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Today I want to talk about short-term thinking.
I wrote a little about this topic a few months ago, but that was pre-podcast so it’s worth revisiting (and expanding).
Short-term thinking is all around us, of course. We’re currently in a cycle of history that seems to be predisposed to it, and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the primary forcing functions that brings about the death of the current age… but we’ll come back to that in a future episode.
For now, let’s stay focused on short-term thinking, because there are a few glaring examples in this week’s headlines.
Let’s start with food assistance… or, rather, the lack of it.
Welcome To The Hunger Games
Right now in the U.S. we’re threatening to cut off food assistance for 42 million Americans.
Not because we don’t have the money.
Because our federal government is still shut down. Seriously. As of tomorrow, we’ll have a new record for the longest shutdown. Woo.
Here we have a program called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — used to be called “food stamps” — which provides money to low income folks for food. I’m recording this on Monday, November 3rd, and the breaking news today is SNAP will have “reduced funds” (probably about half) and will be delayed, despite the administration saying previously that partial payments would be a nightmare to process.
Translation: people might not eat this week because our politicians can’t get their sh*t together.
I don’t think I’ve shared this publicly before, but I was a SNAP recipient here in Colorado for a little over a year.
When I closed #lovework, my tech company, I didn’t have any income for quite awhile. I drained my retirement, received a forbearance program on my mortgage, and qualified for unemployment and SNAP.
SNAP was absolutely incredible.
Our whole lives we’ve been taught, implicitly and explicitly, that we need to work to survive. Many of us have some version of a colonial story like “if you don’t work you don’t deserve to eat” rolling around in our default programming.
It’s hard to describe what it felt like for me to get unplugged from that idea.
I no longer worried so much. I could just go get what I needed. I could buy healthy food for my kids without blinking. My feeling of peace didn’t stay contained to food, either; I found that as my food worries subsided, the rest of my precarious situation felt less worrisome overall.
I just didn’t have to fret about getting food, and it was glorious.
I wish I still had it. I wish you had it. I wish everyone could experience what it’s like to not have to worry about life in this way.
Let me tell you something else about SNAP/”food stamps” you might not realize: this program is actually an economic generator.
Every $1.00 dollar spent on SNAP generates up to $1.80 in economic activity.
Which means that stopping food aid doesn’t just cause people to not eat while also adding massive stress to their lives, it also doesn’t even frickin’ save money — it loses money.
This isn’t “tightening our belts,” this is choking ourselves.
And this is short-term thinking Example #1.
When short-term thinking is applied in situations like this, it might sell itself as “fiscal responsibility,” but it’s not actually “responsible” in any way. In the case of SNAP, it’s not responsible morally and it’s also not responsible monetarily.
Short-term thinking is how we burn through both trust and energy in a system.
We drain people’s hope, and their bellies, then wonder why our society feels tired and angry all the time.
It’s not rocket science. It’s actually just… science.
Which, of course, we’re also working to defund.
Let’s go to Example #2.
The Seed Corn Problem
This one isn’t a single headline, per se, but a reference to a quote inside a podcast episode I would highly recommend.
In Episode 3, I mentioned a gentleman named Geoffrey Hinton. He’s considered one of the godfathers of modern A.I., and rightfully so. He’s obviously brilliant, and though he and I seem to differ on the optimistic future of A.I., I deeply appreciate his perspective and wisdom.
Jon Stewart interviewed him on his podcast a few weeks ago, and near the middle of the conversation Geoffrey said something profound:
Suppose you wanted to do one thing that would really kneecap a country, that would really mean that in 20 years time that country is going to be behind instead of ahead. The one thing you should do is mess with the funding of basic science, attack the research universities, remove grants for basic science. In the long run that’s a complete disaster. It’s going to make America weak. If you look at, for example, this deep learning, the A.I. revolution we’ve got now, that came from many years of sustained funding for basic research. Not huge amounts of money. All of the funding for the basic research that led to deep learning probably cost less than one B-1 bomber. But it was sustained funding of basic research. If you mess with that, you’re eating the seed corn.
Now there’s a phrase for you: eating the seed corn.
I didn’t grow up ON a farm, but I grew up in the center of them.
Literally.
My little hometown in South Dakota was surrounded by farmland on all sides, something like corn fields to the north and wheat fields in every other direction, all the way to what felt like forever.
If you didn’t happen to grow up in this kind of place, “seed corn” is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: kernels of corn grown specifically to plant next year.
It’s how we make sure we have corn in the future.
Because, you know, we tend to appreciate a future that has food to eat.
So, it’s basic common sense that you don’t eat the seed corn — not if you want a harvest next year.
And yet, that’s exactly what we’re doing now, in so many ways.
I mentioned this back in the podcast episode where I first mentioned Geoffrey; we’re defunding the exact things that create a future where we have fewer diseases, clean air, and drinkable water.
We’re so desperate for a snack today that we’re devouring the very thing that will feed us later.
Hinton’s warning is clear: when we defund curiosity and research and patience and learning, we defund the future.
When short-term thinking is applied like this, it strip-mines the present and leaves the future resource-empty. As we go down the road, we will find we simply do not have what we need to live the kind of life we want to live.
