How to develop orientation in a dynamic world

In my last article, I wrote about how cultural advances enable us to learn about anything, but not everything. That the most prominent limitation of our time potentially is attention. That focusing on a few essential things can have a bigger impact on our life than doing many things at a time.

This leaves us with yet another challenge. To choose essential things, you first must have a sense of what is important in your life. You need orientation.

Becoming oriented could be harder now than ever. The more opportunities you are offered and the quicker they change, the bigger the responsibility to know what you want.

The modern challenge of orientation

A prediction by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations published in a paper by the World Economic Forum estimates that 65% of children entering primary school now will end up in jobs that don't exist yet [1].

Some jobs that didn't exist a few years ago but become more influential now are:

• drone operator
• cloud computing specialist
• chief listening officer (CLO)—a person responsible for monitoring an organisation's online presence
• sustainability consultant

Just to name a few.

As another projection, the World Economic Forum states in the Future of Jobs Report 2025 that 40% of workers' core skills are predicted to be disrupted by technological innovation and change by 2030 [2].

The job market is just a benchmark because there is a lot of data available. I believe similar trends are observable in other areas of our life.

We live in a dynamic world.

In addition to a dynamic environment, we are now better at distracting ourselves. We have quick fixes for all kinds of needs.

• Fast food–as a quick fix to being fed.
• Social media–as a quick fix to belong.
• Video games–as a quick fix to achievement.
• Porn–as a quick fix to intimacy.

None of them are necessarily bad. They are easy to attain, and they do work temporarily. But they don't add up. There is nothing you build. No proper body. No proper connections. No proper sense of accomplishment. No proper relationship.

The modern challenge of orientation comes down to:

1. A rapid changing environment
2. An inclination to be satisfied with short-term solutions to our needs.

Given all this, how does one become oriented?

A process to develop orientation

I already wanted to publish this article last Sunday. I didn't. I felt pretentious writing about a topic as fundamental and personal as life orientation. Still, I guess it's a struggle for most and an important topic to tackle.

So here are my thoughts on orientation. You do you.

Perhaps through marketing or movies, we’re sold the idea that we should have a clear vision of our future—like becoming a perfusionist because you refuse to give up on people, even when their own hearts do, living in a spacious New York flat, furnished with a simple yet tasteful Japandi-inspired interior.

I guess it already helps to have a less romanticised view of 'how things make sense in life'. You don't need a clear vision for your future. Not just people, but whole organisations work without meticulously planned strategies from the get-go. It's called emergent strategy.

Emergent strategy to me is best described by the following quote:

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. - Steve Jobs

At any given moment, you try to figure out what you like and what works for you. With time, a pattern develops that you can use for future decisions and situations. Though this pattern didn't exist from the beginning on, it helps to make sense of what you do.

Here are some thoughts on the implementation of emergent strategy:

By trying out things

Discovering what you want, most likely will not come as some sort of intuition if you wait just long enough. It requires actively engaging in the process of trying new things. What you choose to try isn’t as important as continually exploring. You can:

• experiment with different sports—even unconventional ones like powerlifting, fencing, or skeleton.
• explore crafts—such as sketching, playing an instrument, or diving into photography.
• learn new skills—from foreign languages and video editing to practical ones like touch typing.
• take on various internships or part-time jobs. Most of the ones I tried, I didn’t enjoy. That's an insight just as valuable. Knowing what you don’t want to do helps to narrow down the path to what excites you.

By becoming useful

Ones you find things that you enjoy–usually things that you are reasonable good at–you can focus on becoming better at them.

You must not become the best at what you do. Aim at a level, where someone new to the path you chose, can profit from your experience, or where what you do becomes valuable to others and appreciated.

By taking on responsibility

An important realisation for me is, that orientation becomes a lot easier as soon as the process ceases to be all self-centred.

Think about ways to take on responsibility in the things you do. If that's engagement in some sort of club, you can look for newer members. If that's some sort of work, you can look for new tasks or take over new domains of responsibility.

Inspired by a Ted talk I recently watched, here are steps I think I'll use as a guide for the process [3].

Get to know:

1. who you are → Find what you like.
2. what you do → Improve at it.
3. who you are doing it for → Figure out people that can benefit from it.
4. what those people want or need → Figure out a way they can benefit from it.
5. how they change as a result → The impact you have.

That's it for today. Until next time!