The Only Games Worth Playing Are Long-Term Ones

I’ve been reading The Psychology of Money this week, and not in the way you skim a personal finance book to pick up a few clever tips. I found myself sitting with certain lines, closing the book for a moment, and letting them settle. Sometimes I had to reread the same paragraph twice because it stirred something deeper than the surface lesson.

The idea that struck me the most was compounding. Not the charts showing exponential curves. Something more human. The reminder that most things we want in life cannot be forced into existence. They emerge slowly, quietly, almost invisibly, as the result of small actions repeated over long periods of time. The things that matter grow roots long before they grow branches. And the pace of that growth rarely matches the impatience of the mind.

That idea lingered with me for days. I kept circling back to it whenever I paused between tasks or walked Ronnie in the morning. The more I reflected, the clearer something became. At this stage of my life, I only want to play long-term games. Anything short-term feels too noisy, too reactive, too draining. Anything that requires me to constantly monitor, adjust, or force outcomes pulls me out of myself. It puts me in a mode of striving rather than building. Pushing rather than allowing.

Long-term games feel different. They feel calmer. More intentional. They ask something deeper from you, but they also reward you in ways short-term thinking never can. Not with quick hits of progress, but with a steady movement toward a life that feels aligned.

And I’m realising that almost every area of life has a short-term version of the game and a long-term version. The outcomes look similar at first, but the internal experience could not be more different.

How Short-Term Thinking Quietly Drains You

When I look back on the times I felt the most stressed, the most reactive, the most disconnected from myself, it wasn’t because my life was falling apart. It wasn’t even because the situation was particularly difficult. It was because I had unknowingly slipped into a short-term mindset. I had started evaluating myself on a day-by-day basis, measuring progress in tiny increments, and reacting emotionally to every fluctuation.

Poker taught me this lesson the hard way. I always told myself I was thinking long-term, but looking back, I can see how deeply I was caught in the daily swings. A losing day would affect how I saw myself. A losing week felt like a threat. A losing month could send me into a spiral of doubt and second-guessing. I thought I was responding logically to variance, but really, I was living in a short timeline that my nervous system was never built to sustain.

The same pattern showed up in other areas. My training. My business. Even my relationships. Whenever I collapsed my timeline, I collapsed my sense of peace with it. I tried to force things to happen faster than they were meant to. I took every setback personally. I felt like I had to solve everything now, even if the problem I was trying to solve was something only time could truly answer.

Short-term thinking doesn’t just create stress. It distorts reality. It makes every moment feel like a verdict, as if the past and future can be judged based on whatever is happening today. You lose the ability to step back. You lose the spaciousness needed to see the bigger pattern. You lose the sense of trust that things take time.

And what I’m noticing now is that the most important things in life punish short-term thinking and reward long-term commitment. Money. Health. Creativity. Relationships. Identity. Freedom. They all follow the same quiet rule:

If you cannot stay with something long enough, you will never receive the real benefit it has to offer.

What Long-Term Games Actually Feel Like

Long-term games do something subtle. They shift the foundation you make decisions from. Instead of needing things to happen now, you begin to care more about the direction than the speed. You start valuing consistency over intensity. You stop rushing. You stop comparing. You become far less reactive to the small fluctuations and far more connected to the underlying trajectory.

A long-term game doesn’t require perfection. It requires patience. It requires humility. It requires accepting that progress often looks slow on the surface, while beneath the surface, something meaningful is quietly taking shape. You begin to grow trust in the things you cannot yet see. You start letting time do some of the work for you.

I find this idea grounding because it brings me back to what truly matters and strips away the noise. I decided to apply this thinking to four main areas of my life, to show the contrast between short term and long term thinking.

1. Money

My financial ethos is simple now. I want to make decisions that I’ll be grateful for over the next thirty years, not the next three months. I believe in economic growth. I believe in owning assets. And I believe that time, not cleverness, is the real advantage.

Short-term investing creates anxiety because your attention is always tied to the latest movement. You imagine you are making strategic decisions, but the truth is, most of the time, you are responding emotionally to noise. As I’m writing this, the price of bitcoin has dropped 11% this month. For short-term investors, who might need that money in a few years, this could be a time to panic.

Long-term investing feels different. It’s slower. Almost boring. You buy things you believe in, you let them grow, and you resist the urge to constantly evaluate how they’re doing based on small fluctuations. A dip becomes a discount instead of a threat. A sideways year becomes irrelevant. Your time horizon does the work for you. I’ve continued to buy shares in the the S&P 500 index fund for close to a decade, yet I really have no interest in what the yearly returns have been. I plan to hold them for the next 30 years which is the timespan in which I hope that decision pays off.

