All Things Must Pass - That's Why Your Time Horizon Is So Important

All Things Must Pass is the title of an album by George Harrison.   And he's right.  Nothing lasts forever.  Even the earth we stand on will at some point be destroyed by the anticipated expansion of the Sun as it swells up to become a red giant star in some 5 billion years - absorbing the innermost planets of the Solar System in the process.  I dare say most people have come across that fact at some point in their lives.  I don't think many of us are too bothered by it though.  A hundred years into the future is difficult enough to imagine.  Five billion is way more than our brains can cope with.


It's not likely that the human race will be around long enough to be fried in the solar cauldron anyway.  An asteroid or comet could wipe us out any time, much as happened to the dinosaurs.  And we don't even need to wait for external events.  Our own mismanagement of our weapons, our resources or our technology could easily do for us.  Again this is something that few of us worry too much about even on the abstract level.  It is very rare indeed that we take any actual action to avoid them.  We have narrow horizons.  We are more interested in our family and friends than the prospects for our whole species.  And above all, we all have a time horizon.  There are very few people who think much about anything beyond the lifetimes of their grandchildren.

I've come to the conclusion that your time horizon is the most important factor in whether or not you make good decisions.  What I mean by that is how far in the future am I considering the consequences of what I am doing rightn now. For example as I write this I have forgone the opportunity to spend some time on social media.  Both writing this blog post and spending time on Twitter or Facebook are basically the same.  I am lying on the couch and drinking tea, while typing and looking at a screen.  I have chosen to this rather than that because I know I'll feel slightly more satisfied when I finish it, than I would spending the same amount of time interacting with people online.  In fact in the short run it is a bit of a toss up between which is a better use of my time.  The point about social media is that you do get to interact with other people, and that's both enjoyable and educational.   You often learn valuable stuff from it.   But looking a bit further into the future, I won't remember much about this afternoon's news, jokes, arguments and cat pictures.  This blog post on the other hand will be here to refer to for the rest of my life.   So writing the blog post is the better choice taking a longer time horizon - namely the next couple of years.

It isn't hard to see that if you spend more time on longer time horizons you are going to make better decisions and as a result have a better life. 

I've been trying to think of ways that I can stretch my time horizon and give more thought to the future.  As soon as I had the thought, and even before I had really processed it, I instantly find that my desire to go on Twitter and Facebook has dramatically decreased.  I had been thinking along the lines of restricting my use of those platforms to weekends or evenings.   But once I started thinking about my time horizon I almost instantly found their appeal to me had dramatically fallen away.

It's quite interesting just how it happened.  I was literally on Twitter when the thought occured to me that I should create a set of lists of things I normally do categorised according to how quickly they pay off.   It sounded like a good place to start.  But even before I got out my pencil I started populating the list in my head.  Two items came to mind straight away.  Puns, and political arguments.  Twitter is great for puns.  I have a Twitter list called Pundits where I follow all the people who are skilled at spotting them.  They are part of a bigger entity that exists in my mind called Puniverse.  I love puns.  I also love a good political argument.  That's another activity that Twitter is superb for. 

I think it took me about 20 seconds to conclude that if I am going to forego puns and political arguments, there is little point in going on Twitter.   It is still a good place to follow breaking news stories.  I still want to do that.  So I won't be cancelling my account or making any melodramatic 'I am leaving' tweets.   I have just decided, more or less instantaneously that it is no longer my go to place to fill an idle half hour.  I've signed up to an online educational course to fill the gap, and I've already got an idea from it for my business - so that didn't take long for something tangible to come of it.

I still haven't started the list yet, but I have started looking for other things I do that don't pay off in the short run, and starting to do other things that do.  I am finding it surprisingly satisfying.  I have restarted my daily bike ride habit.  The benefits of regular exercise aren't quite as quick to have a noticeable effect, but I think I will start to appreciate it soon.  Quite apart from anything else, it gives me time to think about stuff. 

I have also started planning further ahead on paper - not something I've ever been very good at in the past but I think I might start to regard it as a skill to be learnt and improved rather than a chore to be done.  It hasn't paid back the investment in time yet but lets see how it goes.