Cumulative Consequences

By Jeff Harring, CFP / November 5, 2009 --

The ancient story is told that a palace wise man invented the game of chess. His ruler was so pleased that he offered the wise man a reward of his own choosing.

The wise man, who was also a smart mathematician, asked his Master for just one grain of rice on the first square of the chess board, and then double that number of grains of rice on the second square, and so on: doubling the number of grains of rice on each of the next 62 squares on the chess board.

This seemed to be a modest request, so the ruler called for his servants to bring the rice. How surprised he was to find that the rice quickly covered the chessboard… filled the palace and emptied the ruler’s granary!

The actual number of grains required is about: 18,446,744,070,000,000,000. If they were placed end to end, these grains of rice would reach from the Earth, to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, and then back to Earth again! *

The parable has various endings, some stories have the ruler going broke, some say the ruler beheads the wise man, and some say he forces the wise man to count ALL the grains of rice…for the rest of his life.

The moral is: The cumulative effect of a decision can make or break you.

We live in a snap shot world; we live each day one by one. We don’t seem to realize…really… that the days that we string together actually comprise a life and the sum of the parts creates the whole.

At least we don’t always act like it.

I suspect we’d all make smarter decisions if we saw each decision as part of a series of decisions eventually leading to a goal, instead of treating them as just one random decision at a time.

The idea is to coordinate your decisions to achieve an important long term goal;

I call these “Lighthouse Goals.”

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