The Long Game - 029

Written By Jake Kahana
 

Find Us A House

Golda's new favorite thing is her scooter. Sometimes if she goes scootering in the morning, she'll wear her red helmet all day. On rainy days, she's giddy to scooter from one end of our apartment to the other.

Our apartment felt like a castle when we first moved from our Manhattan studio. And now with a 2 1/2 year old, we've outgrown it. So, with another baby on the way in June🤞, we've been looking for more space to buy a house.

It's been...(how shall I put this?)

A disaster.

We've toured 35 houses in the past 9 months. Made five offers, won zero. Obviously.

One of our favorites went for $250k over the asking price.

Earlier this month, we liked three houses we saw. So we put in THREE offers at the same time.

Not only did we not win any, but we were in the bottom half of all offers.

Ugh.

Once our imagined future in these houses faded and the disappointment wore off, we got a little more realistic. If we can make our apartment work through the Summer, we can probably stretch our money a bit further. Houses may be priced lower and the competition will surely cool off (right?).

We're playing the long game.

We're making some sacrifices and enduring discomfort right now, in order to make things easier later for our  future selves.

And in a way, isn't that what we're all doing right now?

Let's explore what it means to play the long game.

 
 

Today's Investments

Which is the smarter choice: $1 Million today, or a penny that doubles every day for a month?

It surprises many people that the latter option, after 30 days, results in a payday of $5.36 million. 31 days is over $10 million! If we started on Groundhog's Day through February (27 days), the payout would only be  $671k.

Exponential growth is a hard concept to wrap our heads around. 

For me too! In 2019 Lauren and I met with a financial planner. We came into the meeting proud of how organized and aware of our own finances we were. Between the two of us, we tallied 34 financial accounts– 5 checking, 5 retirement, 4 savings, 8 credit cards, 2 investment.

Within the first 10 minutes, that pride crumbled.

"Um, I guess I actually don't understand compound interest." We came home and consolidated our savings into one, our retirement into one, and our investments.

That one meeting sticks as a reminder about the effect of playing the short game.

The short game is really seductive. The costs seem insignificantly small, or even invisible. Stay up late. Take the shortcut. Party. Work another hour instead of spend time with family or rest. That $1M now sounds better than a penny right now.

Those costs multiply in the long game.

And it's not just money. All of our investments compound.

Our relationships can grow exponentially. Our interests and passions compound. Learning compounds.

Wherever we invest our money now is multiplied over our lifetime.

And wherever we spend our time, put in effort, pay attention to now, is multiplied too.

We're making investments every day that pay off later.

So what are you paying attention to?

Giving your time to?

Putting in effort now for a payoff down the road?

 
 

Milestones Aren't Tasks

There's an old Jewish joke where two rabbis are discussing how to get rid of the squirrels in the synagogue attic. The first one says, "We should call an exterminator and we'll never see them again." "Or maybe..." the second rabbi begins, "we should just give the squirrels a a bar mitzvah."

When we reach milestones (like a bar mitzvah), it can feel like we're done. Once we cross the threshold, we never have to do that work again.

But most milestones don't quite work like that.

In the Fall of 2015, I was meeting with jewelry designers, planning scenarios of how I might ask Lauren to marry me. At the same time, we were having more serious conversations about our future–kids, careers, homes, geography...

Just as I was making my final decisions about a ring, my coworker got engaged. As a surprise.

She revealed that she and her fiancée hadn't really talked about getting married and she didn't know if he wanted kids. (But they were engaged! Hurray!) I quickly learned that engagement didn't mean they had a good relationship, at least how I defined it. Finding "your person" doesn't automatically mean happiness forever.

Up until that point in my life, I had just assumed that people who had accomplished the things that I wanted, knew what they were doing. Or that they would do it in the same way that I would. I believed that once Lauren and I were engaged, we'd be set. On a smooth path to happily ever after.

It can feel like reaching a milestone is like a task– once it's crossed off, it's over.  But the truth is, getting engaged is only the first step in committing and working on a relationship. While that seems very obvious now, it was a huge insight 5 years ago.