This is completely nonsensical… but it’s what short-term thinking does.
One more example…
Why Trust Is Infrastructure
Meanwhile, on the global stage, people who ought to be U.S. allies are looking at American tech companies and going, “Yeah… no, we’re good without that.”
Did you hear about this?
You can’t make this stuff up.
Here’s what happened.
The ICC — based in The Hague, Netherlands, the group that handles crimes against humanity — decided it can’t trust U.S. tech anymore. They’re moving to an open-source European system because they are worried the current United States government could at some point pressure Microsoft to shut them off.
Think about that: a court built to try war criminals is scared we might unplug them.
Once upon a time, the U.S. was the grown-up in the room.
Now we’re like some kind of sleep-deprived petulant toddler breaking sh*t and causing chaos.
To be clear, the U.S. has often had a tenuous relationship with the ICC, so this isn’t all that surprising. But it’s yet another example of how our tidy boxes — business over here, politics over there — aren’t really separate anymore. Everything is collisions now, like we talked about in Episode 6, The Intersection Era.
The boundaries are much fuzzier than they used to be.
But let’s also be clear: this thing with the ICC isn’t really a tech problem.
It’s a trust problem.
And we don’t often think about it this way, but trust is infrastructure.
When we lose trust, everything wobbles — alliances, markets, even sales to the biggest companies on the planet.
Trust is like a gorgeous piece of art or a beautiful cathedral — it takes a long time to build, but not very long at all to torch.
It’s earned through long-term, boring consistency… the thing we currently seem to be allergic to.
Short-term thinking is everywhere.
And if we can’t stop it, it’s going to destroy us.
Short-Term Thinking Is Blindness
There’s a reason the word “shortsighted” is a pejorative term.
It’s not a good thing to be shortsighted.
You can do it, but should you? I think you know better.
I think it’s time to call out short-term decision making for what it is — it’s shortsighted, which means it’s fundamentally poor decision-making.
“Leaders” who do this are externalizing costs — they’re pushing the harmful effects of what they’re about to do now into the future.
They usually know the right thing to do, but they override their knowing, and instead choose to do the thing that allows them to keep their job / make the boss happy / please the shareholders / boost the stock market / put a few more dollars in their pockets today.
F*ck tomorrow, you know?
But we KNOW that leadership isn’t actually leadership if it’s only focused on the thing right in front of us.
We have all sorts of metaphors and sayings about this:
- “Not seeing the forest for the trees”
- “Can’t see past their nose”
- “Majoring in the minors”
- “Penny wise, pound foolish”
We get “stuck in the weeds,” “down the rabbit hole,” with a “one-track mind,” and become a “hammer looking for a nail.”
Even the frickin’ war metaphors know this forgoodnesssake: we “Win the battle but lose the war.”
There’s a better way to do these things, and everybody knows it.
You know it, and I know it.
Nobody wants to follow someone who hasn’t a bloody CLUE about what might happen next. Leadership is always about the future and where we are GOING.
To focus only on what’s in front of you isn’t leadership, it’s g*ddamn blindness.
The Pattern Of Shortsightedness
So, let’s zoom out.
The ICC example shows what happens when institutions stop being trustworthy.
The SNAP example shows what happens when governments stop being reliable.
And Hinton shows what happens when civilizations stop investing.
Same pattern.
Different points of impact.
But all versions of the same disease: shortsightedness.
We chase the sugar high of the immediate win — the election cycle, the quarterly earnings, the dopamine hit of a viral headline — and we ignore the quiet collapse happening underneath.
It’s like living in a house that’s on fire but complimenting yourself on just how warm and cozy it feels.
The truth is, we don’t have anything resembling a “funding crisis.”
We have a time-horizon crisis.
We’re running our society on 90-day cycles, but the problems we’re facing — climate, inequality, democracy — operate on 90-year cycles.
That mismatch feels like it’s eating us alive.
The Optimistic Rebellion
Here’s the good news: this is fixable, because it is about perspective as much as it is about policy. And perspective is contagious. Every one of us can stretch our time horizon just a little. That’s how systems change — gradually, then suddenly.
So, if you’d like to employ a little optimistic rebellion strategy, here are three small things you can do this week.
1) Protect the seed corn.
If you’re a leader — in business, education, or government — defend something that looks “unnecessary” but builds long-term resilience. Maybe that’s a research grant, an employee-wellness program, or a community garden. Keep it alive.
2) Practice long-term thinking.
Before any big decision, ask: Will this still make sense in ten years? If the answer’s no, it’s probably a short-term fix that creates a long-term mess.
3) Refuse the outrage treadmill.
Short-term thinking feeds on emotional reactivity. When you pause, breathe, and choose response over reaction, you’re quietly rebuilding trust in the system — because you’re proving it can be done.
The Future Is Hungry
We’re not doomed.
We’re just… distracted.
The world isn’t ending; it’s just asking us to grow up a little.
To trade instant gratification for endurance.
To remember that feeding people, funding science, and keeping our word aren’t luxuries — they’re the things that create a society we actually want to live in.
So, yeah.
Let’s stop eating the seed corn.
Let’s plant something instead.
Because the future’s hungry, too — and if we feed it right, it’ll feed us back.
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