The Great Migration and the Great Change – ElPropósito4 min de lectura

Why we need to unlearn, learn and be born again

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

We stand on the threshold of sweeping technological change in every part of life, personal and professional. The real advantage will come from migrating out of the era we were born, raised and educated in, and learning to unlearn, learn again, grow and be born again. That’s the great change that will define any person or organization this century. It’s the first step we need to take, and we need to be aware of it before setting any new course.

There’s plenty of talk about resistance to change and the comfort zone. It goes hand in hand with the inheritance we carry, which has many faces, beliefs and facets. This era asks us to leave behind perhaps 80% of what we learned, believe or take for granted, or to complement that large share with new skills that demand we learn, practice, motivate ourselves and seek feedback constantly all over again.

Resistance to change often starts with the speed of everything around us, which can feel overwhelming. It deepens with the mismatch between what we know, believe and trust and what the world demands. Getting on that highway and keeping pace starts with small changes: opening up to more people, listening to new opinions and trusting that this century’s solutions call for all our potential, and everyone else’s, in service of the answers we seek.

Trust plays, and will keep playing, one of the most fundamental roles. When we talk about delegating and empowering, the value that links the two is trust, and what defines both is the willingness to share that emerges when we practice them. Information has gone from being locked away (in brains or in big servers) to being available to everyone around the clock, and that shift is clearly behind much of the uncertainty we’re living through.

So information overload leads us to trust that others, too, can find many ways to solve the same problem. And this great change pushes us to look from other positions as well, especially a humbler, more human and more adaptive one.

It’s easy to see, then, why today more than ever we’re searching for meaning in what we do. Changes of this magnitude force us to rethink everything, and the window of opportunity lies in finding how everything we want to do from now on can come to life while we raise our own wellbeing and that of others and leave the world better than we found it.

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to read this blog, and for the appreciation you show me in the messages that reach me. They lift my spirit.

This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: Who was Friedrich Nietzsche? I’ve always found Nietzsche’s work hard to grasp. I’ve read his books once, they sit in my library, and they’re on my list to reread. After this video, my ideas about his body of work are much clearer, as is how complicated his life was, plus one telling fact: his friendship with Wagner and the start of what would shape his path forever.
• What I’ve been Listening to: Jeff Bezos in 1999. In 1999 Amazon was just getting started. I’m amazed by its founder’s vision, and by how, 20 years later and despite the dot-com crash, Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world. Everything in this interview shows a genuine match between what he thinks and what he does. Anyone who’s bought something on Amazon will relate and can see how what Bezos imagined and put into practice is reality today. One line from his vision that stood out: "What I care about is providing the best customer service. If you can focus obsessively on the customer experience, selection, ease of use, low prices, more information to make purchase decisions with, more and better customer service, then you have a good chance of predicting which company will be the best over the long term".
• What I’ve been Reading: How psychedelic drugs may transform mental health care. A powerful article from one of my favorite authors, Tim Ferriss. It covers the potential of psychedelic substances to treat psychiatric conditions that conventional treatments can’t reach today, who’s leading the research, and the impact these compounds could have on medicine worldwide. Mental health is a huge global challenge (according to the WHO, 300 million people suffer from anxiety disorders, to give one example). Care is also expensive, and affordable treatment is needed. The research so far is very promising. Worth reading.
• What I’ve been Learning: 3D printers. A revolutionary technology that’s being democratized at great speed. "It’s the intersection of software, hardware and molecular science". It’s a huge opportunity to manufacture all kinds of solutions anywhere in the world, at small and large scale. For example, fully affordable housing ($4,000).

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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