Focus on what matters next, not what comes next
In most video calls I am on these days, this pondering often comes up: What is going to happen next? Of course, there is a natural desire for us to seek answers and understand what is around the bend, and yet, in these current conditions, this is a recipe for fatigue and overload. Why? Because we cannot possibly know what is going to unfold against a backdrop of shifting tides. We can name the few certainties — and then we are back to the terrain of the unknown.
There are many forecasts about what will come. A quick scan of the news will give you a battery of predictions. It’s a futurist’s hayday. All interactions will be shaped by the online environment. We are going from FOMO (fear of missing out) to FOGO (fear of going out). We will never travel again. It is the final breakdown of our economic systems.
In the field of learning and development (where I spend my day job), the conversation has now turned to focus on digital and remote learning. Will anyone ever want to come to the classroom again? How do we curate all the knowledge for all the users to access anytime, anywhere?
These are all the wrong questions.
Let’s be honest. We actually do not know much. We are good at making predictions, many of which never will manifest. A recent article in Marker notes: “In the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, Time magazine declared “The End of Excess” but a look at consumer spending today shows it has risen by about a third, credit card debt has climbed steadily since 2011 and hit an all-time high in 2019, the global sales of personal luxury goods have more than doubled in the 21st century.”
Even economists will tell you that we cannot make a predictive model that will inform us how to make our way out of COVID-19 (but we still need to wear a mask) and our current societal ailments, and anyone who is telling you what is certainly coming is giving false hope. Contrary to what our rational brain desires, it is those who focus on what will matter next rather than on what will happen next who will shape our collective future.
The overcoming of our obsession with what is next requires a new orientation. Our minds are always searching for answers; this is natural. We look for patterns that help us make sense of our current situation. But what the last few months have taught us is we are in a profound place of unknown. And with this comes the possibility to uncover the future we want to embrace.
There is a discipline called philosophical sensitivity that we can draw from. It is the pursuit of asking incisive questions about the unexplained and complex parts of the human experience. This type of questioning moves us beyond binary ways of thinking — right, wrong, yes, no — to cope with a new reality, one where our challenges cannot be solved without a reexamining.
What bold questions do we need to be asking ourselves and our communities?
For me, this future is about collective outcomes and cohesion, both in organizations and in societies. ‘The key to creating a society that is nourishing, empowering and healing for everyone lies in how we relate to one another,’ writes the early 20th-century Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. The question facing us all is how we can be wise stewards of the societal conditions we want to create. We can change the way we relate to one another and there is no better time than now to embrace that this is fundamental to our survival as a species.
Historian Yuval Noah Harari writes that humans’ greatest asset is our ability to cooperate at scale. We can deploy discretionary and spontaneous effort when we all agree something matters. This means we need to refresh our collective viewpoint and beliefs in what type of society we want and then build systems and mindsets that make it a reality.
