Tag Archives: the future

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Looking Forward to the Future

Leave a comment

After about 43 years of continuous employment for various organizations, (albeit well paid), I plan to retire from my current employment in 2 weeks.

After having the majority of my waking hours focused on achieving Corporate goals (marching to someone’s else’s tune) what I do or don’t do is about to become very much my own choice.

My Choice

With retirement from regular employment, regardless of whether it was self-employment or for somebody else, the imperative of earning money through your own labors is gone (or should be if you planned appropriately).

The passage of time is inevitable, focusing on enjoying every minute is a choice. In the case of retirement the focus is very much personal choice, which of course is one of the reasons retirement is prized.

Doing nothing could be what you choose or perhaps you have some definite goals relative to things you want to accomplish.   Deciding does not mean you cannot change the approach later but consciously choosing something is key to being satisfied.

Either way (whether the plan is to be idle or active), knowing what your plan is, being clear on what you choose is a critical success factor to enjoying retirement.

Freedom

The key and beauty of being retired is you have the power or right to act, speak, or think as desired without hindrance or restraint.  This is of course not an absolute, but rather a general principal.

One caveat, to be most effective and embrace the freedom you achieve from leaving employment a fiscal foundation is needed (some form of retirement income or nest egg).

With that in place (hopefully through pre-planning before you retire) the choice of freedom is yours.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

People’s Inhumanity to People

Leave a comment

Throughout my life I have always been puzzled by man’s inhumanity to man (Retitled people above for accuracy, but I grew up in a world where strangely people were referred to as man – but that is a rant for another time.)

When I see the atrocious behavior aimed at others with full disregard for common and reasonably expected decency I wonder “People am I going insane” (also the title of a Black Sabbath song.)

Black lives matter

I can only lament how low humankind has sunk when we feel the need to highlight a group based on their appearance alone.  It is surely misunderstood for me to broaden the statement in today’s environment but for me, the correct slogan is “All lives matter”.

As I have included in many posts, the single universal core value we all need to believe and practice is the simple statement,  “Everyone is important” (even you, just kidding).

Real Change

This is again a time when around the globe people are gathering to further advance the principle that everyone matters and everyone is important.

The outrage being expressed at the incredibly biased and racist treatment observed in every country and every corner of the globe is exposed like never before with the huge assist of social media.

Just one such incident is too many, we unfortunately are suffering a plethora of such occurrences.    The history of humans is long and checkered with many attempts to create true equality.

We should never stop.  Each time the efforts of the many do change the strange and unwelcome perspectives of the few.  We need to keep at it until really everyone believes and expresses that believe through behaviour that we all deserve the opportunity to thrive.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Accepting the Future

Leave a comment

In his book Homo Deus, Israeli history professor  Yuval Harari explores the future in the context of the past.  His ideas prompted some interesting thoughts.

This post builds on some of the ideas in the book however, it is neither a summary or a review of the book, if you are interested you will need to read it if you have not already.

History as a Train

Consider historical human progress as a freight train moving ahead with increasing speed.  Occassionally progress is derailed but over the long term it steams ahead.

As a passenger on the train you can get off (this can be an orderly departure or a more forced one) or you can stay on for the ride accept and adapt to the changing environment as human kinds train forges ahead.

Going Faster

Intuitively, as humans capabilities progress, past advances feed future ones and the speed of progress is exponential rather than linear. 

That is, the pace and magnitude of change is probably measured in days and months versus the centuries, decades and years progress required in the past eons.

This increasing pace makes it harder to get off the train without consequence (although many still do) and it make it harder for those that stay on the train to adapt.

Artificial Intelligence

The near future holds major changes for all of us as artificial intelligence is leveraged to enhance human capabilities.

Human endeavors will change drastically as more autimation is employed and those of us staying on the train will be part of significant change.

The rest will be left behind.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Whats Next

Leave a comment

Are you ready for whats next?  This is a subtle variation on the boy scouts motto, “ always be prepared”.

Over the last couple of years I have posted on a wide variety of topics.  For my posts In the area of philosophy, personal excellence and leadership there are often recurring themes.  Similar concepts but different (e.g., leading from in front/ behind).

I recognize constant change and improvement are a key tenants underlying the road to success associated with these topics.

This post considers and explores ideas that can be leveraged on that road to whats next (i,e,,  raising your performance bar)

Managing your Personality

As noted in the past, personality is just the term for your natural behaviours.  Those “go to”  actions that are intuitive and form the core of all your behaviours.

A key ability to successfully interacing with others is being able to alter your behaviours ( outside of your personality) to fit best with the contextual circumstances.  To do this effectively it must be natural, not forced, i.e., your behaviour most be believed.

Forceful/ Collaborative

In the leadership concept, whether you are a natural collaborator (your personality) or a controller, one size does not fit all.  It is important to be able to navigate from a partner to an authoritative resource (exercised earned or granted power) according to what the  situation demands.

