The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World, reviewed

We look at this thoughtful book by Dorie Clark published by Harvard Business Review Press.

The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World, reviewed

We enjoyed this book a lot, and found ourselves nodding in agreement quite a few times. The dreaded emails that come in where people suggest that it would be useful to ‘pick your brain’, and that is in any way of any value to anyone but themselves. Clark also describes well the challenge of building a network, and moving from aspiring to being successful to becoming in demand.

We also enjoyed, and recognised her comments about no longer travelling long distances for unfocused meetings over coffee. We too have been there, with people desiring, even demanding coffee with you, but then failing to follow up on any of the items discussed in the meeting.

Clark has been on the outside looking in, and then also within the inner circles, and her goal with this book is to help and share her experiences to help you stake out your own path. There are some good career tips, and her horizon is the longer term, which gives you more context, and also the belief to not give yourself a hard time if you have not achieved everything in three months or three weeks time.

Clark also shares experiences about some projects where she did invest time and they subsequently came to nothing and frustrating outcomes. Some of these are potentially avoidable, and some you have to simply learn from them and aim not to get caught again.

This is a smart book, with good insights and useful actions to take. Well worth reading.

More about the book

How can we break out of the endless cycle of feeling rushed, overwhelmed, and perennially behind to create the kind of meaningful lives we all seek? We need to start playing The Long Game.  As top business thinker Dorie Clark explains, we all know that lasting success takes persistence and effort. Yet so much of the pressure in our culture pushes us toward doing what’s easy, what’s guaranteed, or what looks glamorous in the moment. Clark argues for doing small things over time to achieve our goals—and being willing to keep at them, even when they seem pointless, boring, or hard.

Clark shares unique principles and frameworks anyone can apply to their situation, as well as stories from her own career and other professionals’ experiences. Everyone is allotted the same 24 hours—but with the right strategies, we can leverage those hours in more efficient and powerful ways. The long-term payoff is immense: to finally break out of the frenetic day-to-day routine and transform our life and our career.

More about the author

Dorie Clark is a consultant and keynote speaker who teaches executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. She has been named one of the top fifty business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 and the number one Communication Coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards.

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