I can think of two, but I also think the number of people who don’t use long-term thinking and should far outweighs the number of people who do and shouldn’t, so I still think that teaching that skill is a great idea.
If someone doesn’t know the amount of time or effort to complete a goal, they could end up very unhappily pouring effort into a sunk-cost situation because they are imagining a long-term (but not guaranteed) future where that goal is achieved. In this situation, present-oriented thinking would be more useful.
Future (or past) oriented thinking can be a form of rumination, often seen in depression. In this situation, someone imagines every possible future, over and over, and extremely pessimistically, which leads to a sense of powerlessness. Present oriented thinking is EXTREMELY useful to combat rumination, which is why mindfulness based depression interventions have the same success rate as actual drugs.
Nevertheless, this is promoting a more goal-oriented long-term thinking exercise that doesn’t really run on the same circuits as rumination. Case 1 could still be a pitfall, but promoting long-term thinking will probably help far more people than it hurts.
I can see your point about Case 1, it depends on how the concept of long-term thinking is defined. A long-term approach to winning would evaluate the probabilistic estimate of a situation being a sunk-cost scenario, and factor that into long-term oriented goals. However, there can be some mistakes made with long-term oriented thinking in that context, so it’s a complex one to get exactly right. Still, I think the overall point we agree on, namely that promoting long-term thinking will probably help far more people than it hurts.
I can think of two, but I also think the number of people who don’t use long-term thinking and should far outweighs the number of people who do and shouldn’t, so I still think that teaching that skill is a great idea.
If someone doesn’t know the amount of time or effort to complete a goal, they could end up very unhappily pouring effort into a sunk-cost situation because they are imagining a long-term (but not guaranteed) future where that goal is achieved. In this situation, present-oriented thinking would be more useful.
Future (or past) oriented thinking can be a form of rumination, often seen in depression. In this situation, someone imagines every possible future, over and over, and extremely pessimistically, which leads to a sense of powerlessness. Present oriented thinking is EXTREMELY useful to combat rumination, which is why mindfulness based depression interventions have the same success rate as actual drugs.
Nevertheless, this is promoting a more goal-oriented long-term thinking exercise that doesn’t really run on the same circuits as rumination. Case 1 could still be a pitfall, but promoting long-term thinking will probably help far more people than it hurts.
I can see your point about Case 1, it depends on how the concept of long-term thinking is defined. A long-term approach to winning would evaluate the probabilistic estimate of a situation being a sunk-cost scenario, and factor that into long-term oriented goals. However, there can be some mistakes made with long-term oriented thinking in that context, so it’s a complex one to get exactly right. Still, I think the overall point we agree on, namely that promoting long-term thinking will probably help far more people than it hurts.