Long-Term Thinking in a Short-Term World

Hello, welcome to Inside Scoop. I'm Paula Rizzo. We live in an instant gratification world. Am I right? You're like looking to see, did I get a like on that? Did anybody comment? Social media has done that to us. But true success really takes a little bit more time than we're used to giving it. And things will get done if you're a long-term thinker, even though we're living in this short-term world. Well, we're going to talk to an amazing guest all about this because I know it's like a shift that we're going to have to make to be able to get things done. Uh, Dori Clark will join us in just a moment, but first I want to give you a little resource that I think will help as we're talking through goals and long-term thinking. Lists, as you know, are my favorite thing in the whole wide world, and lists are just are so helpful for this kind of thing. So if you go to paularizzo.com/list, you can get my list-making starter kit to be able to help you to be more organized and, you know, get the right things done. I'm also a LinkedIn Learning instructor and actually so is Dori Clark. We'll talk about that. But I have a course all about how to set boundaries. I have courses about productivity, you know, how to, how to be more productive in this hybrid work environment that now we have. So whether you're working remote or in the office or a little bit of both, I have a whole bunch of courses to help you to be more there. So you can check that out on LinkedIn Learning or go to paularizzo.com/linkedin. And I would love it if you shared this video with anybody who you think might get a kick out of our conversation and could use a little bit of help thinking through their long-term goals. So go ahead and share this video with someone, tag a friend who you think might be interested, and leave us questions and comments. Dori and I are going to chit-chat in just a minute, but But at the end, we're going to take your questions. So if you have questions, please leave them in the chat boxes below. And even if you're watching the replay, put them in there because we'll check back and we'll make sure to get your, your questions answered. So without further ado, I would love to bring on my friend, my colleague, guest, uh, Dori Clark. Dori Clark is the author of the brand new book The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short World. Dori, welcome!

Paula Rizzo, I'm so glad to be here.

So nice to hang. I'm really excited for you. I was just, you know, we were chit-chatting before about some of, some of your other books, and I was just trying to think like how we actually met. And I remember, I think we met right before your first book came out, or second book, I can't remember. But here we are now, you know, book number 4, is it?

All these books later.

That's right, exactly. Well, so great. So how did you, how'd you get the idea for this one? How did this this populates in your mind?

Well, to your point, Paula Rizzo, the idea for writing this book, The Long Game, really started because of all of the crazy fixations that so many of us have with social media and comparison and people being stressed out about the short term. We certainly see it in corporations with executives going to jail because they're making poor decisions. We see it in our own lives. With people just being so stressed out about, you know, wait, what do they know that I don't know? And then the pandemic hit and the whole world was about short-term thinking. But I think now is the moment to take it back, to take back control, to put a stake in the ground and say, we can't be short-term thinkers forever. Now is the time to shift to the long view.

And now it's very— it's way harder to do that now than it was 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 3 years ago. Why is it so different now? I mean, besides social media, I mean, are there— there are things that are going on with all of us that It's just like, hey, you need to think beyond just this short-term period.

Yeah, I think for many of us, we've gotten into almost a form of emergency mode where we're so driven by the, you know, the cortisol and the stress hormones and just getting used to being in heads-down mode on more, more, more and executing. We've often forgotten what I talk about in The Long Game as being an equally important part which is heads-up mode, where we actually lift our heads above the horizons, look around, and ask some of the big questions about, am I doing what I should be doing in order to get where I want to go? Is this the right path, or should I possibly reconsider or try a different strategy?

It can be so hard to think through that though, right? When you're in go mode, when you're like, oh, I, I've got to do this, I've got to do that, I have a to-do list that's very long that I need to make sure to get to. I How do you suggest that people sort of like come up above water and say, OK, I'm going to, I'm going to do some, some big strategic thinking? And I think you have a LinkedIn Learning course about this as well. But what is, what is your thought on that? Because people think, oh, that's a great idea, but how do I actually do it?

Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, the first entire third of The Long Game is talking about what I call creating more white space in our lives. Just, you know, how, how do we avoid the frenzy where, you know, which I think so many of us operate in, where we're essentially trying to fit 120% into that 100% of time. And then somehow we're like, wow, I'm always behind. Well, right. I wonder, I wonder why. If anything, anything goes wrong, we get completely thrown off of our game. So there's a lot of ways we can begin to do this. And I think the first is recognizing and understanding that being a long-term thinker actually doesn't take much more time than being a short-term thinker. This is not about, oh, I need so much time, I need a retreat, I need a sabbatical. I mean, that would be nice, but that's not required for this. It's really just about creating enough space to be able to take that step back. So at a very minimum, what I actually suggest is one possibility. Of course, we all know it's hard for a lot of people to say no to things. One technique that I like to use is if you are especially busy or if there's a request that you kind of don't want to do, but you just feel like you can't say no, see if you can find a way to say yes, but downgrade it. And what I mean by that is that someone will probably come to you and be, you know, oh, Paula, hey, I have some questions, blah, blah, blah. Can I pick your brain? Let's go to lunch. And lunch is very dangerous because it sounds like it should be an hour. It's not. It's 2, 2.5 hours. You're traveling places, things are delayed. And so if we can actually say, OK, I'd be glad to help you. Let's set something up. I am afraid I can't do a lunch, but let's do a call. You've essentially found a way— this is now 30 minutes— to save yourself 90 minutes. If you keep doing that consistently, it adds up rather dramatically over the course of a week or a month.

And, you know, that is one of the nice things, though, I have to say about working remotely is that a 15-minute thing could really be 15 minutes because you're literally sitting down and saying, okay, we've got 15 minutes on the clock. Let's hear what you got to say. Okay, well, got to go to my next call. See you. And you can literally like turn it off and go to the next thing. You can't do that in person, right? So that's like another— well, I would hope you don't do that, but that's another consideration, you know, for, for these times is to be able to say, hey, could we make it a video call? Could we do, you know, instead of being in person, those kinds of things? I, I appreciate that so much. You know, I, I found having that white space for myself too, blocking dates on the calendar. My assistant's always like, "What is this blocked for?" I'm like, "Well, it's my thinking time," or whatever. So sometimes I'll do that for myself too. But it is important to kind of assign the time something because otherwise you'll just do something else. And I know you've recently started to take Fridays off to do some self-development and things like that. How has that worked for you?

Yeah, well, I'm actually very excited because over the past month I have, I have tragically given up my Fridays off because of the book launch. But this is, this is a, this is a temporary phenomenon, right? One of the things that I actually talk about in The Long Game is, you know, a concept that I call thinking in waves, because you have to recognize life is both a sprint and a marathon and different things are called for at different times. Book launches, you know this, it's a sprint. It would be irresponsible not to work as hard as you can. So the last few Fridays I've been having to plow through, but I'm very excited, Paula Rizzo, that starting tomorrow— the book came out last week— so starting tomorrow, this is now my first Friday off in, uh, in over a month, and I am relishing it. I have an appointment at the, um, at the Theater on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library, and I'm watching uh, musical theater, and I have a ping pong lesson. So it's a good day planned tomorrow.

I love it. And it gives you something to look forward to. It's fun. It's something that you, you really want to do, and you need that space to be able to really, you know, do your work when you have to really like put your head down and get things done. I do a similar thing where I try not to book calls on certain days, and I really block out my time, and I'm really good about protecting it. I wasn't in the beginning. Uh, it takes some getting used to, takes some, you know, discipline and that kind of thing. But I do I find that it really helps. I actually just finished writing a novel. I've been working on it for—

I saw that on social media. I am impressed.

Yes, yes, yes, thank you. Uh, but again, this is like a long-term goal. This is not a thing that you just do overnight. And with everything else that I do in my life, I would reserve Fridays. So Fridays for 2 hours is— that's my time when I write. And you know, for me, it was something that was important to me. So let's talk about the importance of these long-term goals. Because when you have something that you're thinking through and you're like, oh, I'd love to do this, I'd love to do that, I'd love to do all these things, how do you end up prioritizing to say, okay, this is the one that's going to get the time, this is the one that I'm going to actually, you know, grab onto?