It feels like several times a month, if not every week, we're checking in with each other and copiloting our relationship. It's not always fun. It's complicated and stressful at times.

Reaching any milestone doesn't mean I'm done thinking about that thing. Landing a great job after months and months of searching and interviewing doesn't mean I should stop thinking about my career and development. Hitting my target weight doesn't mean I'm cleared of thinking about my health.

There are bigger things that I'm building, even beyond what I can see right now.

A marriage, a career, a healthy lifestyle. They're things I'm working on, but they are not to-dos.

___

PS: In case you're curious, I proposed over pancakes in our apartment, two years to the day we first met.

 
 

How to Grow Greener Grass

  1. Look around. Everyone is growing grass. (Some people have been given stronger seeds, richer soil, more access to sunlight.)

  2. Grass is not easy to grow. Just seeing that you have grass is a great start.

  3. Define what shade of green you're aiming for. Emerald? Lime? Shamrock? Crocodile? Sea Foam?

  4. Spend time with your grass. Nurture it and water it, feed it and weed it. Sit in it. Play with the blades in your hand.

  5. Spend time in other people’s green grass if you must. (But now that you're closer, notice the imperfections in their grass, how yours may be better, and how even they are looking for greener grass.)

  6. If you look closely, everyone’s grass is a different shade. The more you can appreciate your shade, the less you’ll care what color someone else’s grass is.

  7. It’s always ok to dig up some areas and replant patches.

  8. Some seasons require letting the dirt rest before grass emerges and turns its most vibrant shade.

  9. You can paint your dirt green, hire a landscaping team, or lay down some astroturf. But the real thing will always be greener than the fake stuff.

  10. The greenest grass takes time to grow. Be patient, keep weeding.

 

Ignite by Nick Levesque

 

Rivals and Infinite Games

When we  started Caveday, it was an experiment to build energy and community rituals into our work. It was in-person and just in NYC. Since March 2020, our global community now gathers every day online to work together.

Because many companies have recently declared that remote work is now company policy, new brands are popping up to take advantage of this trend. Virtual coworking is quickly turning into a category and we're finding ourselves facing new kinds of competition.

It's easy to think of this as a race or game we play to win. A finite game. Growing up, we all learned to play finite games. Nearly every sport is a finite game–limited time, keeping track of score, singular victor.

My cofounders and I met this week to talk about the new competitors in the virtual coworking space. What should we do about them? We came up with some pretty fun and insightful new ideas. And suddenly, something became abundantly clear to me:

competition IS collaboration.

Great work emerges from rivalry. Our competitors push us to work harder, they model new ideas and formulas for what could work, and they keep us in the game. But it's a different kind of game. It's infinite.

In an infinite game, the rules are not explicit. We're not keeping score. There are no winners. And the only point is to keep them going, keep playing.

Whether we have rivals or not, we are all playing infinite games. Business. Career. Marriage. Friendship. Parenthood. No one wins these games. There are no rules. Infinite games are tests of endurance, excellence, and challenge our ability to navigate complex relationships.

Maybe instead of trying to crush the competition and win in life (whatever that means), we can embrace the infinite game we're all playing.

The presence of a rival means the work we are doing is important. We've created something resonant that other people want in on, too. But as much as it seems like we trying to win, we're just pushing each other to work harder.

To be better.

And to keep playing.

 
 

Thank You

The Email Refrigerator started as a way for me to update my friends about what's going on in my life and publicly navigate a career transition. 29 months later, it's evolved into a hybrid of personal updates, philosophy, poetry, art, and whatever else you want to call it.

I have no concrete plans for where this is going in the next 29 months, but I do know I'm planning to do this for a long time. It's a privilege to be able to play the long game and I'm grateful to be able to do this month after month.

Thank you for continuing to read these, responding with your thoughts and reactions, disagreements and "this reminded me of" recommendations. And thank you for sharing this with anyone in your life that might want some brain snacks like these. 

Wishing you a happy May and a healthy beyond.

Jake

Hey it’s me again. One last thing. In case you don’t want to get these emails anymore, no hard feelings. Just click here to change your settings.

 
Jake Kahana http://www.jakekahana.com
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