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About the\xa0author

Dorie Clark has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, and was recognized as the #1 Communication Coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. Clark, a consultant and keynote speaker, teaches executive education at Duke University\u2019s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School, and she is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Long Game, Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of the Year by Inc. magazine.

A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, Clark has been described by the New York Times as an \u201cexpert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.\u201d A frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, she consults and speaks for clients including Google, Microsoft, and the World Bank.

Source: https://dorieclark.com/about/

About the\xa0book

It\u2019s no secret that we\u2019re pushed to the limit. Today\u2019s professionals feel rushed, overwhelmed, and perennially behind. So we keep our heads down, focused on the next thing, and the next, without a moment to breathe.

How can we break out of this endless cycle and create the kind of interesting, meaningful lives we all seek?

In The Long Game, Clark shares unique principles and frameworks you can apply to your specific situation, as well as vivid stories from her own career and other professionals\u2019 experiences. Everyone is allotted the same 24 hours\u200a\u2014\u200abut with the right strategies, you can leverage those hours in more efficient and powerful ways than you ever imagined. It\u2019s never an overnight process, but the long-term payoff is immense: to finally break out of the frenetic day-to-day routine and transform your life and your career.

Source: https://dorieclark.com/longgame/

Big idea #1\u200a\u2014\u200aDo the right\xa0thing

This idea has a couple of different meetings. The right thing might be supporting a social movement, an equality position, or a climate change issue, even if there\u2019s a short term cost. Dorie talks about interviewing someone who says of all the CEOs they\u2019ve ever met, not one of them has not supported one of the issues in the public zeitgeist, However, many of them haven\u2019t stood up publicly and supported those things because they\u2019re too worried about the short term commercial or shareholder response to taking a strong position on a particularly tricky subject.

This short term thinking stops them doing the right thing and using their power to make a stand. Whereas, by taking a long term perspective and asking what the long term impact of taking a position on one of these issues might be, could yield greater results.

The right thing is also about not getting distracted. Doing the right thing is about avoiding shiny object syndrome (we all suffer from it at times) and might involve saying no to things that you do want to do. It\u2019s relatively easy to say no to things we don\u2019t want to do, but saying no to things we do want to do, but are going to distract us and get in the way of the things that we should be doing, is more difficult.

It takes courage to be a long term thinker. It takes courage to stand up and say no to things. It takes courage to stand up and have a position on a strong social issue. When you know there might be a short term \u201cnegative\u201d impact to doing so.

We need to choose what we\u2019re ok being bad at, in order to be a good at the thing that is important. This creates the difference between moving ten individual things an inch each, or one thing a mile. Which very much reminds me of Greg McKeown\u2019s Essentialism concept.

Therefore, we need to set the right goals to focus on the right things. This might involve getting the right people in the right room, which can lead to the most unlikely of possibilities happening many months or years down the line\u200a\u2014\u200aagain requiring long term thinking.

Big idea #2\u200a\u2014\u200aThink in\xa0waves

Dorie talks about strategic over-indexing, or doubling down really on the things that will give the greatest return on investment into the future. You might want to split your time into heads up time or heads down time. Heads up time is when you\u2019re looking for opportunities, you\u2019re meeting people or going to events, whereas head down time is when you\u2019re in deep work mode and focused on creating. Dorie sets herself three to six months blocks to be either heads up or heads down.

The other version of this, is the idea of waves. The four waves that you can be in are;

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1. Learning\u200a\u2014\u200aimproving your skills
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2. Connecting \u2014going to events, joining groups, or networking
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3. Creating\u200a\u2014\u200agetting work done
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4. Reaping\u200a\u2014\u200aenjoying the benefits of your hard work (holiday anyone?)
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I liked this idea of doing waves that you can just commit to for a few months at a time, and then switch modes and focus. Great for those of us who find the idea of focusing on one thing at a time a little painful.

Big idea #3\u200a\u2014\u200aBe\xa0patient

If there\u2019s really one big idea from this book, it is being patient.

Sometimes it\u2019s hard to tell if something\u2019s not working, or if it\u2019s just not working yet. We often hear the glib concept of people giving up just at the point that \u2018it\u2019 was going to happen and they were almost at their inflection point, but it\u2019s really hard when you\u2019re in that moment to know whether you\u2019re on a hiding to nothing or just about to hit your stride. Especially if you\u2019re not getting external validation and maybe you\u2019re even getting actively being rejected from things as well.

Therefore you need strategic patience.

There will be a point of momentum, of exponential growth, and where the compound effect will kick in. Dorie sets out three questions that you can ask yourself if you\u2019re stuck before that tipping point;

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1. why am I doing this?
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2. how has it worked for others?
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3. what do my trusted advisors say?
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It\u2019s easy to fall into the trap of constantly tweaking our strategies if we are getting stuck or feel like things aren\u2019t working / aren\u2019t going quick enough. Usually this results in us not ever really moving forward, just going round and round in little circles. We also need to start comparing, like for like; not comparing you at three years, to someone else at 20 years into a particular field or pathway that you\u2019re choosing to take. Dorie goes as far to say that it takes a minimum of five years of consistent effort before you start to really see momentum building.

All of this requires rethinking failure, looking for different paths to the same desire or the same outcome, and potentially looking at alternative options.\xa0

For example, you\u2019re writing a book but then the publishing deal falls through, or your co-author decides that they don\u2019t want to do it anymore\u200a\u2014\u200adisaster! But maybe not. Using an alternative option and asking yourself how you can leverage what you\u2019ve already done so it\u2019s not wasted would be a useful tactic. In that example you could approach another publisher, try a magazine or publication, turn the content into a series of talks or a course\u2026 there are multiple ways to rethink a setback (and might even become a better outcome).

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