Fast-Forwarding to 2025
I have a few minutes each morning between when I wake up and when I go downstairs to meditate. I do two things during this time: (1) basic hygiene stuff and (2) let whatever thoughts are in my head roll around.
This morning I had the following thought.
It would be nice to just fast forward to 2025.
During some of my recent public talks, Iâve described how the Covid crisis has accelerated work and technology change in a dramatic way. While Iâve said that âwhen this is over, we are going to wake up in 2025â, I then have to explain what I mean by âwake up in 2025.â My idea of simply fast-forwarding to 2025 emerged from that.
The Covid crisis has generated four crises â health, economic, mental health, and racial inequity â that are intermingled. Each individual crisis is complex, not new, and ebbs and flows in the forefront of our collective societal mind.
I recently had someone question me about the idea that the economic crisis was continuous. They asked, âHavenât we had a bull market for a decade?â My response was, âIncome inequality, the occupy movement, Venezuela, European Debtâ and they interrupted with âAh, I get it.â
Usually one of these crises is front of mind for a period of time. I was on sabbatical with Amy when the Ferguson Protests occurred after the Michael Brown murder. We talked about it for several days, explored our own feelings, but didnât take any meaningful action other than a few philanthropic contributions after the moment passed.
After I had a six-month depressive episode in 2013, I put energy into trying to destigmatize depression and mental health issues, especially in tech and entrepreneurship. While my effort here has been consistent, the impact is slow and often invisible.
Remember #MeToo? Gender inequity in tech has lessened, but itâs still a major issue.
It goes on, and on, and on. Yet, right now, these issues, and others, are all colliding in the foreground, with incredible intensity, interwoven in a way that makes an already complex system extremely difficult to navigate.
And then thereâs technology. In January, no one would have said âthe vast majority of the office-based workforce around the world with be working from home, doing video conferences all day long.â Or, âbusiness travel will be largely non-existent.â Or, âthe only restaurant meals you will eat will be takeout or home delivery.â Or, âtelemedicine adoption will make a decade of progress in four weeks.â Each of these activities is dramatically impacted by the technology we have today and enabled in ways that technology providers might have envisioned, but that mainstream society didnât expect to adopt broadly until it suddenly had to.
I recognize that most of us are processing an enormous amount of stimuli in real-time. Thatâs incredibly challenging and ultimately exhausting.
I fully expect several other crises will emerge this year. If you wonder what else could possibly come up, Iâll just remind you that itâs an election year in the US, which is just another massive input into a very complex system.
Iâm not a prognosticator or a predictor of the future. Instead, I like to pretend Iâm in the future, look backward, and try to figure out what to do in the present. While Iâm living in the moment, Iâm going to simultaneous pretend that I fast-forwarded to 2025.