Resilience, Flexibility, and The Future

Do you know what your future looks like?

Have you planned it out? Do you know what you’ll be doing, where you’ll be living, and who you’ll be with? Can you picture it? 

You need a strategy, and I hope it works out.

But what if it doesn’t? 

What if there’s medical stuff? What if you miss on your market assumptions? What if your product doesn’t resonate? What if the kids move away? What if you have a financial inflection? What if you change your mind? What if the system changes? What if the world changes? 

All we know is today and history, but something, probably many things, will not look tomorrow like they do today or did last year.

Crazy will get crazier. The “can’t happen” will happen. The “never thought about” will become the focus.

However, there’s a solution — resilience and flexibility. Design resilience into your plans and foster mental and emotional flexibility. 

It’s simple, if not easy, to combat the unknown future with resilience and flexibility. Here are some ideas. 

For resilience: 

• Assume it will break
• Create margin, checks, guardrails, and failsafes
• Abstract the interface from the implementation 
• Have backups
• Have a plan B, C, D (burn the ships is romantically overrated)
• Watch what they do. Modify accordingly. 
• Invest in a network

For flexibility:

• Allow yourself to decide later
• Play devil’s advocate
• Instead of “What will happen?” try “What else could happen?”
• Follow your curiosity
• Challenge and reconfirm, or change, beliefs
• Practice discomfort
• Daydream about the what-if (not all the time, but occasionally)
• Give yourself grace for past failures and poor decisions. The lesson learned should rarely be “I’ll never do that again.” Rather, it should usually be “This is what I’ll do different next time.” There are some important exceptions, of course. 

Preparing for the future isn’t about being right. It’s about being able to respond when you’re wrong.