If you had a crystal ball

I had an interesting talk with a client today who has a child the same age as my own, but has taken quite a different path to her upbringing, namely the easier path of a little more reliance on technology as a babysitter. While personally I question the move, I think that it is hard to predict what is right when what our children are going to face is outside of what we can actually know - all we can do is predict.

If you had a crystal ball that told you the future, what would it tell you?

This is the prediction that we are all making at all times as we try to position ourselves to be able to take advantage of what is to come and, we feel that we do a pretty decent job of it, even though we tend to miss our goals much more often than hit them.

Humans are not very good at predicting what is going to happen unless we have deep enough experience in our past that can read the patterns for the future path - like a basketballer who takes the shot from the three line and starts back-peddling to the defense because they already know it is going to go in out of the hand. Experience.

But when it comes to looking further into the future and when combined with a great many moving parts and a complexity of uncertainties, predicting what is going to be asked of us gets a lot more guess-y. Yet, we have to make choices now and those choices are going to have consequences on our future capabilities.

My client asked why children dream of being something exotic like an astronaut or firefighter, but most inevitably come up short. Since we are in Finland I used the example of a pro ice hockey player needing to fulfill prerequisites as a very young child to even have the possibility open to go pro over a decade later in life. Yes, there is the talent but there are many work-based activities that need to be performed on top of the talent layer in order to ever have the chance of making it. With out the right set, there is next to no chance.

I think kids dream of this and that because they don't necessarily understand the prerequisites and whether they possess the early ones needed to take the next in the series. They do not consider their genetics, their economic availability, their intelligence, will power or other factors that might be involved. They are naive - they are inexperienced.

As they move further through life, these factors start to come more into their awareness and the environmental factors including their peer group start to play a greater role in the decision making. Peer groups heavily influence what most of us do and there is a strange little component that most don't consider.

If we use smoking as an example, this is often driven by social pressures of various kinds and it is interesting that even though even children know it is a negative, they are the ones who pressure friends into taking up the habit, or at least trying it in the first place. Sure, they don't understand the full ramifications of decreased performance and illness, but they know enough that it doesn't do anything good.

Think about it for a moment - would you encourage someone you care about to do something that endangers their health? Yes, you probably would and in Finland we can see a great deal of the adverse drinking culture supported by social practices. Not many peer groups actually want what is best for others in the group as they prefer "fitting in" to social diversity, practice and subsequent outcome. I find this interesting and I wonder how many outcomes of potentially highly successful people have been changed because of the company they kept when young.

While birds of a feather flock together, due to our social hard-wiring, we are also prone to being shaped by our environment and this includes those we spend our time with. I am a firm believer in we are what we eat and when what we eat socially is low-quality interaction, relationship and collaboration, it is unlikely that an individual is going to break free from that pattern.

However, when someone surrounds themselves with a reference group that is not only skilled, and talented but also supportive of growth of other members, the chance of being able to increase outcomes for more members of the group is higher. A hockey team that plays well together and supports each other to be their best will outperform individual stars on average and someone in a gym who has a spotter they can trust will end up lifting more than they would alone or with someone they cannot.

When it comes to predicting the future and what we might need as individuals to be successful in it, the more prudent approach is to move with a group who are looking to shape the future itself. As often said, the best way to predict the future is to create it and if one is able to run with creators and hold their own, there is more chance of being able to shape what is to come.

Not only that, through activity itself, the changing environment and therefore the adjustments in the plan that might be needed are easier to spot and move with because there is a group on the lookout for each other and looking to support for growth, not compete for resources.

As I have said of myself on Steem, I have spent my time developing a network of people who I can trust and who are also working toward similar goals as myself. I think this is one of the fundamental advantages of Steem as while we all might have different approaches to get their, the vast majority of us want to have a good outcome personally, and by extension the platform also.

the benefit of a decentralized network such as Steem is much like having a very wide reference group with a great many skills as it spreads out and can deliver information back to each individual node. The more decentralized and active the userbase becomes, the greater the compounding effects of the community and the higher the likelihood of success.

While many might fantasize about being the solo success story, the overwhelming majority of complete success stories are not individuals going it alone, but a community of people that supported along the path. When it comes to the success of this platform, it is going to be a team effort and what is brilliant is that due to the way Steem operates, there can be many teams working on a large variety of things in a trustless network that still benefits each other, knowingly or not.

While the crystal ball doesn't exist, if it was to tell me what the next major technological industry is, what will happen in the global economy and what would be the most prudent place to spend my time to be part of creating the future, I think that given the resources available to me, the answer is clear.

Are your eyes open?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]