The only game worth playing
Most people chase hacks. We play decades.
Most people are trapped in short-term games.
They chase likes, hacks, and quick wins. They burn through energy trying to stay relevant by imitating, and when the noise fades, they’re left with nothing to show for it.
But short-term games don’t compound. They distract. They exhaust. And worst of all, they keep you from building anything that lasts.
I know because I’ve played those games. I’ve jumped from project to project, stacking half-finished ideas, chasing novelty instead of endurance. It felt productive, but it was the illusion of progress.
The turning point was realizing that nothing matters more than staying in the game. Becoming a cockroach, building something hard to kill.
Charlie Munger, one of the clearest thinkers, said:
“The big money is not in the buying or the selling, but in the waiting.”
Translation: endurance beats brilliance.
You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You just have to survive long enough for compounding to do its work.
But survival isn’t passive. You need strategy.
Machiavelli would remind us that Fortune (luck, timing, external forces) is like a flooding river. You can’t control it, but you can get ready to channel it.
That’s what he called virtù. The courage, adaptability, and clarity to shape fortune instead of being crushed by it. It reminds me of another quote about inspiration which would very well work for luck:
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” – Pablo Picasso
The same principle applies to business, health, wealth, and even relationships. You can’t predict when fortune will flood, when a market shifts, a competitor collapses, your video goes viral or an opportunity opens.
But if you’ve been quietly compounding, writing, coding, designing, strengthening, learning, you’re positioned to capture it.
Every day people go viral online but most just enjoy the minutes of fame and vanish without being able to capture that attention and direct it to something they can leverage.
The opposite of this is fragility.
The founder who builds only for speed burns out, I know, I burnt out multiple times and it’s no fun.
The investor who over-leverages blows up, I know, I lost all my savings in the last crypto hype cycle.
The creative who chases every trend loses themselves.
The short game punishes the impatient. The long game rewards the enduring.
Look at James Dyson. 5,127 failed prototypes before he created the first vacuum that worked. Most people give up after 10, maybe 50. But Dyson wasn’t playing for weeks, he was playing for decades.
Or take Steve Jobs. Brutal, flawed, but relentless. He wasn’t just building gadgets. He was reshaping taste, brand, culture. Things that compound invisibly over time. Jobs didn’t chase hacks. He played the long game of perception, design, and storytelling until Apple became the world’s most valuable company.
Even Elon Musk, with all his chaos, understands the long game. Rockets don’t happen on quarterly timelines. Neither do electric car ecosystems. His edge is the willingness to endure extreme ridicule, failure, and iteration where short-game players would’ve surrendered.
The principle is the same everywhere: compounding requires survival.
Survival requires clarity. Clarity comes from refusing illusions.
Hacks won’t save you.
Hype won’t sustain you.
Noise won’t compound.
What compounds is focus, discipline, and endurance. What compounds is saying no to 99 things so you can say yes to one game worth playing for decades.
For me, that means a portfolio of calm businesses instead of hype startups. Clear writing instead of endless feeds. Fitness routines I can repeat for life instead of crash programs. Systems that keep me in the game when willpower fails.
The formula is simple but vicious:
Stay in the game.
Play long-term games with long-term people.
Compound relentlessly and don’t interrupt it.
The rest is noise.
Because in the end, there’s only one game worth playing.
The long one.
Notes from Reading & Listening
“All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.” – Charles T. Munger
“All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words.” – Charles de Gaulle
“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” – Thomas Sowell
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t - you’re right.” – Henry Ford
“Play long-term games with long-term people. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.” – Naval Ravikant
This is Vicious Notes. My study of clarity, power, and compounding for long-game players who want to build and endure.
I wish I could credit everyone that influenced my thinking and I try my best to attribute the source but just want to declare it here and onwards that any accidental brilliance you read here comes from the great minds and people in the arena. As Sir Isaac Newton would say, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.
Most people chase hacks. We play decades.
Yes; long-term thinking and long-term ambition beat the short term every time.
But, and yes, there is a but: just like “manifesting without action" will always fail… this is the same.
Playing the long game but never publishing a blog post? You'll get nowhere.
Playing the long game but never shipping any app? You'll fail 100% of the time.
So, here is to taking action, moving forward and: being ok that it may take a while, but you'll stick it through. Because you know that on a long enough time horizon, your success is inevitable.
In for a long game 👊
LaurinaVicious Notes 👌