Yeah, so important. So I think there's a few things at play. So one concept that I talk about in The Long Game is about 20% time. And, you know, many viewers may be familiar with this in the corporate sense because we've heard about it from Google. Google popularized the concept. 3M actually had invented it previously. But the idea is that employees would spend up to 20% of their time on a more experimental project that's outside the scope of their regular job opportunities. In The Long Game, I actually argue that we should all be thinking this way. We should all carve out 20% time for ourselves. Now, certainly, if you're an entrepreneur, you can do it. Even if you work within a company, though, I would argue it's either worth talking to your boss about or, you know, being willing around the edges. You know, this— I mean, this can be a sort of nights and weekends type thing. But the question is, how do you want to develop yourself? And it could be something directly related to leadership, like I'm going to be a better public speaker. It also could be a hobby or a passion that you enjoy, but it's about the process of just investing in and getting better at something. For me, that process over the past 5 years has been centered around musical theater, but it's identifying something that you really would like to just move the ball forward on. 20% is a magic number, Paula Rizzo, because even if it doesn't work, you know, whatever, you, you haven't put too much on the table. Uh, you're not going to go bankrupt because you waste 20% of your time or 20% of your effort or even money on something, it doesn't quite work. But if it actually does work, 20% is enough that compounded over time, you actually can get somewhere with it.

Yeah, I love that because it's not this overwhelming— like the same thing, like you don't have to set a retreat, you don't have to do all these, you know, crazy things. It's just we're doing little micro steps here. It doesn't have to be so over the top and get yourself all, you know, uh, all stressed out about it. But if, if you're watching now on the replay or live with us, please ask some questions. We'll get to those in just a moment if you have some questions for Dori. And I have questions forever, but my question is about busy versus important. Now, I have always— this is a pet peeve of mine, right? You say, "Hey, how you doing?" "Oh, busy." Because people feel like if they say that, it looks like, "Oh my gosh, you're crushing it. You're an amazing human. You're doing more than everyone else, so clearly you're the most successful person in the in the room. What is wrong with this? Please, Dori, tell us once and for all.

That's right, Paula. A lot is wrong with it is the short version. There's some great research by Silvia Boletsa at Columbia Business School and her colleagues talking about this very question. And it, it turns out, and we perhaps know this intuitively, but the research is backing this up, that in a lot of Western societies, especially the United States, busyness is actually viewed as a form of social status. And as a result, you know, there's a lot of things that compound to make us busier. I mean, is it true that we have lots of meetings and emails? Yes, of course it is. But in addition to that, there are oftentimes more subliminal or subconscious factors that are creating problems for us. And the fact that society venerates busyness is a big one because it means that if we actually were to take the actions necessary to carve things out of our calendar to get less busy, that actually in some ways conflicts with our own self-image. We may begin to wonder, are other ourselves, or we may even begin to think, well, would other people view us as less important, less successful? And so it oftentimes stops our efforts to move in the direction that we claim that we want, which is, which is a real challenge. One question, Paula, that I had for you. You are the master of lists. Of course, oftentimes I think, and I think this is not necessarily true, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Oftentimes I think the perception of lists is that it's a task list. You know, it's a to-do list. It's very kind of, you know, tactical. Okay, I'm going to pick up the laundry. Oh, I'm going to, you know, answer this email. How do lists factor in with strategy?

Yes. Well, I think a lot of times you're right. That's what people go to lists for, right? To get the— to get things done. And that's one kind of list. That's your daily to-do list. That's your, like, let's make sure this happens thing, right? But in, in the vein of strategy, I think there's a lot more room to breathe here, to sort of have ongoing lists. Like, I love a good ongoing list when just an idea pops up, you know, and that's not a to-do list. That's not like, I'm going to get this done. Like this novel, this was a great idea that I had 2 years ago, you know, and it wasn't like, okay, this is going to go on the to-do list tomorrow so that I can get it done. Like, that's not going to happen. But having an ongoing list for these types of things, for strategy, for thinking through these big ideas, is always important. So you have to have a capture place. Where are you going to put this list, right? Because if it goes into your mind and you're like, oh, that's a good idea, and then it's gone, What, what use is it? Because you might get your best ideas when you're walking around the city or you're doing whatever it is that you're doing. So I like to have a place that I just, you know, put ideas. It used to be Evernote. Sometimes I use an app. Sometimes it's an audio message that I leave for myself, you know? So you have to find the thing that works best for you. But then also taking those things apart, right? So once you do look at the strategy list, let's say you have ideas, you have things, how then do you take it and pull it apart because then that's the important, like, how do we get it done? So it has to go from that big idea to actually go mode, you know, because they, they do go together, I think.

Yeah, I think that's well put.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, the, the other thing I wanted to— we were getting some questions now, so if anybody has questions, let's throw those in there and we'll get to those in, in just a moment. Um, but I wanted to also ask you about, um, We talked about saying no and carving out your time and all that kind of stuff. I'm curious about your writing process and about how you— this book was kind of fast, right? This was faster turnaround than you're used to maybe, I'm not sure. But how do you do this? What is your method?

