You may have gone too far the wrong way. As far as I can remember the longer the rod the higher it shifts, the shorter you go the lower in RPM and speed it shifts.
I thought the same thing too, but things didn't work that way with my set up.
Here are a couple pics of my set up before I adjusted it. In the second pic I loosened the bolt so I could adjust the rod. At first I moved the rod towards the back of the car, thinking I was shortening it and therefore making the car shift sooner. I had no results though. It shifted exactly the way it did before. So that's when I went and moved the rod all the way forward, which caused it to shift the way it is now: Sooner than it was before, but still not quite right.