Long-term thinking: how to practice it every day

What it is

Long-term thinking is the ability to consider the effects of our decisions over decades, even beyond our own lifetime. It is not about predicting, but about widening the time horizon we use to decide.

Why it is hard

Many forces push toward the short term:

• Day-to-day urgencies take up almost all our attention.
• Political cycles, quarterly reports and social media reward the immediate.
• Long-term effects are uncertain and distant, and hard to feel as our own.

Inspiring ideas

• The seventh generation principle, attributed to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, asks us to consider the effect of each decision seven generations later.
• The Long Now Foundation, founded in 1996, is building a clock designed to run for ten thousand years, as a symbol of long-term responsibility.
• In 2015, Wales passed a Well-being of Future Generations Act that requires its public bodies to consider the long term.
• In 2024, the United Nations adopted a Declaration on Future Generations.

Exercises to practice

• Change the horizon: when facing a decision, ask how it will look in 1, 10 and 30 years.
• Write a letter to someone who will live in your neighborhood in 2060: what are you leaving them?
• Note a signal today and ask what it could mean a generation from now.
• Think of someone who is a child today and how their adult life will be in your city.
• In a meeting, set aside a few minutes for the question: "what would those who come after us think of this?"

The long term starts today

Long-term thinking is not only for governments. It can be practiced at school, in the neighborhood, in a small business or in the family. Observing signals in the present and talking about possible futures is a concrete way to start: it trains curiosity and reminds us that the future is built with today's decisions.