So I actually think that my method hasn't changed terribly much from the time that I wrote my first book, which is Reinventing You, uh, to the most recent one, which is, which is The Long Game. Uh, broadly speaking, I mean, this was all really forged because I came out of print journalism, and so that's the, the template that I have in my head. But the major things that I like to do is, you know, first of all, of course, with nonfiction books, you always write the proposal. And so you have to develop a relatively fleshed-out vision of what the book is even in order to sell it at the proposal stage. But once you actually get down to writing it, I like to start with interviews because I want to have all the data in front of me first. So I usually do all of the interviews upfront and try to just get everything. And then I go through a period of, of collation, I guess you could say, so I can see where the pieces fit together, put them in order. And then once I have that, I just blitz on the actual writing of it and turning it into more finished text. And so This was a little faster, I would say. But broadly speaking, I signed the contract in early March of 2020. This was an eventful time to be landing a book deal. And as the world is collapsing and I completed it by August of, of 2020, late August, and then, you know, just went through the sort of editing process, etc. The text was finalized in February and it came out last week.

Wow. Wow. I mean, that is kind of fast though for publishing. Publishing, I feel like takes forever. I mean, I come from the broadcast world where like things are instant. And so when I wrote my first book, I was like, well, how long is this going to take now? This is crazy. Like, I can't believe how long these things take. But, uh, I love this method and I sort of do similar things with when I'm writing nonfiction is to get the, get all the information, get all the data, do all those interviews. Were you doing it on, on Zoom? Like how did you do your interviews or were you recording them on the phone? What was your method?

So actually, the original method that I used, I, I was a little more targeted this time around with information gathering. So I went through and really identified very specifically the questions that I wanted answered and the places where I needed stories or anecdotes. And so I came up with that, and I would frame it like, okay, does anyone have a story about a time that dot dot dot? I would then post it on social media, on my social media channels, and crowdsource and see who seemed to have the best answers or the most compelling answers. And then I would follow up with those people. And if I was like, oh yeah, I really want to go into this, I would then schedule a Zoom interview with them to go into greater depth.

Cool. I love that. That's a, that's a really good way of kind of like getting it out there before you have to commit to the actual full, full-on interview or whatever. Uh, that's That's cool. And, you know, I want to point people to your website before we take some questions. And, you know, if you go to dorieclarke.com/thelonggame, they will get an assessment. What do they find here?

That, that is true. dorieclarke.com/thelonggame. They will get this assessment, which is helping, helping folks think through in their own lives how to apply the principles of strategic thinking to their lives and careers.

This is Perfect. Okay, so let's do some questions. Um, let me see who, who we have over here. Um, Michelle is saying that she does this— hang on, she says congrats on the novel. Thank you, thank you. Uh, okay, this, uh, she says I do this in my unscheduled, uh, in my unscheduled time without tasks, hence my assistant, uh, attendance at this session. Well, I guess what she's saying is basically she makes sure to be places she wants to be and put that on her to-do list, which I love. So go ahead and do that.

Well done, Michelle.

Yes, we're glad to have you here. Okay, Jay has a question about book writing, so let's just pull that one here. Um, he says, let's see, um, if you're looking to write your first book, what recommendations do you have on the process? How do you choose a publisher, etc.? Okay, so the publishing thing, right? So let's, let's hear what you got here, Dory.

All right, well then I want to hear what you got, Paula, because I know you, you have a lot of experience in this area too. But, uh, yes, for your, for your first book, Jay, what I would suggest is, and often a really good starting point if you want to be commercially published, which it sounds like you do since you're asking about publishers, one of the very best tips is to look at other books that are similar to yours and read the acknowledgments section, because almost always it's a convention in the acknowledgments that you will thank your agent. And so if you look at a number of books, you know, let's let's call it 10 books that are similar to the genre of yours, you can see who those agents are. You can then go to their website and see what the agent requires. Sometimes they want just a cover letter up front. Sometimes they want— if it's nonfiction, uh, they maybe they want to see the whole thing, or maybe they just want a sample chapter. And you can follow their policy and submit to them to have your work considered. This is important because it's not true if it's a small publisher, but if you're looking for a large publisher, you are almost certainly going to need to have agent to be the broker in that deal. So finding the agent is the first step, and you can do it by looking at competing works.

