Sit Up and Pay Attention

Everything is changing. What's happening day to day now probably won't be relevant to what happens in 5 or 10 years but the moves we make right now in how you position yourself (in all contexts) will determine everything for our long term prospects and futures.

It's absolutely natural to have concern, fear, and stress - it's been baked into the cake of our psyches. Those that had no fear probably didn't last long in a world full of predators and dangers we wouldn't recognize now. Take zero risks and the likelihood of survival also falls to zero. So there needs to be some balance. And that risk/reward system stays with us in our core, informs how we act and make decisions. Survival was all that mattered then, and for thousands of generations. Until everything changed. It worked out ok for those that sat up and paid attention.

Burn out is a natural outcome of these shocks to our system:

For many of us, the workplace is (by far) the most stress inducing part of our lives. We aren't worried every minute that every little thing can kill us; we have more time to think, to worry about all the slights and oversights, the behind the back politicking and to our face assholishness (cc Alina Doran, CPCC, ACC).

How can we overcome that? It's not the office per se that causes stress, but needing to be in an office environment can definitely add to a lot of those emotions: this video made me feel all the emotions -

Maybe it was all a big mistake? I'm talking civilization. I'm talking the ability to hear and the ability to see. Ok, that's a stretch but only by a bit...

Technology has always been developing and changing the way the world works, the way we engage with the world globally and one on one. The way we operate could not be imagined by our great grandparents, it's such a unique time in human history. What I also believe is that we won't recognize how our grandchildren operate. We have a hard time conceiving what we have never seen but there are some ways we can prepare for the unknown and how it will all impact us. And now is the time to sit up and pay attention.

For most of human history we could outrun the bear that was chasing us. More specifically, we just had to outrun the other people trying to outrun the bear. Learning how to overcome challenges, to utilize technologies in pursuit of that goal; that's been the human endeavor since we started using fire and some basic tools. How will AI be a tool that helps us survive is a big question that we just don't fully know the answers to yet. But knowing how to leverage the platforms it is enhancing and creating will lead an there's no-one better to hear from in this regard than Serena H. Huang, Ph.D. We are looking forward to this conversation and your thoughts, questions, and feedback.

Another good start resource and expectation setting-wise is this piece from Emily Friend

There's so much going on right now, it's impossible to keep up. Maybe that's a good use case for AI. Maybe it's the best way to Secure the Bag.