Giving Compass' Take:

• Craig Keilburger argues that long-term thinking should be the norm not just for corporations, but for governments, charities, and individuals in order to properly address our world's pressing problems.

• How can your giving benefit from more long-term thinking? How can we start asking the right questions about sustainability, climate, and ethical business?

• Read about a framework for sustainability in business.

Deep in the Sierra Diablo Mountains in West Texas, a clock is being built that will tick for 10,000 years. The century hand will move every hundred years, with a cuckoo bird poking its head out at the millennium mark. Set to stand 200 feet tall, the clock will be a reminder of the immense scale of time. It demands visitors reflect on their own place in the long chain of humanity.

It’s also a rebuke to the epidemic of short-term thinking we’re currently living in. Politicians plan in four-year election cycles. Fashions change with the micro-seasons (there used to be just four). Corporations measure by quarters. News cycles turn over in days, and Twitter churns constantly. Short-term thinking has become our default; meanwhile, we can’t marshal the focus or resources to tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems -- the kind that loom long term, from public debt to technological risk and climate change.

I thought of our obsession with the now during a recent lunch meeting when I heard something that floored me. The CEO of a major Canadian manufacturer told me that her company has a 100-year plan. While other companies obsess over quarterly reports and monthly budgets, her company frames all of its decisions through the lens of a whole century.

Read the full article about long-term thinking by Craig Kielburger at Forbes.