Category: Change

How to Deal With an Evolving Circle of Friends and Acquaintances

Following up on our post ‘How to Decide When It is Time to Know New People‘, the associated question with looking for some new acquaintances to help us grow is, because we have only limited time in our lives, that it means stopping, or seeing less some people. That is often the most difficult part of having our circle of relationships evolve.

It may be more obvious or easier to stop seing someone that is exceedingly negative and continuously speaks about impending doom, or involves us in a toxic relationship. It is far less easy to spend less time with some people that just don’t grow at the same rate than us, because it is so subjective. And we may have such common emotional baggage and history that it is just difficult to spend less time together.

Let’s take this statement positively: it is good to try to meet new people that will accompany our growth, and at least get to know a few every year. It is also good to help people we are with grow together with us. It may be that we evolve in such a way that some relationships may get less close, but let’s never forget where we come from, and let’s keep in touch. Eventually we may become some day the person they will need to grow themselves.

Share

How to Decide When It is Time to Know New People

Robin Sharma writes “If you’re the smartest person you know, it’s time to know new people“. As we evolve and grow, we realize from time to time that we need to know new people that are in a position to help us grow.

It is well known that “you are the average of the 5 people you are the most with“. As we evolve and grow, the people we stick with may not evolve and grow at the same pace. This calls for renewing acquaintances and looking for people that can support us in our continuous development.

We should probably have a rule to try to identify every year a pair of new acquaintances we feel we need to make to support our growth objectives and direction.

Have you identified some new people you feel would support your growth? Go for it!

Share

How We Move From Avoiding Climate Change to Adapting to It

In this interesting Bloomberg article ‘New Climate Debate: How to Adapt to the End of the World‘ we can measure how the debate has shifted from avoiding climate change to adapting to it, because it appears to be inevitable.

As mentioned in the Fourth Revolution book, I expect there might still be another step which is how to engineer climate, but that’s probably still far away. Anyway, the interesting part here is that we are now to the point where adapting is becoming the mainstream approach – and avoiding social collapse at the same occasion: “Can modern society prepare for a world in which global warming threatens large-scale social, economic, and political upheaval? What are the policy and social implications of rapid, and mostly unpleasant, climate disruption?”

The question is now whether climate change will be sudden and disruptive, or sufficiently progressive to allow for adaptation of current infrastructure. The question is open for the scientists, but it is quite possible, as is the case in natural phenomena, that the extreme events will drive any adaptation.

Share

How Grit Is An Essential Ingredient for Success

Angela Duckworth’s book ‘Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance‘ describes how grit is an essential ingredient for success.

“Many of the people I talked to could also recount tales of rising stars who, to everyone’s surprise, dropped out or lost interest before they could realize their potential. Apparently, it was critically important— and not at all easy— to keep going after failure: “Some people are great when things are going well, but they fall apart when things aren’t.””

I increasingly observe that what makes a difference is not so much how we respond when successful, but rather how we respond under failure. Do we show determination and flexibility, or do we just become disheartened and stop making efforts?

Responding, rather than reacting, when we face failure, and making sure we learn our lessons and bounce back – that’s probably an essential element that distinguishes successful from less successful people. How do you fare under failure?

Share

How Traditional Decision-Making Tools Are Not Fit for the Collaborative Age

In his excellent book (in French) ‘Bienvenue en incertitude!: Principes d’action pour un monde de surprises‘ (Welcome in uncertainty: principles of action in a world full of surprises), Philippe Silberzahn explains that the decision tools that we are using have note changed since the 1970s while the world has become radically uncertain.

“Predictions become inevitably victim, one day or the other, of an unprecedented event that makes them obsolete. However the decision-making tools we use have not changed. They are based on a predictive paradigm. They date back to the 1970s for most of them and are anchored in the industrial revolution civilization born 150 years ago“. And for sure, most of the decision-making tools we use are based on a linear evolution assumption. And the invention of spreadsheets have worsened the situation, as it is so easy to compute extrapolations over quarters and years!

