yourself out there. And that’s how you grow. By showing up and being the one who steps into the arena.

In contrast, those who find themselves stuck in a judge-and-be-judged framework withdraw from contributing their own ideas and shut down when they receive anything less than praise. They watch from a distance.

Everyone acknowledges this at a surface level—some sort of feedback loop is important to progress. But far fewer people can actually face the feedback that it takes to grow. Whether embracing a difficult conversation or acknowledging an imperfect answer. It’s easier to settle back into the coping mechanism that is passive aggression or judgment without taking risks of your own. 

If you want easy, it comes at a cost. But those committed to growth understand that life is about learning, no matter how painful that might be.

If you want to develop yourself, you’ll need to hone your own bias towards action, a deep appreciation for the present, and an openness to challenging feedback. It’s not about perfection. It’s about building the right mindset to carry with you.