A Short-Term World With Long-Term Problems
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A Short-Term World With Long-Term Problems
I do hope that you will return to the post from last week to catch up on the newly released TED talks on that list. The names with talks that have been released are “hot-linked” and you can see them underlined and in bold.
The lengthy interview with Elon Musk is worth watching for sure. I am grateful for his vision, hard work, and risk-taking. He attacks HUGE human problems and so far, has made incredible contributions to a better world. TESLA, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring Company, and perhaps TWITTER. No small ideas there!
Perhaps what makes him controversial to some, is that he calls things as he sees them. And, of course, he isn’t always right. No one is. And yes, we always have to be sufficiently critical when power accumulates too much into the hands of one person. But so far, I am grateful for his contributions to humanity. He is certainly contributing to a future I am more excited about.
This week, I am back to one of my most deeply held convictions.
We live in a short-term world with long-term problems.
I believe, quite passionately, that perhaps the most significant problem we face is our collective short-sightedness for just about everything. We want faster and faster results and yet the way we allocate our own time, the way we elect political leaders, and the way we make decisions are based on a return we expect instantly. Obviously, the immediacy of social media, technology at large, and eCommerce have all contributed to our intolerance for "waiting" for just about anything.
I don’t have many solutions to this cultural problem, other than to keep pointing it out and doing my best to inspire myself, my friends, and my companies to think further out. The venture capital fund that I co-founded and am a partner in was founded on the principle of “longtermism” and I am proud to work with founders and investors that share the view that long-term value is not the same as short-term price.
We need to expand our horizons. There are so many examples of the problems with short horizons in decision-making. We pay incredible interest on the debt we accumulate by insisting on instant gratification and delaying necessary investments today.
We often say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We also say to measure twice but cut once. But somehow, we seem to be doing the opposite. We cut immediately and measure afterward. Or we happily invest in immediate symptoms of problems rather than attacking the root cause which always takes longer but saves both money and lives later.
The latest example is the inflation we are now dealing with. We made too many short-term decisions (à la our inflated stimulus) that we knew would show up later as high inflation. I have said it before, and excuse the graphic (and, perhaps, overly Scandinavian) nature of this one: "It's like peeing your pants in the wintertime. It feels warm and comfortable when you do it, but you end up freezing later.”
If you consider the most important contributions to a good life, what would you say they are? Here would be mine (needless to say, this is MY List and I respect anyone with different priorities, of course):
Health - without it, not much else matters.
Love - particularly for a lifelong partner
Children - they are the future and bring both meaning and hope to my life.
Work - having something useful to do and feeling relevant, valued, and productive.
Money – yes, money. Not enough to not care and enough to not worry.
Relationships - parents, friends, community - a rich social context.
Learning - when you stop learning, you stop growing.
I can probably list a few more, but you get it. Every single one of these big “rocks” in our lives requires constant “investment”. They are literally like bank accounts. They need to be filled up all the time with our love, our intentions, and our care, or we deplete them. If you approach them with a short-term mindset, you won’t be happy. In this way, we have to live our lives in reverse. We have to begin with the end in mind.
What do we want all of these to embody when we are almost done? We typically refer to this “philosophy” as back-casting (rather than forecasting).
When you set your sights on something further out, I believe you gain more conviction and strength. This is why I am such a big believer in the power of purpose.
The deepest pleasures, greatest joys, and most intense feelings of happiness come from the perspective on that higher mountaintop where you can see the path that took you here. Having instant success, or even happiness doesn’t really last. It’s fleeting, at best. And part of it is because it doesn’t have that resonating quality, where the feeling of joy is amplified by the knowledge of how you got there. In this sense, the journey is indeed part of the destination.
Two more things. First, Gandhi’s 7 Social Sins. I think they are great to reflect on, as I think our shortened time horizons have basically diluted, or perhaps even muted, our attention to the second word in these important pairs. The first is the output and the second is the input. We can't have one without the other.
Politics without principles.
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Then, I will end with a quote I have shared before. From my friend and mentor, Charles Handy, who wrote these inspiring lines about the relationship between ethics and time horizons:
“Set your sights on immortality, or as close to it as you can get, and most of the ethical dilemmas sort themselves out. But that requires leaders to think beyond their own demise. The men who designed and laid the first stones of the great cathedrals of the middle ages knew that they would never see them finished, yet they built them to last forever as the symbols of their belief. Today the skyscrapers of business tower over the old cathedrals. We must hope that those who build the enterprises within them are cathedral builders in their turn, for if they fail us then we all fail. Sadly, or perhaps not, we cannot legislate for cathedral thinking. It has, like all ethics, to be a matter of belief.”
For those that want to read more about my own journey around long-term thinking, I can share this post from 2013 , inspired by a talk I gave to the Institute of Design, as well as a post on Cue Ball's website around we started our venture capital firm focusing on longer-term outcomes.
I will for sure return to this many times in the future. There are books to be inspired by, talks to reflect on, and conversations to be had. But I will save that for another time. As always, please share your own experiences and ideas for how we can inspire all of us to resist the temptations of today in favor of a better tomorrow. Like most humans, I struggle with that every day and need all the help I can get!
Have a great week!