Take the typical business plan for example: how many of them consider really discontinuous events and events that change paradigms? In a world of complexity we really need to question what decision-making tools we use on a daily basis.

Share

How Starting Something Often Takes Longer Than Doing It

In his post ‘But why does it take so long?‘, Seth Godin states that “Persuading ourselves to move forward can take even longer [than doing, coordinating, persuading, pathfinding…]”

I find this observation very much to the point: although building something takes time, for the vast majority of people, just deciding to start takes even more time (and sometimes an infinite duration as they never get to start).

It is only by trying many things that one finds what works for himself and for the world. Therefore, losing excessive time deciding to start is probably the number one issue why people don’t manage to achieve what they aspire to.

Don’t spend too much time overthinking about what you want to start. Just start it. Start it small, start it slow but start. That’s the key.

Share

How Skim Reading Changes our Ways of Thinking

Skim reading is the new normal. We scroll down on content and often do not take the time to read in detail what is written. Even worse, we often just don’t read at all! (see my post ‘How Most People Sharing Links or Commenting Don’t Read the Posts‘). In this excellent Guardian piece, ‘Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound‘, the issue is analysed further. The author concludes that we need a new literacy for the digital age.

The point developed in this paper is that a specific learned capability of humans is getting deeply modified. As a result, “the result is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes, like inference, critical analysis and empathy, all of which are indispensable to learning at any age“.

A specific focus in the article is about our diminishing empathy: “The subtle atrophy of critical analysis and empathy affects us all. It affects our ability to navigate a constant bombardment of information. It incentivizes a retreat to the most familiar silos of unchecked information, which require and receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and demagoguery.”

One interesting aspect is that it seems that reading on screen (even on a Kindle) compared to physically handling a book creates less attention and more skimming.

Anyway, for sure the younger generations are learning differently from older generations and might not develop exactly the same approaches. I am not sure if that’s good or bad, but it will certainly be different. Exciting times!

Share

How Changes from New Technology Will Lead to Unexpected Results

In this interesting article ‘Uber and Lyft Are Overwhelming Urban Streets, and Cities Need to Act Fast‘, unexpected consequences of new technology (more streets getting more car traffic) are discussed with recommendation for a single solution: more regulation.

For sure, apps like Uber, Lyft or even apps calculating less jammed drives such as Waze or the likes necessarily change the pattern of road utilisation (Waze for example typically increases the usage of smaller, previously underutilised streets). It thus creates change and possibly at a massive level.

The new apps and services do respond to a need, which normally should decrease individual automobile utilisation; but is also creates new usage for better and more comfortable transit than public transportation on a point-to-point basis.

The interesting lesson here is that when one would think that those new services would rather decrease congestion, the actuel effect, due to the complexity of the situation, is observed to be rather the opposite. Therefore, one should not attempt to forecast what a new service will do when it scales.

Also, expecting regulation to provide a solution may be a way to go, but it needs to be considered with care, because the impact of a regulation might be equally unpredictable and the outcome may not be as expected. Welcome to a complex world!

Share

How the Happiness Industry Influences Our Lives

“Being happy” is at the same time a wish and a mantra for most, and somewhat of an injunction in the current society. And the happiness, self-help domain has become a major industry with much presence in our lives. In the new book ‘Happycratie – How the Happiness Industry Has Taken Control Of Our Lives’ (in French) authors Eva Illouz and Edgar Cabanas denounce an industry with an excessive influence.

I find the take of the book probably a bit excessive – comparing the happiness industry to some sort of totalitarian organisation, a way to create power – however it does provoke the question of the influence of this industry in our lives.

It is quite clear that it is an industry – one needs only to browse through the relevant alleys in bookshops and consider the amounts of proposed activities around the general topic of happiness.

The point of the authors is that happiness has changed from a transgressive request in the 18th and 19th century to something that is now borne by the state and organisations. Everyone is claiming for happiness, and at some stage the social compact seems to change to the state providing happiness against social rest.

