In our current fast-paced and ever-evolving business landscape, the ability to think long term is becoming increasingly vital. As technology advances, societal shifts occur, and markets transform, we have to learn how to cultivate a strategic mindset that goes beyond immediate gains.

‍

That’s why I curated a list of 10 exceptional books on that highly relevant topic, to help you navigate the complexities of this modern world.

‍

Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs:An Antidote for Short-Termism - by Ari Wallach (2022)

A paradigm-shifting manifesto for transforming our thinking from reactionary short-termism to the long-term, widening our scope beyond today, tomorrow, and to even five hundred years from now to reclaim meaning in our lives.

‍

Many of the problems we face today, from climate change to work anxiety, are the result of short-term thinking. We are constantly bombarded by notifications and “Breaking News” that are overwhelming our central nervous systems, forcing us to react in the moment and ultimately disconnecting us from what truly matters.

‍

Futurist Ari Wallach offers a radical new way forward called “longpath,” a mantra and mindset to help us focus on the long view. Drawing on history, theology, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and social technologies, Longpath teaches readers to strengthen their ability to look ahead, relieve reactions to stressful events, increase capacity for cooperation, and even boost creativity. Wallach challenges readers to ask themselves, “to what end?”—what is my ultimate goal and how does my choice align with my values? And even more provocatively, Wallach challenges readers to ask “to what end?” for civilization at large.

‍

What We Owe the Future - by William MacAskill (2022)

The fate of the world is in our hands. Humanity's written history spans only five thousand years. Our yet-unwritten future could last for millions more -- or it could end tomorrow. Astonishing numbers of people could lead lives of great happiness or unimaginable suffering, or never live at all, depending on what we choose to do today.

‍

In What We Owe The Future, philosopher William MacAskill argues for longtermism, that idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. From this perspective, it's not enough to reverse climate change or avert the next pandemic. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed; counter the end of moral progress; and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital, not human.

‍

The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World (2021) - by Dorie Clark

Your personal goals need a long-term strategy. It's no secret that we're pushed to the limit. Today's professionals feel rushed, overwhelmed, and perennially behind. So we keep our heads down, focused on the next thing, and the next, without a moment to breathe. How can we break out of this endless cycle and create the kind of interesting, meaningful lives we all seek?

‍

Just as CEOs who optimize for quarterly profits often fail to make the strategic investments necessary for long-term growth, the same is true in our own personal and professional lives. We need to reorient ourselves to see the big picture so we can tap into the power of small changes that, made today, will have an enormous and disproportionate impact on our future success. We need to start playing The Long Game.

‍

Clark shares principles and frameworks you can apply to your specific situation, as well as vivid stories from her own career and other professionals' experiences. Everyone is allotted the same twenty-four hours—but with the right strategies, you can leverage those hours in more efficient and powerful ways than you ever imagined. It's never an overnight process, but the long-term payoff is immense: to finally break out of the frenetic day-to-day routine and transform your life and your career.

‍

The Good Ancestor – by Roman Kznaric (2020)

“The most important question we must ask ourselves is: Are we being good ancestors?” So said Jonas Salk, who cured polio in 1953. Salk saved millions of lives, but he refused to patent his cure or make any money from it. His radical rethinking of what we owe future generations should be an inspiration to us all, but it has hardly taken hold: Businesses can barely see past the next quarter; politicians can’t see past the next election. Markets spike, then they crash in speculative bubbles. We rarely stop to consider whether we’re being good ancestors...but the future depends on it.

‍

Here, leading public intellectual, philosopher, and best-selling author Roman Krznaric explains six practical ways we can retrain our brains to save our future - such as adopting Deep Time Humility (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and Cathedral Thinking (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime to complete). His aim is to inspire a “time rebellion” - to shift our allegiance from our generation only to all humanity, present and future.

‍

Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now - by Vincent Ialenti (2020)

We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now.

‍

Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise—today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism.

‍

For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository “Safety Case” experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands or millions—of years. They are not pop culture “futurists” but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.

‍

The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age - by Bina Venkataraman (2019)

Instant gratification is the norm today—in our lives, our culture, our economy, and our politics. Many of us have forgotten (if we ever learned) how to make smart decisions for the long run. Whether it comes to our finances, our health, our communities, or our planet, it’s easy to avoid thinking ahead.

