{"id":1241,"date":"2021-04-26T13:01:01","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T13:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2021-04-26T13:01:03","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T13:01:03","slug":"rule-5-lean-into-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/04\/26\/rule-5-lean-into-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Rule 5: Lean into the future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the interesting facts uncovered by psychology is that people suffer three times as much from losing something they had as they enjoy getting something they didn\u2019t have before. There are all kinds of convincing explanations coming out of evolutionary biology why this would be the case, but in the modern world, it easily creates a mindset where many try to hold on to the past instead of embracing the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, deciding to rely on the proven ways of doing things is \nof course a perfectly defensible strategy. In the financial space, many \nseasoned investors can\u2019t resist a smile when new entrants in the field \nclaim that \u201cthis time it\u2019s different\u201d only to be proven wrong a few \nmonths or years later. Whether it\u2019s the dot-com bubble or the subprime \nmortgage crisis, the basic, fundamental principles in the market don\u2019t \nchange or change only very slowly. History doesn\u2019t repeat itself, but it\n does rhyme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem in a digital world is that all the opportunities are created at the edges. It tends to be those who can see the potential of new technologies and use these to create value that benefit from the first-mover advantage. Of course, being the first mover is a risky strategy and there are many examples of the second or third mover winning the game, but entering late into an established market is a recipe for failure. I wrote about this earlier<\/a>, in relation to virtual assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a world where the pace of change is only increasing, we need to \nproactively overcome our more conservative tendencies. Especially for \nthose of us who\u2019ve been around in the industry for a while, it\u2019s \nincreasingly easy to discard new concepts and ideas based on new \ntechnologies as the emperor\u2019s new clothes. Over the years, we build up \nhabits not only in our personal lives but also professionally. Also, \nwhen further into a career, the daily workload tends to be such that \nit\u2019s very difficult to even find time to explore new ideas and \ntechnologies and understand these in detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To address this, I believe we all need to employ at least three \nstrategies: create time, exhibit purposeless curiosity and intentionally\n break habits. First, Jeff Bezos famously said about his senior managers\n who were complaining about a lack of time that they were the ones who \nhad the most freedom to allocate their time as they wanted. They should \njust take the responsibility to do so. This is, in fact, true for almost\n all professionals. There\u2019s no end to the number of urgent, but not \nterribly important, things that can occupy our minds and fill our \ncalendars. If we don\u2019t explicitly make time for the exploration of new \nideas and technologies, it will simply not happen. So, the first \nstrategy has to be to create time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, we need to foster a habit of purposeless curiosity. Many tend\n to start from a problem and then start looking for solutions to address\n it. However, the most interesting and novel insights and connections \nare those where you weren\u2019t looking to solve anything but rather just \nexplored a topic out of curiosity. As S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard said, you can \nonly understand your life by looking backward, but you have to live it \ngoing forward. Exploring topics out of curiosity without the goal of \nsolving anything allows for the serendipity of novel connections to \nappear that add real value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, as I wrote in rule 2<\/a>, humans are habitual creatures and we easily spend most of our time following the trigger-action-reward model of habits we\u2019ve built during our lives. The danger is that these habits aren\u2019t automatically updated when the world around us changes. This is where our rational and reflective mind comes in and needs to take responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In earlier posts, I\u2019ve used the quote by Gandhi as to how our beliefs\n lead to thoughts, words, actions, habits, values and, finally, our \ndestiny. It works the other way around, too. As we humans are \npost-rationalizing in our behavior, our habits cause us to think about \nthe world through the lens of these habits. For instance, many software \nengineers initially have a hard time understanding machine learning as \nthey\u2019ve been primed to think in an algorithmic fashion where they first \nneed to understand how to solve a problem, then specify the solution in a\n sequence of steps and then code it. Machine learning asks for a model \nand a data set and trains itself to figure out how to best solve a \nproblem. Consequently, we need to frequently break some of our habits \nwith the intent of forming new ones that are more in line with the \ncurrent world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although we\u2019re not all the same and some of us are more open to new experiences and others are more conservative, by and large we tend to be more conservative than what\u2019s helpful in a rapidly changing and evolving digital world. To address this, we need to \u2018lean into the future.\u2019 We can operationalize this by creating time, using this time for purposeless exploring of new ideas and technologies guided by our curiosity and, finally, intentionally breaking habits that are holding us back. In the end, the future is where we spend the rest of our lives, so we better get ready for living the best life possible over there!<\/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>), Medium<\/a> or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the interesting facts uncovered by psychology is that people suffer three times as much from losing something they had as they enjoy getting something they didn\u2019t have before. There are all kinds of convincing explanations coming out of evolutionary biology why this would be the case, but in the modern world, it easily … 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":[12,8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241"}],"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=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1244,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}