Short Term, Long Term Or Right Term?

Looking at the pink papers for the past 9 months have left me depressed. The saving grace however is the economists and financial gurus  are now seeing bamboo shoots of recovery. The focus of this article is not about why or how it happened; there are many experts who can do a better job explaining the situation than me.

Beyond the trillion dollar bail outs and band aids that have gone to contain  the fallout and reboot the economy, some questions keep popping up again and again:
- Are we all too short term in our focus?
- Did we forget that we must  endure short term pain for a long term gain?
- Do we adopt difference yard sticks in our personal and professional lives?

In life, we postpone many immediate enjoyments for a bigger goal– like putting aside money for our retirement, education of child, etc. However in our professional lives we tend to look at a majority of things from a short-term perspective.  Is this because, we live in an age where companies go belly up on one quarter’s bad performance?

It is a classic “catch-22” situation.

While I believe that is preferable to replace short term with long term thinking, in today’s situation this appears utopian. Today, short term thinking is a prerequisite of survival –  not necessarily a sign of greed or impatience!

At times I wonder if this economic tide will turn but it is worth waiting to see the consequences in the months and years ahead. Or, perhaps we need to look at a new way where both these perspectives are simultaneously taken care of without a long span of uncertainty and anxiety.  It is probably time that we adopt a “right term” focus of long term sustainability, while still achieving short term results we need to survive.