the fastest way to ruin your life.

Every day, people unknowingly trade their ideal future for fleeting comfort.

The modern world, driven by instant gratification and cheap dopamine, has conditioned society to prioritize short-term pleasure over long-term fulfillment.

With everything readily available at our fingertips, the need for careful planning and discipline has all but disappeared.

We live in a comfort crisis—one that blinds us to our obligations to the future.

As a result, many sacrifice lasting success for temporary gain.

The consequences of this mindset are already surfacing, yet we’ve only begun to see their full impact.

Before the rise of modern technology and today’s obsession with convenience, civilizations had an entirely different relationship with time.

Look at ancient Rome and medieval Europe—their architecture, their cities, their way of life.

They spent decades constructing a single building.

Scholars dedicated years to mastering a single subject, craftsmen refined their work over a lifetime, and entire societies prioritized longevity, beauty, and mastery.

Now, contrast that with today.

We build cities as fast as possible, chase jobs for quick paychecks, and enter relationships based on immediate gratification rather than long-term fulfillment.

Our world desperately lacks long-term vision, deep thinking, and patience.

One of the most glaring symptoms of this high-time-preference culture is the modern health crisis.

Over 50% of adults are overweight, children are more unhealthy than ever, and chronic illness is at an all-time high.

This is the cost of impulsive, short-sighted living.

The Goal & Benefits of Low Time Preference

A high time preference prioritizes immediate gratification, leading to impulsive decisions and short-term thinking.

A low time preference, on the other hand, delays gratification in favor of future rewards—fostering discipline, long-term planning, and lasting success.

For individuals, this means mastering a craft, developing specialized knowledge, and creating a vision for the future.

For society, it means fostering growth, prosperity, and stability.

Those who think ahead recognize that the work they do today creates the foundation for tomorrow.

One of the clearest benefits of this mindset is financial security.

A low time preference allows you to store value, harness the power of compound interest, and build long-term wealth.

By consistently providing value to the world and investing wisely, you create a future where your past efforts sustain you.

The same principle applies to health.

Your body is a compounding asset—what you invest in today determines the quality of life you experience later.

Choosing to eat well and train now, despite the discomfort, leads to a stronger, healthier future.

While the short-term sacrifices may seem small, their long-term rewards are life-changing.

The fastest way to ruin your entire life is to trade your ideal future for immediate needs and desires.

Because of the convivence many of us live with in our lives today we become a slave to our natural impulses without recognizing the consequences we will face later on down the road.

Changing your time preference alters how you see the world and how you view time.

The man who walks diligently through life with a keen eye for making the right long term decisions will continue to live a more abundant and higher quality of life.

The man who walks blind and lives solely for today might experience temporary joy but in the end will suffer greatly because of it.

Time is a very powerful thing and it is the most precious asset we have as human beings.

How you choose to use it and leverage it will greatly impact the kind of life you will live and the results you will get.

Lowering your time preference is a way of using time properly.

Planning, preparing and executing on a daily basis to leverage the power of compound interest in your health, finances and spirituality.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy—disorder—always increases unless energy is applied to resist it.

Life operates the same way.

If you don’t actively invest in your future, things naturally decay—your finances, your health, your skills.

A high time preference accelerates entropy, leading to wasted potential and chaos.

But by lowering your time preference—delaying gratification, building discipline, and making long-term investments—you impose order on your life.

You resist the natural pull toward decline and instead create a future of abundance.

Understanding this principle is one thing, but applying it is another.

If resisting entropy and lowering your time preference is the key to a stronger future, how do you actually do it?

Here are three steps to shift your mindset and start prioritizing the long game.

The first step to lowering your time preference and harnessing the power of time is to view short-term pleasure as the enemy of your future self.

Nothing worthwhile comes easy, and nothing easy is worthwhile.

Most people think in days and weeks—they live for the weekends, and their plans end on Saturday night. But if you start thinking in 5-to-10-year timeframes, your entire perception of reality expands.

You begin to see past the trees and into the depth of the forest.

This shift allows you to develop true mastery, build meaningful and lasting projects, and finally see things through to the end.

What stops most people from achieving their goals isn’t a lack of ability or talent—it’s a lack of long-term thinking.

Great things take time, and without giving them the time they require, you’ll never create anything that lasts.

Consider a grandmaster chess player.

A beginner focuses only on their next move, while a grandmaster thinks 10+ moves ahead, positioning their pieces for future advantage.

Life works the same way. If you only focus on short-term wins, you’ll always be reacting instead of strategizing for real success.

"Your next five moves determine your success. The more moves you can think ahead, the more in control you are of your future." — Patrick Bet-David

By thinking further ahead than the average person, you gain more control over your time, decisions, and ultimate success.

The second step is to build habits that reinforce delayed gratification.

Habits are your destiny.

Most people fail to create a long-term vision not because they lack ambition, but because they don’t establish habits that align with their goals.

Success isn’t about grand victories in front of thousands—it’s about the small, consistent actions that compound over time.

Take health and fitness as an example.

By implementing simple, effective daily habits, you reinforce your long-term vision of yourself, making your belief in that vision even stronger.

Recognizing the importance of time preference is essential, but ultimately, your habits determine how you use that time.

Without structured habits and routines, achieving your goals will always feel out of reach.

The third and final step is to create “Inevitable Success Environments.”

As you begin thinking in longer time horizons and building habits that support your goals, your environment becomes the single most important factor in determining whether you stay the course or fall back into the cycle of short-term gratification.

No matter how badly you want to bring others with you on your journey, not everyone is willing to go.

And you can’t carry the weight of those who aren’t aligned with your vision.

One of the most critical aspects of your environment is removing temptations that feed into instant gratification.

Instead, surround yourself with disciplined, focused individuals who reinforce your long-term mindset.

Your environment will either accelerate your growth or hinder it—and the choice is entirely yours.

By following this three step process you can begin to attract what you want in your life without chasing.

You harness the power of scarcity, become magnetic and decide what to plant in the Kingdom you have built.

Hope this helps.

Cade Rector