The Long View | The Field Guide

You won’t see results this week. Maybe not this year. Maybe not for a decade. Parenting is the longest game you’ll ever play. The feedback loops are measured in years. The compound effect is invisible until suddenly it isn’t. How do you stay patient when progress is invisible?

In 1878, Milton Wright gave his sons a toy helicopter. Wilbur was 11. Orville was 7. They played with it. It broke. They tried to build their own. They failed. They moved on to other things. Twenty-five years passed. Milton Wright never saw a direct line from the toy to the airplane. He just planted a seed and waited. He didn’t know which seeds would grow. He planted anyway.

The problem with parenting is that you’re playing a game where the score isn’t revealed until the end. You make a thousand decisions. You create hundreds of moments. You repeat lessons until you’re tired of your own voice. And you have no idea if it’s working. So you look for short-term signals. Did they listen today? Did they say thank you? Did they pass the test? But short-term signals are noise. The real signal takes years to emerge.

John Adams didn’t see his son become president. He died on July 4, 1826 – the same day as Thomas Jefferson, exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. John Quincy was Secretary of State, not yet in the White House. Adams spent decades writing letters, shaping principles, investing in a vision he would never fully see realized. He planted trees whose shade he’d never sit in. That’s the long view. You work for outcomes you may not witness.

The compound effect

James Clear writes about the “plateau of latent potential” – the period where you’re putting in effort but seeing no visible results. Progress is happening. It’s just underground. Then one day, breakthrough. The skill clicks. The habit sticks. The character shows. All those invisible deposits suddenly become visible. This is true for habits. It’s especially true for parenting. Every dinner conversation about money compounds. Every moment of letting them struggle compounds. Every time you hold the boundary compounds. You won’t see it. Then one day you will.

How to stay patient

Trust the process, not the progress. On any given day, you can’t measure if it’s working. So don’t try. Focus on the process: Are you living your principles? Are you creating moments? That’s all you control.

Zoom out regularly. Once a month, look back six months. Once a year, look back five years. Progress that’s invisible daily becomes obvious at scale. Keep notes. Take photos. Record memories. Your future self will need the evidence.

Celebrate seeds, not just harvests. You planted a seed today. That’s worth celebrating – even if the harvest is years away. The planting is the work. The growing happens on its own timeline.

Find parents further along. Talk to parents of adults. Ask them what mattered and what didn’t. Their perspective is the view from the future. It will calm your present.

Warren Buffett’s father gave him stock certificates as a child. He bought his first stock at 11. But Buffett didn’t become a billionaire until he was 56. His wealth didn’t become legendary until his 70s and 80s. Howard Buffett planted the seed in the 1940s. The harvest came in the 2000s. Sixty years of compounding. Howard never saw it. He died in 1964.

The two traps

The urgency trap: “They need to learn this NOW or it’ll be too late.” Rarely true. Development isn’t a race. A child who learns to cook at 15 instead of 10 isn’t ruined. Relax the timeline.

The comparison trap: “Other kids their age already know this.” Other kids have different principles, different parents, different timelines. The only relevant comparison is your child today versus your child yesterday.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: You’re not parenting for today. You’re parenting for a future you can’t see. The 25-year-old they’ll become doesn’t exist yet. You’re building someone who isn’t there, using tools that don’t give feedback, on a timeline you don’t control. This requires faith. Not religious faith – practical faith. Faith that small deposits compound. Faith that seeds grow. Faith that the work matters even when you can’t prove it.

The long view isn’t a strategy. It’s a stance. A way of holding the work. You’re planting trees. Some will grow. Some won’t. You won’t know which is which for years. Plant anyway.