‍

The consequences of this immediacy are stark: Deadly outbreaks spread because leaders failed to act on early warning signs. Companies that fail to invest stagnate and fall behind. Hurricanes and wildfires turn deadly for communities that could have taken more precaution. Today more than ever, all of us need to know how we can make better long-term decisions in our lives, businesses, and society.

‍

A journalist and former adviser in the Obama White House, Bina Venkataraman helped communities and businesses prepare for climate change, and she learned firsthand why people don’t think ahead—and what can be done to change that. In The Optimist’s Telescope, she draws from stories she has reported around the world and new research in biology, psychology, and economics to explain how we can make decisions that benefit us over time. With examples from ancient Pompeii to modern-day Fukushima, she dispels the myth that human nature is impossibly reckless and highlights the surprising practices each of us can adopt in our own lives—and the ones we must fight for as a society.

‍

Established: Lessons from the World's Oldest Companies Hardcover - by Dark Angels (2018)

From the oldest pub in the world to the Liberty Bell and the origins of a nation, Established: Lessons from the World’s Oldest Companies tells the stories of twelve businesses with a combined age of almost 5,000 years. They’ve survived war, plague, rebellion, boom, bust, depression and strange twists of fate. But how and what can we learn from them?

‍

Spanning the local and the global, family businesses and household names such as Guinness and Wrigley, Established seeks to uncover the secrets behind the longevity of these twelve remarkable institutions. This is a book with points to make through stories told; all reinforced by photographs, many of them historic. At a time when the average lifespan of a business seems shorter than ever, the companies included here stand as living testaments to the value of rich, compelling stories in a world of quick-fix branding.

‍

The Day After Tomorrow -  by Peter Hinssen (2017)

Most of us focus on Today: on the meetings we will be having, the e-mails we will respond to, the price offers we need to send out while deadlines are breathing down or neck. And we should. Today is what pays our bills. We also think a lot about Tomorrow, about our future value and how our company will survive disruption. Tomorrow is what keeps us awake at night. But let’s face it, most of us don’t think (much) beyond that.

‍

The truly great ones, the giants, those that dictate the market are the ones who dare to envision The Day After Tomorrow. Because that is where enormous amounts of long term value lie. The radical ideas, concepts, notions or inspiration that focus on The Day After Tomorrow are the ones that change entire companies, industries and even the world.

‍

In ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, Peter writes about an exponentially changing world and its consequences for organizations of Today. He introduces those pioneers who managed to move (way) beyond Tomorrow-thinking in innovation and were able to change the course of entire industries. Above all, he writes about the business models, the organizational structures, the talent, the mind-set, the technologies and the cultures needed to maximize our chances for survival in 'The Day After Tomorrow'.

‍

Finite and Infinite Games - by James Carse (2013)

“There are at least two kinds of games,” states James P. Carse as he begins this book. “One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

‍

Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life; they are played in order to be won, which is when they end. But infinite games are more mysterious. Their object is not winning, but ensuring the continuation of play. The rules may change, the boundaries may change, even the participants may change—as long as the game is never allowed to come to an end.

‍

What are infinite games? How do they affect the ways we play our finite games? What are we doing when we play—finitely or infinitely? And how can infinite games affect the ways in which we live our lives?

‍

Carse explores these questions with stunning elegance, teasing out of his distinctions a universe of observation and insight, noting where and why and how we play, finitely and infinitely. He surveys our world—from the finite games of the playing field and playing board to the infinite games found in culture and religion—leaving all we think we know illuminated and transformed. Along the way, Carse finds new ways of understanding everything, from how an actress portrays a role to how we engage in sex, from the nature of evil to the nature of science. Finite games, he shows, may offer wealth and status, power and glory, but infinite games offer something far more subtle and far grander.

‍

The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World - by Peter Schwartz (1991)

What increasingly affects all of us, whether professional planners or individuals preparing for a better future, is not the tangibles of life—bottom-line numbers, for instance—but the intangibles: our hopes and fears, our beliefs and dreams. Only stories—scenarios—and our ability to visualize different kinds of futures adequately capture these intangibles. In this book, Peter Schwartz outlines the "scenaric" approach, giving you the tools for developing a strategic vision within your business. Schwartz describes the new techniques that are based on many of his firsthand scenario exercises with the world's leading institutions and companies, including the White House, EPA, BellSouth, PG&E, and the International Stock Exchange.

‍

‍

What are your favorite books about long term thinking? Let us know in the comments of our social media post.