Food for Thought No. 4
This week we share some ideas on how to lead this fall against the backdrop of massive uncertainty - COVID resurgence? Back to School? US Election? CERB ending impact on the economy?
Hi,
Here is your weekly GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world grappling with uncertainty and exponential change.
Every Sunday morning this summer, you'll receive GC's 3-2-1 newsletter with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and one question for you.
Just back from two weeks deep in the woods basking in the gloriousness of summer.
The freedom of the outdoors, the escape from home-schooling, the joy of seeing people in person. With Fall around the corner, these summer days are beginning to feel scarce, and we are collectively facing more uncertainty than we are used to.
Will COVID return with a vengeance? Will the consequences of back to school outweigh the positives? What will happen with the US election and what impact will that have on the free world? What will happen to the economy if the subsidies end?
How we think about uncertainty matters a lot.
This week we share some ideas that may be helpful to you as a leader in your businesses, your community and within your family.
EXPLORE
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I. Anti-fragility, Optionality and Agility
As an entrepreneur, immigrant and early stage angel investor, Nassim Taleb's ideas on anti-fragility have made a lasting impact on my approach to uncertainty. Ultimately his mental model favours uncertain scenarios.
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Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. The antifragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which also means — crucially— a love of errors, a certain class of errors. Antifragility has a singular property of allowing us to deal with the unknown, to do things without understanding them — and do them well. Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.”
- Nassim Taleb,Anti-Fragile: Things that Gain from Disorder
The COVID pandemic exposed the fragility and lack of resilience of many systems.
- Nassim Taleb, The Pandemic Isn’t a Black Swan but a Portent of a More Fragile Global System.
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This fall, how can you go beyond being more prepared for uncertainty (i.e planning better for work from home, quarantine scenarios, homeschooling scenarios, PPE sufficiency, etc.) to becoming anti-fragile towards it? How can you benefit from this disorder and uncertainty?
For example, never before has there been a better time for virtual platforms in the areas of remote education, e-commerce, creator platforms, virtual healthcare, and remote work solutions. Why? More people than ever before need new tools and old pre-COVID habits have been permanently broken.
You may also want to prioritize the concept of optionality (where the total value of all options created by your decisions is greater than not having made that decision) and agility (your ability to move and adapt quickly if the future was not as you predicted).
- Farnam Street on Preserving Optionality. Forbes on the OODA loop and agility.
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II. Meditation to Deal with Fear of the Unknown
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
- Seneca
Emotional mastery is the superpower we all need in the 21st century. Our imagination coincides with our expectations. But, when these expectations are not realized, and there is uncertainty, we become frightened. This becomes a negative feedback loop when we mistake that fear for pain and suffering.
One of our previous guests on Gamechanger Sessions, Ariel Garten, neuroscientist and creator of Muse, meditation headband, helps us understand that we are not our thoughts.
Often when fear is present, our amygdala response is getting in our way and meditation can help us calm that response.
Watch this 5 min clip of Ariel teaching us how to Use Meditation to Overcome Fear, and watch her amazing Gamechanger Session.
Join the 4MM+ users and listen to Ariel's podcast Untangle on learning about the brain, how to optimize it, and how to manage the crazy that sometimes floods all of our minds.
III. Circle of Control
In uncertainty, we often try and control things that we have no influence over: other people's beliefs and thoughts, other people's responses to COVID, the weather, the traffic, or even time.
This futile attempt can heighten anxiety and prevent us from focussing our energy on things that can have an impact. The result? An unhealthy mindset, stuck in autopilot mode rife with anxiety and often escalating to mental health issues.
Instead, focus your attention on the things you can control — your beliefs, values, perspective, and actions.
As Epictetus said:
“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
Determine what is outside your circle of control and see it for what it is, accept it, and move onto what you can control.
Determine what is inside your circle of control and focus your time and energy on taking action and moving forward in those areas.
READ
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I. Radical Uncertainty
We often view the risks we are taking as quantifiable and knowable. Certainly, much economic advice has led us to believe that.
John Kay and Mervyn King suggest:
“The limits of certainty demonstrate the power of human judgment over artificial intelligence. In most critical decisions there can be no forecasts or probability distributions on which we might sensibly rely. Instead of inventing numbers to fill the gaps in our knowledge, we should adopt business, political, and personal strategies that will be robust to alternative futures and resilient to unpredictable events. Within the security of such a robust and resilient reference narrative, uncertainty can be embraced, because it is the source of creativity, excitement, and profit.”
- John Kay and Meryvn King on Radical Uncertainty.
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II. Stoicism
Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman offer a daily habit of using Stoic meditation to remind us of helpful ancient mental models that allow us to live more peacefully in uncertainty.
- Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman’s The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living.
REFLECT
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I. Responding to Uncertainty
Uncertainty is a mental state, and mental states can be changed. We can actively transform ourselves when we feel overwhelming uncertainty through conscious reflection and mental models.
Whether it's being anti-fragile, using meditation, designing optionality, choosing asymmetrical risk opportunities, being agile - all of these mental models and actions are in our circle of control.
How do you respond to uncertainty? In what ways are you embracing anti-fragility this Fall? What practises do you have to share that help you with uncertainty?
Share your thoughts on Twitter with us @gamechanger_co.
Thanks for tuning in.
See you next weekend.
Best,
Candice
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P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger Sessions and see highlights on our website. We'll land in your inbox 1x a week. No spam, we promise.
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