A Little Happier: Don’t Know What Will Happen in the Future? Try to Understand Now.

Everything is changing so fast these days, there’s so much discussion of what the world will be like in two years, five years, twenty years.

It can seem confusing and impossible to manage.

I feel this as a writer, as a podcaster, as a Facebooker…my work is changing so fast, it can feel overwhelming at times, and I think, “How do I figure out what to do, when I have no idea what the future holds?”

I remind myself of something I heard a panelist say at a media conference many years ago. He was a futurist, and he said about his firm, We know we can’t predict the future, so we try to understand what’s happening now. Which is surprisingly hard. But it turns out that if you understand now, you really understand now, you learn a lot about the future.”

I’ve found this to be very helpful. When I’m confused about what to expect from the future, I spend some time trying to understand better what’s happening now.

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