Half a life-time ago I wrote a book about my business failure titled ‘I’m Not Afraid of the F Word, 50 Lessons learned on the way to business failure’. I recently put it up on Kindle and as I prepared the book to upload, I scrolled through the 50+ lessons in the book and was delighted to discover that so much of what I wrote about well over a decade ago foreshadowed the work I do in futures thinking now. I recalled my favourite (painful) lesson from that book: We are either Preparing or Repairing.
In the book I explain that as my financial situation worsened from my business loss, I had to spend time fixing financial issues instead of investing time in building more financial resources.
The same could be applied to relationships. Our engagements with those we care about sometimes end up in conflict which means that we have to repair the relationship. However, if in anticipation of potential stresses, we prepare the relationship to be resilient then when we encounter a problem we have reserves of respect and compassion for each other that an unfortunate mood doesn’t doom a good friendship.
But let us explore this in terms of being futures literate. We know that to remain relevant in the future requires that we become constant learners. We cannot imagine that a qualification received in our twenties will see us through the next 4, 5 or 6 decades of work life. My last three career choices weren’t even options when I was in university. What happens when we don’t pay attention to the future and how it is changing, is that one day we are rudely forced to acknowledge that we are no longer qualified to do the work we used to excel at.
If our profession or industry has moved on and we have not, then we are no longer relevant. Which means that we go into a panicky response of repairing. We have to find a new job or source of income, perhaps in a vastly different field. Or we have to quickly obtain some new skills or a qualification. Or maybe we have to re-evaluate our entire lives and choose to live differently, reduce our lifestyle, because we can no longer contribute to our previous field.
The pain of that repairing could be avoided if we prepared instead. If we keep a constant mindset of having to upgrade our skills and obtain relevant experience, if we stay aware of changes in our industry and scan far and wide for signals of change, then we can be prepared to take advantage of those changes.
Preparing is always more profitable and less painful than repairing, but we don’t do it often enough because it means an investment of time and effort now, in something that is not immediately required. We sacrifice the future for the ease of the present. But of course that implies that we are not adequately futures literate.
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