Forward-Looking Statements

Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, American companies have a legal “safe harbor” for forward-looking statements. A projection is protected when it is identified as such and “accompanied by meaningful cautionary statements identifying important factors” that could make the results differ.

This is why earnings calls open with a warning that the company’s plans and forecasts may not come true. Words such as “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate” and “intend” mark a statement as forward-looking.

The Quarter

Every domestic American public company reports to investors by the quarter. It files a Form 10-Q for each of the first three quarters of its fiscal year, with unaudited financial statements, and an annual report on Form 10-K. Companies, analysts and the financial press speak of Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4.

In September 2025 President Trump called for an end to quarterly reporting. On May 5, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed letting companies file a semiannual report on a new Form 10-S. Under the proposal, a company that does not choose this option stays on quarterly reporting. As of October 2026 the proposal had not been adopted.

Pencil It In

Let’s pencil it in. — We set a date, but it can still be erased.

Down the road. In the pipeline. — In the future, not yet fixed.

TBD. — To be determined.

Next quarter. Q3. The back half of the year. — The units of the planning calendar.

The out years. — The later years of a multiyear budget, where the numbers are least firm.

Eventually. Someday. — No date, and therefore no commitment.

Let’s Do Lunch

Let’s do lunch. Let’s get coffee sometime. By 1985 a Los Angeles Times columnist was already joking about the first: “Let’s do lunch sometime, have your girl call my girl.”

MIT’s office for international students explains such invitations to new arrivals. An American writer on the page says that when people say “Let’s get lunch!” it “seems like they don’t really mean it.” If an American is serious, “they will propose a time and place.”

The Agile Manifesto

From 11 to 13 February 2001, seventeen software practitioners met at a ski lodge at Snowbird, Utah, and in three days wrote sixty-eight words. The fourth of the four values is the one that matters here: responding to change over following a plan. Not instead of a plan — over it. The plan is acknowledged as valuable and then explicitly ranked second to the ability to change course.

25 year career plan

Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses the 25 year plan he developed while a student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and why you should veer away from such plans. Cook spoke as part of his class reunion at the school.

The journey was not predictable. The only thing you can really do is prepare. Ebb and flow. Lots of things change. Have a North Star. Find your journey.

Short-term thinking in corporate America is strangling the economy

Vox. 2016. Hillary Clinton has made short-term thinking in corporate America — also known as “quarterly capitalism,” a reference to the pressure companies feel to meet quarterly earnings predictions — a central issue in her campaign.

That issue has been bubbling beneath the surface of policy discussion for years, but it’s gained fresh attention as influential investors such as Warren Buffett and Lawrence Fink (of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset holder), and politicians like Vice President Joe Biden, have stepped up to warn of the perils to our economy of turning away from a long-term perspective.

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