The Optimist's Telescope Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus The Optimist's Telescope

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Zusammenfassung von The Optimist's Telescope

Name: The Optimist's Telescope
Rating: 4.2 (29 reviews)
Author: Bina Venkataraman

Bina Venkataraman

Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age

4.2 (29 Bewertungen)

22 Min.

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The Optimist's Telescope
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What’s in it for me? Cultivate long-term thinking to prepare for the future.

Long-term thinking is one of humanity’s most precious abilities – in fact, it’s what makes civilization possible, from planning architecture to cultures and systems. And yet, we witness shortsighted decisions every day in our personal lives, in our communities, and in society.

Whether it’s saving for retirement or preparing communities for global climate change, long-term planning presents a fundamental dilemma: to do what’s better for tomorrow, instead of what’s easy today.

In these blinks, you’ll learn about the barriers that stand in the way of wise judgment and how to cultivate a mindset to overcome them. You’ll also learn how decision-makers in society can improve their ability to weigh future losses and opportunities to benefit generations to come.

Equipped with these practical strategies, you’ll discover that reckless decision-making is not humanity’s fate, but a choice that anyone can refuse to take.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

the surprising trick to convince young people to save for retirement;
why a successful hedge fund investor hides her portfolio from herself; and
what lobstermen in Mexico can teach global markets about adapting to climate change.

People and societies are not doomed to make short-sighted decisions.

Imagine you’re at the supermarket, shopping for groceries with the best of intentions. You fill your cart with fruits and vegetables, and glide to the cashier, hopped up on your own wholesome goodness. But when you arrive at the register, you find yourself surrounded by a sea of chocolate bars. Your doctor has strictly warned you to avoid sugar but, with the colorful packages winking at you while you wait in line, you can already taste the sinful sweetness on your tongue. At the last minute, you cave and grab a couple off the shelf. You know that “the future you” might regret this impulse – but right now, you want the treats.

The key message here is: People and societies are not doomed to make short-sighted decisions.

Reckless decisions are made when we consciously ignore the future threats and opportunities that we can foresee. And we witness people making short-sighted decisions every day.

More concerning than our personal missteps are the reckless decisions we make in society. For example, the global 2014 Ebola epidemic and the 2007 economic crisis were both more devastating than they needed to be because reliable predictions about them went ignored. Or consider that every day, doctors prescribe painkillers to soothe patients, which all too often leads them to opioid addiction.

We as a species have a collective tendency to kick the can down the road when it comes to our most pressing problems – just think about how our political systems fail to act on our global climate crisis, even though it threatens humanity’s existence. With so many failures of judgment, it would be easy to conclude that humans are fundamentally reckless. But recklessness, the author argues, is not a fixed human trait. In fact, this fatalist myth is just what makes people feel powerless in the face of future change.

Rather, the author calls our modern era “a reckless age” because the stakes have never been higher for humanity to think ahead about its survival in the face of rising seas and planet overheating. At the same time, we have unprecedented tools to detect the warning signs of disaster. We can see how the legacy of our current choices will pan out tomorrow, whether it’s how saving money improves retirement conditions, or how burning fossil fuels today devastates tomorrow’s natural habitats.

Luckily, wise decision-making is a skill that can be developed. We can all learn to make good judgments about the future, both on a collective and on an individual scale. In the following blinks, we’ll look at the conditions that prevent people from thinking ahead – and the tools we can hone to correct them.

Culture and values drastically influence people’s relationship to their immediate impulses.

Every payday, it's easy to get excited about the influx of money in your bank account. You know you should save it for retirement, but wouldn't that new jacket in the shop window make a spectacular addition to your wardrobe?

It’s the sort of dilemma we face each day: we know the long-term benefits of delaying gratification, but too often we fall into the clutches of immediate temptation.

The threats people take seriously are the ones they can vividly imagine.

Imagine yourself in the future at an event you’re looking forward to, like walking down the aisle on your graduation day. If you try, you can probably summon the sights and colors. Maybe you can even hear the din of the crowd and feel the certificate in your palm. Although the event hasn’t happened yet, you are able to conjure all the sensory details of the moment.

If you’ve ever found yourself daydreaming about a future version of yourself, you were engaging in what cognitive scientists call mental time travel. Your mind repurposes images from your memory to bring a future event to life. And without this ability to imagine the future, human civilization would not exist: there would be no planning, no architecture, no culture.

Planning your reaction to future temptations can help you hone willpower.

Every day, our senses are bombarded with temptations to do what’s better for now, versus tomorrow. When you smell a cookie at the bakery or see a shiny lottery ticket at the supermarket, an overwhelming urge makes it hard to conceive future consequences – even if in the absence of those immediate temptations, you wouldn’t settle for a quick fix. The question is, how can we hone willpower for long-term gains in the face of so much immediate temptation?

Here’s the key message: Planning your reaction to future temptations can help you hone willpower.

Focusing on short-term metrics obscures the big picture about the future.

Let’s say you want to become fitter, so you set the goal to run half-a-mile a day for a month. Weeks later, your running app dings – hooray, you’ve reached your goal! But when you step on the scale that day, you notice you’ve gained more than a few pounds. You cringe as you remember that you stopped off for ice cream after every other jog – which your running app didn’t measure.

The key message here is: Focusing on short-term metrics obscures the big picture about the future.

People need immediate rewards for making long-term sacrifices.

When a friend of the author’s decided to run a marathon, she went along to cheer him on. She knew her friend had a festive spirit, so she decided to surprise him at key mile markers by scattering glitter all over him. After completing the race, her friend came to thank her – the glitter had provided him with the boost he needed to endure until the end.

This is what the author terms the glitter tactic – offering rewards for going the extra mile – and it can go a long way when it comes to thinking ahead.

The key to foresight is to see yourself – and your actions – as part of a greater history.

Maybe you have a treasured family heirloom – a great-grandmother’s wedding ring, or a grandfather’s lucky charm. These items are meaningful because they represent a continuum of history. Passed down from generation to generation, heirlooms turn you into an ancestor with the responsibility of passing it down to your descendants. This is what spurs you to protect your heirloom, so it may outlive you.

The key message here is: The key to foresight is to see yourself – and your actions – as part of a greater history.

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Worum geht es in The Optimist's Telescope?

The Optimist’s Telescope (2019) explores our everyday decisions that have a long-term impact on our personal lives, our communities, and our planet. Using a variety of strategies and case studies from biology, psychology, and behavioral economics, the book shows that humanity is not doomed to make reckless decisions – and that we all have an untapped potential to make wiser choices for the good of our future selves and generations to come.

Wer The Optimist's Telescope lesen sollte

People who want to learn how to better plan ahead for the future
Anyone concerned about society’s big challenges, like climate change
Leaders interested in building sustainable strategies for success

Über den Autor

Bina Venkataraman is a science policy expert and journalist. A former Obama administration senior climate policy adviser, she is now a professor of the science, technology, and society program at MIT and the Editorial Page Editor of the Boston Globe. The Optimist’s Telescope is her first book.

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Psychology Society & Culture

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