People are bad at habits by design. Many of us would prefer short-term gains over long-term ones instinctively. The present will always be more valuable than the future. Well, because the present is determined, however, the future is uncertain. Most people are short-termists; they focus on short-term results at the expense of long-term interests.
I recently learned about long-termism in a broader sense; long-termists think that it's more useful to focus on issues that affect future generations of people than focus on the current population. They rely on the fact that humans' number will grow exponentially; hence long-term impact will be much more significant.
Although that's an interesting position, I doubt that we need to be concerned about the future that much. People struggle to understand our current problems, let alone predict future generations' needs. What seems to be right today may have catastrophic consequences in the future. We don't even know will the population growth continue eventually or will it be that steady. We should be very cautious with ideas like long-termism and think very carefully about what may go wrong. We should also accept our limited understanding of the current problems.
There are current problems, the solutions of which will make a significant impact on our lives. And we can't imagine future challenges because they heavily rely on these solutions. New problems will arise. The future is nothing without the present. We may try to predict the future based on the present and the past, but it isn't much better than playing a slot machine.