The Long Game book review

Everybody wants things immediately, if not yesterday. So, how do you play the long game, and what's the incentive for doing it? Keep reading to find out what book I'm writing about. 

The book we're talking about today is called The Long Game. The author of the book is Dorie Clark. The genre of the book is nonfiction. The theme of the book is entrepreneurship leadership.

So, how do you play the long game, and what's the point? I learned four important lessons from this book.

Number one, thinking waves. What's the point of that? Dorie talks about three waves in the book. The first one is learning, creating, connecting, and reaping. There's a time in your life when all you want to do is learn– you're watching a video and trying to learn. Then you want to create– now you want to create your own YouTube videos. What do you need? What do you do? What do you set up? Then you are connecting; oh, Kyla taught me something; maybe I should reach out to her and see if she has any tips. Then you get to reap. So you gotta think in waves. 

Sometimes, you will reap; your business is doing well. Sometimes you're just gonna be connecting, hey, I know this person, you would love to know this person. You gotta know which wave you're in because then you won't be frustrated. You don't plant something and then expect to see it there tomorrow. You probably do, but that's not really how things work. 

The second thing is that there are no requests from anyone for the first year you've met them. Let's say you're out at a dinner party, you meet someone. “Oh my goodness. You're fabulous. You're amazing. But, hey, can you connect me with that person? Do you know somebody who could do this? Could you maybe do this? Will you buy it?”  No request for the year. Spend time with them, get to know them; even if it's virtual. “Hey, what are you doing? Hey, what are you interested in? Hey, this, hey, this, hey, this.” And then maybe you can even refer to them to someone. “Oh, I think you would love this person. Oh, I think you'd be good at this.” You don't make any requests for the first year. Play the long game. For one, you expect that relationship to still be valid in a year.So that's a whole different perspective you bring when you meet someone at a dinner party. 

The third thing is that experience takes time. Dorie Clark is an expert to me, but she writes that before she had three books, she was writing for the Harvard Business Review, but before she did that, she was writing for free, and before she did that, she was trying to figure out do I enjoy writing, do I just enjoy reading, what do I enjoy? She says it takes three years to be considered an expert in something. Maybe you think you're an expert right now, but it takes three years for someone to recognize you as an expert. And I was like, wow, that's why I'm not a millionaire from YouTube yet, yes and no. It took me three years to become an expert in podcasting. It's going to take me three years and more to become an expert on YouTube because it is always changing. It takes three years of doing something for you to be considered an expert. Give yourself time. You literally have to play the long game because you won't be an expert on day one. 

The fourth way you can play the long game is to appreciate that evidence of absence is not an absence of evidence. What? The evidence of absence is just because I'm recording videos, reading books, publishing them, I'm writing episode notes. Where is the work? Well, Kyla, you lack evidence. Who's enjoying the videos? Who is learning something? Who just picked up the book. An absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. I get comments from people. Oh, I read their other book, I'm going to pick up this one too. Oh, I think that's so funny. 

I put out a review about why I ate ramen noodles for a month to save $1,400, and people were like, how dare you do that? You must have high blood pressure from all the sodium. I didn't only eat ramen noodles, but you commented because you watched. Evidence. Every time you do something, you are putting work out there, you are putting good out there. Do you get the evidence that it was amazing immediately? No, because right now, we're all obsessed with being viral. But when you play the long game, you have to realize it might take a little while for you to see some of the results. 

You’re probably gonna hate the phrase, but say it with me, “an absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” Stuff is happening that you cannot see. Do your part, create it, and put it into the world. 

Until the next book review, Kyla