The mindfulness and meditation bandwagon is here and trying to get us to be "present" in the now. We don't want to reminisce about the past or pontificate about the future. Spot on. Being in the present moment is the new nirvana.

We are not spending enough time focussed on the long-term in the following categories:

• Information and Knowledge: Our lives are inundated with up-to-the-minute WhatsApp messages, Twitter feeds, Instagram stories, Facebook posts, Slack Channels and such. We are increasingly consuming information with a very short half-life and not nearly enough which has lasting value. We need to avoid consuming "byte" sized morsels which whets your appetite but leaves you unsatisfied and grazing all day. We need to consume more longer form articles, blog posts, podcasts, books and more and not. Further, we need internalize longer-form content and enhance our existing mental models. This beautiful post on Compounding Knowledge talks about how folks like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger read and digest voracious amount of information and keep compounding their longer term mental models.
• Habits - Due to the never ending stream of ever accessible information, we are often mesmerized by the fad du jour. It could be a new nutrition or exercise plan, or a way to speed read, or a new social media channel to participate in. I'm a big believer in innovation and experimenting a lot, both at a personal and professional level. However, I would assert that we should pick a few of the successful experiments and commit to them so they become long-term habits. So, instead of trying a new fad of giving up sugar for a week or a month, or doing a GM diet, or a new workout routine, one may be better attempting a sustainable habit - say, skipping desserts for all days but one or doing a soup and salad dinner once a week or exercise 3 days a week no matter what. It takes about 66 days to create a new habit but the compounding returns of some of those may last a lifetime!
• Relationships - we have unprecedented ability connect with everyone, everywhere, all the time. We are increasingly building shallower relationships with lots of people and not many meaningful relationships with a select few. This is true at work and at home. Do we really get to know what drives or motivates people? Do we really spend time to understand where they grew up, what they like to eat, play, read? Do we know what their secret superpowers are? Or, are they just another connection on LinkedIn or a "business" associate?

Frameworks to help build for "long term" impact:

I could think of 3 three well established frameworks that I have read from 3 different books over the last 20 years. I attempted to try and connect them to the problem at hand.

Prioritise: Steven Covey's timeless 4 Quadrants in his book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" came to to mind.

Back when he wrote it, he asserted that we end spending way too much time in Quadrants 1 and 3. I think Social Media and other distractions have made Quadrant 4 also become a bigger time sink.

Takeaway: We should prioritise how we are spending our time and increase our allocation to Quadrant #2 significantly.

Another great framework is Suzy Welch's decision making one from her book "10-10-10 - A Fast and Powerful Way to Get Unstuck in Love, at Work, and with Your Family"

Takeaway: We should spend way more time deliberating decisions that will have an impact to our lives in 10 months or 10 years!

Most recently, I read Barbara Oakley's book "Learning How to Learn". It argues that we should cultivate two ways of thinking - a focussed mode and a diffused mode. In the former, you are learning a new skill or assimilating new information - such as reading this blog post. The second part is to reflect this and let your mind "idle" in diffuse mode to connect the dots with your existing mental models. She suggests this helps you not only digest this material better but is a critical step to commit this to longer term memory.

This is the classic memory diagram of how new experiences and learnings go from sensory memories to eventually long term memory. It is a deliberate process that requires organising what you have learnt in you own way and then having enough "down" time which includes noodling over this information, sleeping over it (!) and then practice active recall.

Takeway: Everytime you read, learn or get inspired by something, practice the Feynman technique. One way is to explain to a 10-year old how this works. As an aside, blogging is also a great way to do it! For extra credit, go explain or share this blog post in your "own words" to someone you care about!

About the Author -

(Amit Somani is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM. He is also deeply engaged with the early stage startup ecosystem in India and actively volunteers with iSpirt, TiE and NASSCOM. He tweets at @amitsomani)

This article was originally published on Linkedin