Seth Godin’s daily thoughts are always provocative and thoughtful, but today’s is a particularly timely and apt one for the new year. Godin describes three ways of coping with the future: Accuracy (correctly guessing what will happen); Resilience (admitting you can’t make accurate predictions, so preparing to weather a variety of storms); and “Denial” (pretending nothing will change and getting clobbered as a result). I’m shooting for “Resilient” myself, but if I’m brutally honest, I have to admit that I have moments where I assume that I can be Accurate and where I’m too tired to do anything except Deny.
Accuracy is the most rewarding way to deal with what will happen tomorrow–if you predict correctly. Accuracy rewards those that put all their bets on one possible outcome. The thing is, accuracy requires either a significant investment of time and money, or inside information (or luck, but that’s a different game entirely). Without a reason to believe that you’ve got better information than everyone else, it’s hard to see how you can be confident that this is a smart bet.
Resilience is the best strategy for those realistic enough to admit that they can’t predict the future with more accuracy than others. Resilience isn’t a bet on one outcome, instead, it’s an investment across a range of possible outcomes, a way to ensure that regardless of what actually occurs (within the range), you’ll do fine.
And denial, of course, is the strategy of assuming that the future will be just like today.