Especially when we’re wrapped up in the pursuit of a goal, we tend to see anything that’s not clearly forward progress as a setback. In other words: We think If we’re not gaining ground, we’re losing it.
As a result, we can end up making risky moves in an attempt to try to move things forward. But we may end up only wasting our energy, and not even gaining ground—or even worse—losing it.
That’s where a shift in mindset can help. If we scale back our obsession with constant forward movement, we can do much better over the long run. We just have to realize that sometimes the best available moves are not forward—but sideways—or maybe even backwards. Yes, sometimes we may even have to move slightly backward now in order to be able to move a longer distance forward later.
Pass It To the Side
It can help to take a cue from American football, and consider the merits of what they call lateral moves.
The rules of football dictate that the ball cannot be thrown forward from one player to another beyond the line of scrimmage—which is the line from which the play began. So once a player begins running the ball past that line, it may seem like their only option is to keep running. And when they encounter opponents, they may try to simply plow through them.
But the rules of football allow for the ball to be thrown sideways or backwards. And while that in and of itself doesn’t provide forward progress, it does open up opportunities that weren’t available before. It just takes some patience and vision to see how it can work.
Don’t Trap Yourself in the Short Game
When we encounter opposition on our march of forward progress, we should be willing to consider lateral moves. They’re the moves that don’t immediately look like progress. In fact, sometimes, they can seem like concessions or giving in to setbacks. But these moves can help put us in a better position to move forward later.
And that’s the real kicker—the thing that keeps many of us from considering lateral moves. We lack the patience to wait for “later”. We don’t value the future like we do the present. And even when we do value the future, we tend to value the immediate future much more than the long-term.
So we end up playing the short game. We lack the vision to see how lateral moves now can actually make way for significant forward progress down the road.
In Praise of Patience and Zooming Out
This is why patience is a truly unsung hero of the virtues. The world continues to move more quickly than it did in previous years and decades. And it seems to demand that we do so as well.
The sheer amount of new information to sift through continues to increase. And the pressure that comes with our awareness of that increases as well. We have to move faster and more elegantly in order to keep up.
But in the face of such acceleration, it might pay to question the prevailing momentum. What do we gain by “keeping up”—if we’re even successful at doing it? The others who seem to be charging relentlessly forward—going further down field—are they able to keep up that pace and progress for long?
I think you’ll find that the answer is no. The zoomed-out, long-run picture of progress may look like a straight line upward. But zooming in, in almost every case, you’ll see peaks and valleys. You’ll see losses that nearly erase the gains. You’ll see pauses and perceived plateaus or stagnation—but then a march back upward again.
The picture we see of ourselves is almost always zoomed in. We see yesterday’s setbacks, and today’s challenges. We see how we fell short of our goal this past year. But we don’t usually zoom out and see that all of that was part of a consistent path forward.
So this setback today—this lateral move when you really wanted to push forward—it’s not a loss. Every loss is a potential lateral or backward pass that can allow you to make an even better push forward further down the line. But you’ll never be able to do that if you don’t see it as a possibility.
Keep your eyes peeled and your mind open.