the comfortable state of all spheres of life, your strengths and weaknesses. Meaningfully feel motivated and strengthen the growth mindset. Your environment should promote development and positively influence all spheres of life. And most importantly, you need to know the true causes of your problems and results. Highlight problem areas and find root problems. Most of the problems you can’t solve because you don’t want to or don’t know how. If you are reading a book, then everything is «OK» with the desire. Now you only need to get the necessary knowledge and try it out. If you understand in detail the problems and causes of the current situation, then a solution may arise already at the analysis stage. The problem may not be a problem at all, or there will be no need to solve it. Remember, everyone in the world is against you stopping and figuring everything out. The swift current will always carry you forward, so that you do not have time and energy for this. It’s hard to resist, but it’s possible. This requires a systematic approach, where analysis plays a fundamental role. Conscious life and development are impossible without it.
Chapter 2. Planning
Prologue
Everyone has their own plan until they get hit in the jaw. Then many people, like rats, stop and freeze
In the first chapter, we analyzed what we have to start moving. In the second chapter, let’s move on to where and how to start moving? To figure this out, you need a planning process. Today it is fashionable to hide behind the VUCA-world, so as not to plan. There are no guarantees anyway, and no one knows what will happen. Therefore, there is no point in planning. Yes, no one knows what will happen. Before Tyson, Field Marshal Moltke said that in a battle, the battle plan is the first one to die. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to plan. It is better to start moving according to the plan and deviate than to start moving at random. No matter how scary the VUCA world is, no one bothers to make a plan for a year, quarter, week or day. It all depends on your ability to adapt in the first collision of the plan and reality. The shorter the planning period, the more likely it is that the plan will come to fruition. Because there is more clarity. But at the same time, the shorter the planning period, the more negligent we treat it. We are sure that we will solve everything quickly on the go, and it’s not worth bothering. Has it ever happened to you when you woke up on your day off and didn’t know what to do? Why is this happening? You knew it would be a day off, so have a rest. But you haven’t planned what you’re going to do. As a result, you need to strain yourself, come up with leisure and sort out options. Usually, you end up watching TV series and whining that you didn’t do anything over the weekend. Then a working week starts, and everything looks like a circle that never ends. Most people are busy doing things, not implementing plans. They just don’t have time to stop and ask themselves the question: why am I doing this? What goal does this bring me closer to or what problem does it solve? Because there is no clear goal and plan to achieve it. And when it is not clear what to do, the brain suggests doing what is clear and simple. Many will say they have a plan. It’s in the head, and they follow it. They can even list out loud: «And this must be done, and this …". If you ask them, «Why? What is the deadline and the output result?», they have nothing to answer. Planning is not thinking what you want to do, it is part of a system of self-organization in the form of specific processes. It is very important to learn how to transform a strategy into a process, and a process into a description of specific work actions. Without this, you can only do harm and accelerate the squirrel in the wheel to the speed of light. Fasten your seat belts. We are starting a chapter that will upgrade your knowledge about goal setting and planning.
There are no guarantees
Before planning, you need to take vitamins for thinking in the form of the text below. So that the update of the growth mindset accelerates and gets deep into your mind. Reading about the VUCA world, we seem to understand that there is uncertainty, and this is the norm, but we do not consciously accept it. Because certainty is a drug for our brain, and it’s not easy to do without it. We want to be sure that our company will not be closed during the pandemic, the working meeting will go well, the bank will not go bankrupt, the developer will not disappear, there will be a guarantee of work, we will have enough money to survive the crisis and so on and so forth. We want everything to be clear, stable, predictable. We want to organize everything, get guarantees, insure ourselves, avoid difficulties. We cannot stand uncertainty, and we begin to break down when it is unclear what will happen next. So strong that it is impossible to tolerate it, and we start having anxiety. Research has proven that we tolerate pain more easily than uncertainty, because pain is understandable to us. For example, the uncertainty that everything is going well at work has a worse effect on health than dismissal. No one is to blame for this. This is how our brain works. Look at the SCARF social behavior model (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness), which was developed by David Rock. It explains the five main goals that our brain perceives as critically important:
1. Status – a sense of respect caused by a position in the hierarchy;
2. Certainty – the ability to predict the consequences;
3. Autonomy – a sense of control over what is happening;
4. Relatedness – a sense of security next to others;
5. Fairness – the perception of a fair exchange.
Everything is quite logical. With the help of these goals, our brain fulfills the well-known instinct of self-preservation. From the second point it is clear that the brain wants confidence, and considers all the unknown stuff to be dangerous. It must know what any action will lead to, and will do everything to avoid uncertainty. But there is no certainty! If it were, we could say with 100% certainty that the ruble would not devalue, there would be no self-isolation, a war would not start, a meteorite would not fall to the Earth, etc. We try to make predictions, but there is no certainty anymore. If there had been, then 10 years ago you could have said: «I want to be the manager of a virtual influencer on a social network,» but no one could have imagined that such a thing could be. And no amount of forecasting would help to predict it. No matter how much we strive for certainty, we will never be able to get it. The brain wants what it doesn’t have. Yep, what a paradox. Think for yourself, there is no certainty in anything. Anything can happen, anytime. This has not been news for a long time. Nassim Taleb wrote everything in his books a long time ago. But the task of learning to accept uncertainty is still very relevant.
What to do with uncertainty?
First you need to change your worldview about the future, uncertainty and problems.
1. There is no image of the future anymore. The future has trends, but it is impossible to predict the future just by analyzing them. My wife’s uncle once said: «When we lived in the USSR, everything was clear. It’s like you’re flying slowly and steadily on a spaceship, but it’s clear where you are heading. And now you’re flying on the same ship, but 100 times faster, and meteorites are flying at you. And you only can try to dodge them.» Then there was no certainty either, but there was too little speed to notice it. Today, the speed of the world is regularly increasing and can make a leap in a day. If you are asked at an interview, «who do you see yourself in 5 years?», then you need to leave it or answer with a fictional profession. Let them prove that there will be no such thing in 5 years. Today life is like running in a fog. You can see it up close, but not further than 5 meters ahead. Like a map of the area in a computer game – it opens further when you come to its border.
2. We need to accept the uncertainty. Such a decision will give you the strength to make changes.