I wouldn’t say this approach makes you wealthy quickly, but it does something far more valuable. It gives you psychological freedom. It gives you space. It removes the constant checking, worrying, and second-guessing that short-term thinking creates.

And that peace compounds just as much as the money does.

2. Health

If there is any area where compounding becomes obvious, it’s health. Your body is shaped by tiny choices repeated over years. Most people know this, but the short-term mindset still finds a way to take over.

It happens whenever someone starts a twelve-week program with the intention of changing everything at once. It happens when people chase intense bursts of effort instead of sustainable rhythms. It happens when progress is judged in weeks instead of years.

At this point in my life, my ethos is very clear. I want to be strong, capable, mobile, and healthy when I am in my 70’s. I want a body that supports me, not one I am constantly trying to fix or fight against. And when I hold that vision, the decisions I make today become obvious. I don’t need extreme diets or extreme training blocks. I need consistency. Simplicity. Movement. Strength training. Cardio. Whole foods most of the time. A deep respect for recovery.

Nothing dramatic. Just habits that compound.

And like money, the real benefit is not the physical result. It’s the mental quiet that comes from knowing you are living in a way your future self will thank you for.

3. Relationships

Relationships only flourish on long time horizons. The depth you want cannot be rushed. Connection does not work on a schedule. Trust grows slowly, and it usually grows in the moments you are not trying to accelerate anything.

When I think about the relationships that matter to me, the pattern is obvious. The longer the timeline, the richer the experience. The more shared history, the more meaningful everything becomes. The more honest conversations, the more grounded the connection feels. None of that comes from intensity. It comes from presence and time.

Short-term relationships prioritise novelty. Long-term ones prioritise depth. And depth is what most of us are really looking for, even if we try to convince ourselves otherwise.

If I want meaningful relationships, the actions are simple. Show up. Spend quality time. Be present. Be honest. Be patient. Let things unfold. Allow people to be who they are. Let trust form naturally.

You cannot force the compounding process here. You can only participate in it.

4. Freedom

Freedom is probably the most misunderstood long-term game. The world often sells it as something immediate. Zero responsibilities. A life of excitement. A calendar with no commitments.

But real freedom has nothing to do with novelty or escape. Real freedom is internal. It is the ability to spend your days doing what matters to you without the constant pressure of needing to keep up, earn more, or respond to every short-term fluctuation in life.

For me, freedom is the ability to write when I want to write, create when I want to create, play padel when I feel like playing, spend time with the people I love, and move through the day without feeling like I am constantly behind.

It’s simple. Almost ordinary. And it only exists because of long-term choices made years ago. Choices that prioritised low spending, simple living, investing in myself, and a respect for creative time.

Short-term freedom feels like stimulation. Long-term freedom feels like space.

A Life Built on Compounding

The more I reflect on these four areas, the more obvious the deeper truth becomes. Compounding is not just a financial principle. It is a life principle. It applies to your habits, your attention, your relationships, your energy, your identity, your emotional patterns, and the way your days slowly shape your sense of self.

Everything compounds. Everything.

The small decisions you make today will eventually become the life you live. Not through intensity, but through time. Not through dramatic breakthroughs, but through quiet consistency.

This feels comforting to me. It makes life less about speed and more about direction. Less about being perfect and more about showing up in a way that your future self will thank you for.

When I hold this truth in mind, I stop rushing. I stop comparing my timeline to someone else’s. I stop trying to force clarity. I slow down. I breathe. I remind myself that meaningful things take time to grow and for benefits of compounding to show.

And if I end up living a life I’m proud of, it won’t be because I acted fast. It will be because I acted consistently, patiently, and in alignment with the long-term games that matter to me.

What Game Are You Playing?

This is the question I keep returning to.

What game am I playing?

Does it reward consistency, patience, and intention? Or am I being pulled into something short-term that will leave me feeling reactive and disconnected?

When I ask myself this question honestly, the next step often becomes clear. The urgency softens. And the path I want to walk becomes more visible.

Long-term games build your life. Short-term games drain it.

And the older I get, the more grateful I am for the things that grow slowly. The things that last. The things that become more meaningful with time.

These are the only games worth playing.

And thankfully, they are the ones we get better at the longer we stay in them.

Adam