Planning Horizon

You go to the doctor for a routine check-up and get some sobering news: You picked up a parasite from a toilet seat at the mall, and there's a worm-like creature in your belly, growing at an exponential rate. Right now, it's about the size of a hot dog. By tomorrow, it’ll be the length of an average garden hose...you'll probably be bulging at the seams and in excruciating pain.

Within a couple days, the worm will likely have burst through your body, leaving you as a pile of goo as it slithers off to the mall to lay more eggs in the bathroom. But for now, you're in the hot dog stage. You can still move around. You can still do whatever you want.

How are you going to spend that last day? Brush your teeth? Finish your taxes? Politely return all the work emails sitting in your inbox?

Probably not. More likely, you'll empty out your bank accounts and catch the fastest flight to Vegas after passing several Dunkin' Donuts shops. Okay, same doctor's visit, different result. Everything checks out. You've going to live a long life. That's the good news.

The bad news? Teeth brushing, tax doing, email returning. All that stuff is back on the itinerary. Your time horizon matters. You make different decisions when you look only at the short-term than you do when you have a longer time line to worry about. Which brings us to the difference between planning horizon and infinite horizon.

A planning horizon is the length of time into the future that a strategic plan covers. Think: Stalin's five-year plans. Or, in a slightly gentler vein, a company's strategic quarterly plan. Or your program to lose 20 pounds in 20 days.

An infinite horizon refers to the long-long term. Staring wistfully out the window to an unknowable future. Maybe a time of robot servants and flying cities. Or maybe conquest by bug creatures from space. Who knows?

So...how does this notion come into play in real life? Think about Uber. In the ride-sharing company's planning horizon, they envision transitioning from humans using their own cars...to company-owned self-driving vehicles. It's not going to happen tomorrow. It's a long-term goal. But it's within the planning horizon.

But on the infinite horizon, someone might invent teleportation. Cars, self-driving or otherwise, might become irrelevant. Uber's plan is shot. And maybe a good thing, too. Self-driving cars might be nice. But they're no match for conquering bug people from space. Hopefully, we'll just be able to teleport out of here when that happens.