Term-inal thinking

A general observation --

Even with so much history to guide us, and supposedly so many free knowledge tools at our disposal, so many decisions are made based on the short term benefit rather the long term potential.

For example, a football team hires a coach while evidently thinking of the long term. But give 4-5 bad results in a row, and the coach is no more. So, a coach's long term future is penalized because of short term failures.

Even when we buy lots of stuff on credit, we are looking at short term benefit (enjoying using whatever we buy) rather than long term potential (too much debt).

Stock market - if a company announces that it missed its earnings forecast by 0.05%, everybody sells the stock, and that too at a loss! Forget the long term potential of the company.

A company is making losses, so it will fire off enough employees so that the balance sheet again shows a profit. Of course, making a generalization here, but the point is still valid.

Are we getting too used to the I-want-it-now fast food philosophy that we apply to everything? What about some good old grinding out the good results, or sticking around in tough times and riding them out?

After all, it is the long term decisions that decide how we fare in the, well, long term.