In a nutshell the oft quoted critical skill  of self awareness is the lynchpin to this balancing act.  You need to be fully, conciously aware of the situation in real time and balance your behaviour accordingly.

Not easy, but truly the best use of self awareness.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Uncertainty

Leave a comment

My crystal ball is a lttle opaque.  I cannot see future events with great certainty.  I can speculate, interpret the data I have available and then predict the most likely result.

Bottom line though is whatever the topic, sports event outcomes, horse racing (a sports event of sorts), my next big success or failure, it is all mostly surrounded by uncertanty.

Navigating the Uncertain

Uncertainty is common and how we manage it is a key skill both for our own personal well being and the well being of those we interract with.

Most importantly do not allow uncertainty to color your emotions.  Fear, anxiety, panic,  and the list goes on, can often be associated with uncertainty.

Unlike the fight or flight reaction initiated by an adrenaline surge, these negative emotions are more likely to lead to a negative outcome.  All of them mask both your ability to analyze the circumstances carefully as well as clouding your judgement.

Uncertainty is best managed through a conscious appraisal of the circumstance.  What you do, first is to think it through.  Reacting without a plan makes it impossible to measure success or failure.

Without knowing whether your approach to uncertain situations is working or not it is not possible to adjust (change course) through anything other than guessing (which is just additional uncertainty).

It is not always easy to pause,  reflect and most importantly plan.   It most certainly requires a strong concious effort to do these things, but it can be done.  The results make it well worth your while.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Predicting the Future

Leave a comment

” What is? is. What was? will be. What will be *was*, but will be again.”

Quoted from an episode of the TV show “Welcome back Kotter”

The basic logic of this quote is that events occur in cycles.  The only thing you can be sure of is the current cycle, (what is) but predictably the past will be back.

Past Behaviour Predicts Future Behaviour

Analysing past behaviour to determine the future is not an absolute and investment advisors ( to pick an example of a profession frequently trying to predict) regularly provide caution about using this approach to determine which funds or equities to purchase.

They advise, there is a real risk upcoming events will be unique and not influenced by historical at all.  For example, the government might introduce a new tax or policy that impacts behaviour.

Balanced Predictions

Past behaviour has been a proven predictor of future behavior in a number of psychology studies I have read.  That being said, the unexpected does occur and can significantly impact a future event.

Given  both these factors can have an influence on future predictions,  it is the balance you draw between behavioural predictability and the unexpected that will drive the accuracy of your predictions.

The future predictions you make will have a risk of inaccuracy, but careful consideration of past behaviour, event cycles and possible unexpected occurances should enable you to have some confidence in your forecast.

This is a bit contextual as some things are clearly more volitile than others, and so harder to predict.

Most pragmatically, what is: is ; what was: was and what will be: will be.  As the pseudo Spanish lyrics say, que sera sera (whatever will be, will be).  The future is not ours to see.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

A little wistful thinking

Leave a comment

This morning the phrase “If I knew then what I know now….” popped into my head.   It was not about a specific incident but more wistful thinking prompted by a news article I was reading.

Knowing yourself

This mornings wistfulness primarily arose from what I think of myself now versus what I knew about myself forty years ago when I made some key choices about how I would spend my life.

Lest I give the wrong impression, I have no feeling I made the wrong decisions, nor do I have any regrets.  My life so far has been and continues to be fulfilling and satisfying.   I am fortunate in that I am very comfortable with the real events that have brought me to the point I am at (this is not a perception, for me this is – reality)

I often use these posts to share philosophical ideas and that is my purpose today.

Knowledge and Experience

If I knew then what I know now can most often be related to knowledge gained through experience.  There are numerous ways to gather knowledge; whether proactive, reactive or sedentary (you just gather it like a rolling stone does not gather moss) as you move through life knowledge is gathered.

Gathering Experience

My thoughts traveled more along the lines of how  gaining experience requires time.  That is to say, while every moment of your life is an experience, the compiling of valuable and worthwhile knowledge generally (although not always) takes years of gathering, storing and analyzing these moment by moment occurrences.

The conundrum for me is the time it takes to codify a valuable set of experiences to the point where they are useful in guiding your decisions is often too long and so too late.  The decision point has long past.

Why Wistful?

Unfortunately time travel is not a reality (at least that I know of) so there is no way to explore and test alternatives.  What if I had……?

And then I realized, I don’t care and really the point is irrelevant. The enlightenment I experienced at that moment was very heartening and probably proof that I should be more happy than wistful.

What I have experienced, the decisions I have made and where it has brought me are really satisfying (both positive and negative experiences I would not miss one of them).  And that feeling is really good.

And if I did not feel this way, I suddenly understood now be a point to make a change.  It’s never over, never final.