Yeah, I, I think you have to read a lot, you know, you really do. You have to do your homework, you have to know what's out there. Uh, you know, both of my books, Listful Thinking and Listful Living, were both published, traditionally published by an indie publisher, so smaller publisher, which I loved because I got to get my hands in there a lot more than you probably would with one of the big ones, you know, uh, which was, which was very good for for me and I enjoyed it very much. But I met the publisher at a trade event and she followed my blog for years. So I have this blog, listproducer.com, that I started, oh my gosh, like 10 years ago about lists and productivity. And I started it back when I was a TV producer. And I just started writing and writing and writing and she was following me. And she said, "Well, when are you going to have a book? What's going on here?" And I said, "You know what? Maybe I will. Maybe I'll put one together." And I did. And you know what? I ended up selling the book to her, but without at first I had no agent, and I was like, I think I need an agent because I don't know what I'm doing. Like, this is not my world, you know? So I have a wonderful agent who I work with who, who now, you know, she doesn't do fiction. So now I'm in this world of— now that I've written this novel, in, in this again. So what I'm doing is I have a spreadsheet, of course, uh, of all of these agents and books that might be similar to what I'm doing. So it— as you're saying, Dory, like doing my homework, looking through these books and saying like, who are the agents, who are the publishers, publish books like this? You know, where could this be? And having that target, you really have to know the landscape, you know, because if you think, oh, I'm gonna just send it out to everyone, it's like, it's like with media, right? Like, for the years that I was a television producer, people would misfire on their pitches for years because they didn't do their homework. They didn't see what shows I produced and what my demographic was. It's the same thing with this. You have to be very targeted, or else it's it's just going to be a no and you're going to get disappointed right away, I think.

Yeah, I think that's a great point, Paula. And I'll just, I'll just second what you're saying about the importance of actually making yourself discoverable to agents or publishers, which is, which is frankly the best thing, right, is when they come to you. In The Long Game, I actually tell a story about a woman named Cara Catrusella, who is a journalist, a freelance journalist And she created a newsletter, and it's a, it's a short daily newsletter that she created. Originally, she wasn't even really intending to do anything. She would have these monthly gatherings of her friends, many of whom were in the media, and it was just kind of this, this like almost potluck type gathering. And people would go around and talk about what they were working on, and, you know, hey, I'm looking for a roommate, or hey, my company's hiring, you know, that sort of thing. And somebody suggested to her Oh, hey, why don't you like write up the notes of this and oh, you could send it out like a newsletter. And so she decided to do it and she eventually began this short daily newsletter with kind of inspirational tips about writing and productivity and things like that. And she has done it now for close to 5 years. And because she had different friends who were in the media, it grew and people became more aware of it. She got writing gigs as a result of it because people were like, oh, Cara, you, you cover things like this here, write a story about it. Eventually, one of the people on the list was in fact a publisher. They were wanting to do a sort of inspirational book called, you know, and it's her book is called Do It, Do It for Yourself. And they said, oh, this is, this reminds me of Cara's newsletter. And then they said, wait, Cara could write it. And that's how she got her book deal.

Yeah, that's it. Like, you want to be found. You want people to remember you and know you for something, you know, in particular. Yes, I love lists. I love many things, but lists are the way I kind of get in. You know, you got to— you have to have one way in. Dori, this is a gimmick. It's true. Absolutely. I know that. Jay Cook loved our information. So thank you, Jay, for watching. Thank you all for being here. And if you're watching the replay, leave us some questions below. We're happy to answer. If you go to doriclark.com/thelonggame, you can check out that assessment. Check out the book. I want you to, you know, connect with with Dori all over the place. And Dori, you're also a LinkedIn Learning instructor. We both are. And so you have a bunch of courses here. You know, if people go to LinkedInLearning.com, they can check those out as well, which would be very nice. And thanks for being here, Dori. Enjoy the rest of your book tour.

Thank you so much, Paula. Always a treat to connect with you.

Yeah, of course. And, you know, all these freebies and things, you can check them out if you go to PaulaRizzo.com/booktour. Lists. You can check out my List Making Starter Kit to make sure that you are more organized and less stressed, because that's what we want, right? And all of those courses, as I mentioned, are on LinkedIn Learning. So if you go to paularizzo.com/linkedin, you can check out all my LinkedIn Learning courses there. And thanks so much for watching. So glad to have you guys here today. If you have other questions, leave them in the chat boxes below, and we'll see you next time. Thanks.