In the long run you'll forget paycheck sizes. You won't forget the moments you chose standards over panic. That's how your name gets steady enough to keep you.

The thought behind it

The horizon is set deliberately far out. From there urgency looks smaller and consistency looks enormous. In Quiet Power restraint is the whole discipline, and it pays in a currency nobody else can see. Everything hinges on “14”, which is the part a politer version of this sentence would have left out.