How to thrive in an unknowable future
(part of the “do this” directives)
1. Prepare for the worst.
Since you have no idea what the future may bring, be open to the best and the worst.
But the best case scenario doesn’t need your preparation or your attention.
So mentally and financially prepare for the worst case, instead.
Like insurance, don’t obsess on it. Just prepare, then carry on appreciating the good times.
2. Expect disaster.
Every biography of a successful person has that line, “And then, things took a turn for the worse.”
Fully expect that disaster to come to you at any time.
Completely assume it’s going to happen, and make your plans accordingly.
Not just money, but health, family, freedom. Expect it all to disappear.
Besides, you appreciate things more when you know this may be your last time seeing them.
3. Own as little as possible.
Depend on even less.
The less you own, the less you’re affected by disaster.
4. Choose opportunity, not loyalty.
Have no loyalty to location, corporation, or your past public statements.
Be an absolute opportunist, doing whatever is best for the future in the current situation, unbound by the past.
Have loyalty for only your most important human relationships.
5. Choose the plan with the most options.
The best plan is the one that lets you change your plans.
(Example: renting a house is buying the option to move at any time without losing money in a changing market.)
6. Avoid planning.
For maximum options, don’t plan at all.
Since you have no idea how the situation or your mood may change in the future, wait until the last moment to make each decision.
great post Derek. Serendipity meets highly unlikely options more often.
Hi Derek,
Thank you for the post. Your advices seem, in Taleb's words, to minimize the probability of black swans and maximize the chances of white ones.
The only thing I would personally add - #7. Gradually grow your ability to tolerate pain, stress and discomfort.
The last one (#6. Avoid planning) might be somewhat controversial though. While I am also gravitating towards "in-the-moment" mode of decision making, I can't stop asking myself what is the value of planning (and "concepts" in general). One can't deny that walking with a map is safer than without one. The problem starts when one believes the map more than his eyes. Likewise planning is useful only so much as one is able not to allow planning spoil the "in-the-moment" experiencing. Thus in new city I love browsing the streets and often in the morning appoint some destination to reach . Yet while in the journey for that destination I feel free to disregard it and experience something else I spontaneously meet. So it's not so much "Avoid planning" as "Disregard planning when it's conflict with on-going experiencing"...
☺ Very cool. I like that. You're right. — Derek
These recent posts are so ridiculously aligned with how I think lately, it's not funny anymore ;-)
I have probably been influenced by all your previous information.
Keep writing, love it.
This certainly appeals to the nomad in me...
Great post! I think I will benefit from quite a few of your ideas. I just finished reading your book Anything You Want and it was unbelievably helpful. I'm trying to create a business and your book took a lot of pressure off of me. Just wanted to say THANKS!!
good advice for being at this moment
Sound advice from a free thinker. I admire how your message is clear and to the point. Having few if any expectations about life leaves one free to experience it as it comes. We often commit our self to too many obligations and then become tethered to our promises. Better to reinvent ourselves in each waking moment to appreciate the beauty and mystery in life.
All of what you said works great but the fundamental reason for living is to be happy or at peace.
People feel if that to be happy they will need more.
but they can never be happy because there is always more.
Saving more, spending more, prepared, winging it etc is a form of more.
That leeds to suffering with less until you have more.
The cycle of pain and suffering until we leave this world.
You are already happy and at peace. Wanting more is when you suffer.
There is no more or less. Just this moment in time is what's real.
All the rest is just thoughts that are not real.
I agree with almost all of these (except the last one), and I'll just leave a couple of related thoughts.
1. Expecting the worst and preparing accordingly is paramount, but there are pitfalls there: if you expect a complete crash of the global economy, your preparations will be different than if you expect nuclear war, or if you expect that your country will become a dictatorship. And there are so many ways that things can go wrong that it's hard to know how exactly you should prepare. Should you build a shelter? Grow your own food? Save money in the bank? Bury it in your yard? Put it into crypto? Ideally, you'd do it all, but in a world of limited resources, you have to prioritize and limit how much you diversify. So knowing that you should prepare is just a part of the solution. Knowing HOW is harder.
