I was having a conversation recently with a friend, and she posed a question that I’ll bet you’ve considered at some point:

“Why is it that most people will put more time and energy into planning a two-week vacation than they’ll put into planning their entire lives?”

Have you had that thought? Have you ever wondered why it’s true (and you and I both know that it is true)?

Well, since my friend posed that question, I have been wondering why it’s true—and I think I’ve come up with the answer. And not just the answer, but a way that we as leaders—of a team, of a project, of our own life—can use the answer to our advantage to become better producers and better leaders.

So why is it that most people will put more time and energy into planning a two-week vacation than they’ll put into planning their entire lives?

The Answer

I think it’s because our orientation is, by nature, short-term and reactive.

This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. It’s hard-wired into us. For most of our time as a species on the planet, there was no such thing as long-term planning, because for most of us there was no such thing as long-term. Until very recently, our average lifespan was 35 years, virtually all of which was lived under the category of short-term and reactive:

• “My stomach is empty now—how can I find food?” (short-term and reactive) vs. “I’m going to freeze these burritos and have them next month” (long-term and proactive)
• “I’m being attacked by a sabre-tooth tiger—I should probably do something about that” (short-term and reactive) vs. “If I can domesticate this sabre-tooth tiger, make it smaller, and take videos of it knocking things off tables, I’ll have something viral to post to YouTube once videos, tables, and YouTube are invented” (long-term and proactive)
• “I need to build a fire so that Og Jr. can survive until morning” (short-term and reactive) vs. “I need to put 15% of my income into some kind of high-yield interest-bearing account so that when Og Jr. graduates from high school he can go to Harvard—once high school and Harvard are invented” (long-term and proactive)

That’s how we survived. By being short-term and reactive. We’re hard-wired to react to the immediate.

Going back to my friend’s question, the two-week vacation is short-term. It’s immediate. It’s a date on the calendar, and we react to the deadline of that date.

The mistake we make is thinking we can overcome hundreds of thousands of years of hard-wiring through the brute force of will power (which, as we’ve now discovered, is a finite resource which diminishes throughout the day). We can’t. We’re just not wired that way.

What To Do Instead

So rather than try to fight millennia of hard-wiring, let’s use it to our advantage. Let’s agree that we are, by nature, short-term, reactive creatures. And let’s build that into our plans.

• Yes, make long-term goals. But then break those long-term goals down into numerous short-term goals which, when completed, will also complete the long-term goal.
• Yes, celebrate the completion of the long-term goal. But also plan smaller celebrations for the successful completion of each of the short-term goals.
• Yes, have a deadline for the completion of the long-term goal. But also have deadlines—real deadlines that you put on your calendar—for each of the short-term goals.

The bottom line is this. Our success doesn’t have to be in a continual state of struggle with our nature. Instead, we can use our nature to ensure our success.

Doesn’t that sound easier?