Six Ways Long Term

---
name: six-ways-long-term
description: Apply Roman Krznaric's cognitive toolkit for becoming a good ancestor through deep-time humility, legacy mindset, intergenerational justice, cathedral thinking, holistic forecasting, and transcendent goals
---

# Six Ways to Think Long-term

## Overview

Roman Krznaric's "Six Ways to Think Long-term" presents a cognitive toolkit for escaping short-term thinking and becoming a "good ancestor." Published in "The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World" (2020), the framework addresses a fundamental challenge: how can we make decisions today that serve people who won't be born for generations?

The toolkit establishes 100 years as the minimum threshold for "long-term" - roughly one long human lifespan, pushing us beyond our ego boundary of personal mortality. An estimated 6.75 trillion people will be born in the next 50,000 years. This framework asks: what do we owe these "futureholders"?

Each of the six ways represents a distinct cognitive shift from our default short-term bias. Combined, they create a comprehensive approach to long-horizon decision-making applicable to climate action, institutional design, infrastructure investment, and personal legacy planning.

## When to Use

- Making decisions with multi-generational consequences
- Evaluating policies affecting future populations
- Designing institutions meant to outlast their founders
- Climate action and sustainability planning
- Personal legacy and estate planning
- Infrastructure investments (energy, transportation, cities)
- Institutional governance and succession planning
- Assessing ethical obligations to future generations
- Breaking free from quarterly-thinking or election-cycle myopia

## The Process

### Step 1: Cultivate Deep-Time Humility

Recognize humanity's minuscule place in cosmic history. Our 200,000-year existence is an eyeblink in Earth's 4.5 billion years.

**Exercise:** Draw your life as a dot on a 100-meter timeline representing Earth's history. Humans appear in the final 4 millimeters; your life is invisible.

**Insight:** This perspective reveals both our destructive potential (we can alter planetary systems in a geological instant) and our responsibility (we're the first generation to understand our impact).

### Step 2: Develop a Transcendent Legacy Mindset

Move beyond personal or familial legacy ("be remembered by my kids") to transcendent legacy ("be remembered well by generations I'll never meet").

**Question:** If someone 500 years from now researched your era, would they find evidence you worked for their benefit?

**Models:**
- Wangari Maathai: Planted 40 million trees in Kenya
- Jonas Salk: Refused to patent polio vaccine ("Could you patent the sun?")
- Katie Paterson's Future Library: 100 novels sealed until 2114

### Step 3: Apply Intergenerational Justice

Recognize moral obligations to "futureholders" - future people who vastly outnumber those alive today.

**Decision framework:** Before major decisions, ask: "How would someone seven generations from now judge this choice?"

**Application:** Indigenous Iroquois Confederacy required consideration of impacts seven generations ahead (~175 years) for major decisions.

**Concrete test:** Does this decision create options for the future (good) or foreclose them (bad)?

### Step 4: Practice Cathedral Thinking

Envision and commit to projects spanning decades or centuries, accepting you won't see completion.

**Criteria for cathedral projects:**
- Multi-generational timeline (50+ years to full realization)
- Benefits accrue primarily to future generations
- Requires sustained effort across leadership transitions
- Creates lasting infrastructure (physical, institutional, or knowledge)

**Examples:** Climate action, seed banks (Svalbard Vault), Long Now Foundation's 10,000 Year Clock, social movements (women's suffrage took 72 years in US).

### Step 5: Engage in Holistic Forecasting

Map possible civilization pathways rather than single predictions:

**Three trajectories:**
1. **Breakdown:** Collapse from ecological overshoot, conflict, or systemic failure
2. **Reform:** Piecemeal solutions within existing paradigms (incremental improvement)
3. **Transformation:** Radical systemic change creating new paradigms

**Application:** Identify leverage points where intervention could shift trajectory from Breakdown/Reform toward Transformation. Focus effort there.

**Question:** What disruptions (technological, social, ecological) could redirect society's path?

### Step 6: Pursue a Transcendent Goal

Adopt "one-planet thriving" as the organizing objective: humanity living within Earth's biocapacity while flourishing.

**Principles:**
- Harvest renewable resources only at regeneration rates
- Limit waste to what systems can absorb
- Preserve biodiversity and ecosystem function
- Ensure equitable distribution within planetary boundaries

**Personal application:** Calculate your ecological footprint. What would it take to live within your fair share of Earth's capacity?

## Example Application

**Situation:** City council evaluating 50-year infrastructure bond for public transit.

**Application:**
- **Deep-time humility:** Current car-centric infrastructure is 100 years old; this decision shapes the next 100. We're not the endpoint.
- **Legacy mindset:** Will 2075 residents thank us or curse us? What would we want our predecessors to have built?
- **Intergenerational justice:** 7th generation test - does transit create options (mobility, density, climate) or foreclose them (sprawl lock-in)?
- **Cathedral thinking:** Accept that the full transit network takes 30+ years. Current council starts what successors finish.
- **Holistic forecasting:** Map pathways - breakdown (climate, congestion), reform (incremental road expansion), transformation (transit-oriented development)
- **Transcendent goal:** Does this investment align with one-planet thriving or perpetuate overshoot?

**Outcome:** Framework shifts debate from "cost/benefit in my term" to "what kind of ancestors do we want to be?"

## Scoring Rubric

- **Practitioner Weight:** 7/10 - Krznaric is public philosopher; Long Now Foundation endorsement adds credibility
- **Clarity/Executability:** 8/10 - Six clear concepts with specific exercises
- **ROI:** 7/10 - Benefits are diffuse and long-term by design
- **Novelty:** 8/10 - Synthesis of long-term thinking approaches into coherent toolkit
- **Cross-domain:** 9/10 - Universally applicable to any long-horizon decision

**Total: 39/50**

## Anti-Patterns

- Applying to decisions with genuinely short time horizons (not everything needs 100-year thinking)
- Using long-term framing to avoid accountability for near-term impacts
- Cathedral thinking without viable knowledge transfer mechanisms
- Paralysis from deep-time perspective ("nothing I do matters")
- Ignoring present needs for speculative future benefits
- Treating "future generations" as monolithic rather than diverse stakeholders
- Assuming we know what future people will value

## Related

- cathedral-thinking (multi-generational project execution)
- 10000-year-clock (civilization-scale timeframes)
- seventh-generation-principle (Indigenous decision framework)
- backcasting (working backwards from desired futures)
- systems-thinking (understanding long-term dynamics)
- intergenerational-ethics (philosophical foundations)