It's easy to get caught up on short term things.
What if I only worked on things that will exist after I die?
My heuristic can be:
Will this exist in 2050? Yes, continue working. No, stop working.
Alternate take:
This mindset can quickly turn toxic as it doesn’t account for people, love, and non-quantifiable things. Although a grand vision and goal is great, I don’t want to live in a world in which no one is investing time in other people.
In the book
The heuristic words for not getting caught up in trends, but can quickly create a grandiose and non-empathetic person if taken too far.
In analogous terms - On one side you have the person getting sloshed about by each new wave, and on the other extreme you have the person surfing on top of them.