There certainly should not be any tyranny of happiness. Still, seeking happiness is certainly a quest that many of us follow because it does help us. Therefore, we need to take happiness as a personal goal while being careful to avoid any coercion associated with it.

Extracts in French are available in this ‘The Conversation’ post ‘Sois Heureux et Tais Toi‘.

Share

How to Deal with Psychology’s Experiments Replication Crisis

Increasingly, studies find that seminal experiments in psychology can’t be replicated. A good summary is available in the Vox post ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud‘. The title is perhaps a bit exaggerated, as the text describes merely that probably the conclusions were provided in a too extreme manner but may not be entirely wrong, still these facts do come out as generations of lead psychologists change.

The issue of experiment replication arises in many scientific fields, and it is easy to understand why that may be even more acute in psychology where it is harder to control all parameters, starting with the recruitment of the people who do participate to the experiment (generally university undergraduates, which by itself is quite a skewed representation of society).

Of course, this poses questions about what we may have assumed to be scientific fact in the last decades in that field. And of course, textbooks and popular ‘self help’ books will carry on for a long time those inaccurate results and conclusions. This process has always happened through history. Psychology is an area where lots of wrong assumptions have been made with inadequate treatment given throughout the 19th and 20th century to patients. Still, we should take those results as thought provoking and decide whether we want to be influenced by them. It is probable that further study will find that the directions given by previous findings were right, even if the amplitude of the effect might have been exaggerated.

Share

How Colleges in the US Turn to Randomness for Assigning Roommates

To run contrary to an annoying trend in US colleges with students turning to like-minded students and shunning anything that might them feel uneasy (refer for example to our post ‘How Overprotecting from Different Points of View is a Moral Hazard‘), some colleges have turned to assigning roommates randomly to favour encounters and diversity. The title of this Quartz post says it all: ‘The life-changing benefits of living with a random roommate in college‘.

Increasingly students were choosing their roommate prior to year start through social networks. To curb this approach which united like-minded students, “at Duke, the roommate-selection process is back to being entirely governed by the university. Roommate pairings are made largely at random, while taking into account some lifestyle preferences or needs, like sleep patterns, disabilities, or medical conditions.”

The paper mentions a vast array of studies showing the decisive influence of the roommate – for better or for worse. “If college roommates can worsen your bad habits but also open your horizons, it’s no wonder that colleges have a stake in making sure that the experience benefits people as much as possible. And there’s a special authenticity that can only come from randomness; from the beauty of two complete strangers sharing the roller-coaster ride that is freshman year of college, for better or for worse.”

I find that this way of adding an element of randomness in the lives of student is quite a worthwhile experiment. It might not please students or parents – but certainly will create life-changing experiences.

Share

How Algorithms Are More Effective Than Human Decisions – Even If Bias Still Needs to be Managed

In a counterpoint to the ideas represented by the “Weapons of Math Destruction” concept – how algorithms could reinforce inequality and prejudice (refer to our post ‘How Algorithms Can Become Weapons of Math Destruction‘), the HBR paper ‘Want Less-Biased Decisions? Use Algorithms‘ discusses the fact that algorithms lead to less bias.

“Critiques and investigations [about the perverse effects of algorithms] are often insightful and illuminating, and they have done a good job in disabusing us of the notion that algorithms are purely objective. But there is a pattern among these critics, which is that they rarely ask how well the systems they analyze would operate without algorithms. And that is the most relevant question for practitioners and policy makers: How do the bias and performance of algorithms compare with the status quo? Rather than simply asking whether algorithms are flawed, we should be asking how these flaws compare with those of human beings.”

The paper then quotes a number of studies and papers showing that automation reduces dramatically mistakes and some biases in human decision-making. An effort still needs to be made to ensure algorithms are not biased, however following public awareness a lot of activities are happening in that field, including publication of the source code of some key algorithms. The paper thus rather takes a positive view on the subject. Let’s keep a tab to see how it evolves over the next few months!

Share