{"id":1142,"date":"2020-10-06T09:29:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T09:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2020-10-06T09:29:58","modified_gmt":"2020-10-06T09:29:58","slug":"you-dont-control-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/10\/06\/you-dont-control-anything\/","title":{"rendered":"You don\u2019t control anything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Daniel Kirsch from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One realization that I had recently (only to show that I\u2019m not too bright) is how much energy we all spend on controlling our environment and trying to keep everything the same. The trigger was a car trip from Gothenburg to Stockholm during one of the warmest days in Sweden this summer. Unfortunately, the air conditioning in the car had broken down right before the trip and the inability to keep the temperature in the car within a narrow band led to a significant amount of complaining during the ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re always looking to control our environment, including the \ntemperature inside our homes, the safety of the area we live in and the \nselection in the supermarket we shop in. Even the climate change \nactivists who constantly lament about the climate changing seem to \nforget that the climate has been changing continuously for eons. \nCompanies plan and budget for the coming quarters and years and managers\n get rewarded for their accuracy in predicting the future. In the same \nway our bodies use homeostasis to create a stable system, we\u2019re \nconstantly looking to address the deviations from an anchoring point we \nconsider ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, our desire to control our environment is a great asset.\n As George Bernard Shaw so eloquently said, \u201cThe reasonable man adapts \nhimself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt \nthe world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable\n man.\u201d And over the last century or so, humankind has seen more progress\n than during its entire history combined. Based on all metrics that we \nuse to measure quality of life for everyone on the planet, life has \nnever been better. And it\u2019s driven by our constant desire to control our\n environment and avoid bad outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concern I\u2019m trying to raise here is that our success over the \nlast century has lulled us into believing that we\u2019re in control. That, \nbecause we know how to treat certain diseases, have found ways to avoid \nworld wars, globalized our economies to achieve new levels of \nefficiency, and so on, we can stop worrying about these things and \nassume the horrors of the past will never come back. And this is of \ncourse a complete fallacy as the Covid-19 crisis clearly shows. The \nshifting power balance in the world increases the risks of new wars. And\n the anti-globalization sentiment that we see in many countries pours \noil on the fires of disagreement and conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar to these developments on the macro level, we tend to confuse \neffort and outcome on the personal level as well. We can exercise and \neat healthy, hoping for a long, productive life. We can work hard and \nhope for recognition and promotion at work. We can invest in \nrelationships and hope for a rich social life. However, the risk is that\n we feel entitled to these outcomes because we put in the effort. As the\n Stoics so beautifully identify, confusing what we can control and what \nwe cannot is one of the biggest sources of suffering. We can control how\n we behave and where we spend our time and energy, but we can\u2019t control \nthe outcomes of our efforts. Despite our best efforts, things can go to \nhell in a handbasket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChange is the only constant\u201d is a phrase often used but seldomly \nactually lived by. Most of us are trying as hard as possible to keep \nthings as they were before. This is one of the reasons that driving \nimprovements and change such as digitalization is so hard: deep down, we\n want things to stay as they are. The fact of the matter is, though, \nthat nothing ever stays the same. So, we either move forward or we\u2019re \nleft behind. Unless we embrace change proactively, it will be forced \nupon us. And I, for one, prefer to at least pretend that I\u2019m in control \nof my own destiny, rather than a victim of circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My main message is that we don\u2019t control anything, or at least very, very little. Everything that we feel we\u2019ve accomplished can be ripped out of our hands at any point. Nevertheless, we need to relentlessly work to make things better. Right now, in industry, that means digitalizing your business and letting go of the belief that everything was better before. Because it wasn\u2019t, and even if it was, we can\u2019t go back there anyway. So, get to work, focus your energy on what you can control and don\u2019t bother about the outcomes that aren\u2019t under your control. You\u2019ll be busy enough as it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One realization that I had recently (only to show that I\u2019m not too bright) is how much energy we all spend on controlling our environment and trying to keep everything the same. The trigger was a car trip from Gothenburg to Stockholm during one of the warmest days in Sweden this summer. Unfortunately, the air … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1144,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}