Short-termism has been the distinguishing intellectual vice of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. For the first time in recorded history, there has been a widespread assumption that the experience of all previous generations is irrelevant to present policy. Institutions, like individuals, however, diminish their effectiveness if they fail to reflect on past successes and failures. The most senior MI5 officer to write some of its history was Anthony Simkins, who after his retirement collaborated with Sir Harry Hinsley in writing the official history of security and intelligence in the Second World War. "I would have been a better DDG," Simkins said afterwards, "if I had written my history first.
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On the one hand, this is a culture that privileges only the present and the immediate - the extirpation of the long term extends backwards as well as forwards in time (for example, media stories monopolize
attention for a week or so then are instantly forgotten); on the
other hand, it is a culture that is excessively nostalgic, given over
to retrospection, incapable of generating any authentic novelty.
Our sense of the future has expanded and contracted over time. But survival means learning new lessons from the shocks society is facing right now.
There may be multiple forces fostering a short-termist mindset in our age. Some point to that often-blamed scourge, the internet. Others lament the intersection of 24-hour news media and politics, which encourages decision-makers to focus more on headlines or polling than future generations. Hartog blames the capitalist, consumerist norms that came to dominate Western culture by the late 20th century. During this period, “technological progress kept forging ahead, and the consumer society grew and grew,” he writes, “and with it the category of the present, which this society targeted and, to an extent, appropriated as its particular trademark.”
As with many ailments, there is probably no single cause: rather, the convergence of many is responsible. But we need not despair. If this account is correct, then short-termism is an emergent property of the cultural, economic, and technological moment. It need not last forever, nor is it totally out of our control. The assumption that things must always stay the way they are today is actually itself a form of presentism. But if we understand some of the psychological pressures that nudge us toward short-termism in daily life, we can find ways to combat them.
Some themes surfaced again and again, to which I’ve given the convenient acronym SHORT:
S – Salience
H – Habits
O – Overload
R – Responsibility
T – Targets
(...) Short-termist behavior can also plague organizations. For example, the Boston-based think tank FCLT Global recently reviewed the habits of corporations and warned against letting board meetings focus on compliance instead of long-term strategy, or failing to tell shareholders about long-term plans. Business leaders who establish different habits—such as Jeff Bezos, who communicates Amazon’s long-term principles to shareholders regularly—can create a culture among employees and investors that fosters the longer view.
The problem with metrics is captured by Goodhart’s Law, named after a British economist, which is often phrased as: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” To escape short-termism, we must reassess the targets by which we gauge success. Do they encourage longer-term thinking, or do they prioritize only present-day gains?
Short-term thinking tends toward the selfish: Better get mine while I can! Long-term thinking plays to higher ideals. Thomas Jefferson’s idea of “usufruct”—in his metaphor, the responsibility to preserve fertile topsoil from landowner to landowner—embodied an obligation of stewardship and intergenerational fairness. Our Founders thought in centuries. Such thinking discourages shortsighted temptations (such as passing an immense burden of national debt onto our descendants) and encourages the effective management of intractable problem.
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This week’s cover looks at the metabolism of corporate life. Senior executives routinely say that everything is getting faster all the time—and that speed is the secret of success. Their critics counter that bosses obsessed by the here and now are guilty of short-termism. We explain how both sides miss the point
