Now Squared

On the continuum of life, there are those who are stuck in the past. They live looking through a rear-view mirror, smiling at their successes and fretting about what might have been.

Others plant themselves firmly in the mediocre present where their days are predictable and the surprises few.

Others are mavericks, hurling themselves into the future with bold plans, taking care to burn their ships to prevent retreat.

99% of mavericks fail. They go down in flames, tripped up by some nasty surprise they didn’t foresee when viewing the future through the lens of the present.

The 1% of mavericks who succeed receive extraordinary acclaim. They are heralded as visionaries. The press gushes over their wealth and beauty, creating lists to rank these heroes by riches, influence and prestige. Successful mavericks sell books by the millions, explaining step by step how everyone can repeat their success. Failed mavericks never get book deals.

Mavericks are needed. The innovations spawned by their risk taking help create the future. Mavericks are indeed visionary. The question is how clear was their vision beforehand.

Mavericks, like everyone else, are near-sighted. Their vision is fuzzy. The 1% of mavericks who cross the finish line and are crowned with laurels and wealth rarely acknowledge they were at times stumbling in the dark. Success always appears inevitable to those who are successful. When looking backwards in time, the beaten path the maverick sees that led to his or her success looks straight and true. The lucky breaks and near disasters are hidden from sight. That’s not to imply that mavericks’ success is all due to luck and randomness. Only that there is a happy dance between skill and serendipity.

I applaud mavericks. I admire them. I just don’t like the odds. That is why I’d rather live on the leading edge of the present. Not stuck in the past, or muddling in the boring middle, nor blazing the maverick’s trail to glory or disaster. I’d rather be a step or two behind the maverick.

How do you live on the leading edge of the present? That’s what this blog is about, but here is a summary of steps covered in earlier posts.

1. Try the ideas and products successful mavericks produce. I’ve mentioned before these ideas are legion, as numerous as popping corn.
2. Don’t burn your ship when trying these new ideas, rather scale the experiment based on its risk. As the personal cost of being wrong about an idea or decision increases along with the uncertainty of success, the size of the bet should be reduced.
3. Measure the results of the experiment, paying particular attention to the unexpected, to the surprises both good and bad.
4. Step back and put the results in context. Look for patterns. What does your intuition say about the results?
5. Experiment some more, be a piece-meal engineer, a tinkerer. Take incremental steps to edge you closer to the future.

These are of course just steps. What are needed are more examples. A topic of many future posts.