2. Planning is just simulating the future in your own head, and finding ways to navigate through it. You will undoubtedly make decisions at some point, so might as well do it sooner to avoid the uneasiness of not being decided. "Hesitation is always easy, rarely useful." (That is not to say that you should stick to all previous plans despite changing circumstances.)
As a professional planner (IT project manager), I have always loved Eisenhower's quote "...plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
Life is uncertain so it’s a good thing to always be ready that’s why always say it was fun while it lasted
Pretty much how I try to live and am labeled insane by friends for it.
I don't know if this is because my birthday also has to be at September 22, or because your exceptionally correct in all you are saying .But you said the only mantra that matters.
It happened this way, since April 2015 when I was first introduced to you through forwarded email, I become your silent student And I do not accept other gurus.
Bravo Dereck !
Great realistic list to face future uncertainties.
I would add one very important point, build your mental toughness; Your ability to face challenges, take risks, stay positive and hopeful
Your resilience and opening your mind to unlearn and learn to overcome any external stressors. Basically, strive to thrive!
Hi Derek! I love how I got pulled to your writing yet again.
I have started a company (incorporated just today) so I'm quite in tune with what has been working and what has not. I've also recently embraced Eckhard Tolland and have been experimenting with how someone can live focusing almost completely on the moment.
I must say my embrace of the moment has led to a sense of ease and focus that I have never experienced before, so many of your points here are well-received. However I encourage you to perceive it from the Stoic perspective of being one with the world, rather than trying to plan against it.
1. Preparing for the worst seems initially to me to be just as unhelpful as preparing for the best. Both are illusions. If your objective is to make the most impactful decisions in the moment, placing your attention on observing the world allows you see the true variables that run closest to your situation and offer you the most actionable solutions for security's sake.
2. Love it love it! My old philosophy teacher told me "Never base your happiness on things that can be taken away from you, because they always will be". This mantra has meant different things to me since college, but it's great.
3. Totally agree. Right now I'm on a tropical Island riding out Covid. Never could have got here if I valued my attachment to my material possessions over my love of travel. I've found they have an inverse correlation :)
4. Love it
5. Love it. I'm discovering as I create my company there are so many directions at every step I can take. My lack of rigidity has really helped it flower in the early stages.
6. While I like the idea of flexibility behind this one, I think planning is too broad of a concept to totally reject. For example. I live day to day. If I don't have a plan, I'm not productive. Unless I'm working toward a particular set goal, I just kind of float around. Planning for me has become a critical step in lifting myself out of the working-class lifestyle I was bred and raised to perpetuate.
Love your writing keep it up!
-T
Derek, I can't argue with your "not loyalty" belief, because In my lifetime, with the last 40 years being under the Reaganomics model, and the Vietnam-years before that, I have seen loyalties weaken in many areas of society.
Younger people today, like your friend Mark Manson, age 36, have never known a world without Reaganomics.
When I was a boy, and people dressed up for air-flights, it was remarkable, perhaps "unAmerican," to hold more than one passport. Not now.
Now I merely see my job as a gig, or "day job," and my country is becoming a bedroom community.
This all makes sense to me, now that I've read the sixth book in your book list, "The Guide to the Good Life."
The stoic philosophers of 2,000 years ago were wise..
Hello Derek! An honest question (I love your philosophy of life!):
How can you prepare for the worst (point 1) without planning (point 6)?
My thoughts about this even before reading your post is that I do like planning (and thinking in general, for which I get generally bad reactions as if I was suffering for thinking about possible outcomes). But I do like even more to abandon plans because better stuff comes up.
This applies easily to traveling: I prefer to plan things or are least know options. If when the travel arrives better things come up, I will be very happy to abandon the original plan. But this way I have a baseline. Not always nice things come up just by waking up and waiting (or even walking around).
Cheers!
Sounds like you've already found the solution. ☺ — Derek
Love it!