Short-term thinking - or short-termism as some call it - is prevalent nowadays.
Many four-year degree programs in Malaysia were shortened to three years because 'the labour market' needs more graduates. Not many people attend Sixth-Form anymore - it is deemed a waste of time. Many people hop jobs to get pay rise and promotions as frequent as every one or two years. Many businesses were started with expectation that they can become wildly successful in just one or two years.
If you have been reading advertisement in the newspaper in recent months, you would surely saw a lot of 'get rich quick' schemes - through options trading, internet business, etc - which supposedly give you tens of thousands of Ringgits within few days or weeks.
The net results of short-termism were apparent: many failures, and long term success forgone. It is like plugging fruits that are not ripen - the fruits are not edible and you lost the chance to taste the nice ripen fruits in the future.
How long should we take to do something well?
I would think five years would be a reasonable time frame. I took 5 years to get my first degree in engineering. And another 5 years for a doctoral degree in management. Yet I still feel that I am just touching the rudiment of the subjects. Most doctors takes 6 years before they can practice medicine. A few successful friends of mine took 5 years to have their companies stabilized and made profit.
In spiritual practice, novice Buddhist monks have to practice under a teacher at least for 5 years before he is allowed to be independent. Many successful spiritual teachers in the West has practiced at least 5 years in the East before they went back to the West to teach.
Even great thinkers like Peter Drucker took three to four years to learn a new subject:
Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject, but they are enough to understand it. (Requoted from here)
Jim Collins and his team took 5 years to fully understand what makes great companies and report their finding in the book Good to Great.
In Germany, many graduate students refuse to graduate until they fully understand what they study - and that usually take many more years than the average period of university programs. I am amazed by their serious attitude in learning and their willingness to spend time to master their knowledge. This is the type of attitude we should emulate.
There are not many 5-years in our lives. Assuming we live 50 adult years, we probably can do about 10 things really well throughout our life time. This means we have to consciously choose things which are important to us and spend a good 5-years on each of them.
