Mike Walsh from StraightPath wants us to write two short notes to former selves. One writing now to ten years ago (2025 me to 2015 me), and one writing what we imagine a future self would write to us now (2035 me to 2025 me). In 2019 there was a “letter to 20-year-old me” post, but that was different. Twenty-year-old me didn’t know about the significance of data or of the technical community, hadn’t started a career yet, was still at university… whereas today’s post is writing to someone who’s a lot like current me, just without the last ten years. And imagining what a version of me in ten years’ time would say. Hmm.
I’m in a business leaders group called Vistage. In Australia it used be to called TEC (I’m quite happy about the rebranding because “TEC” sounds like “tech”. Plus each group has a chair, and “TEC Chair” sounds a lot like “deckchair” to me). Anyway, when there’s a discussion going on, my Vistage chair sometimes says, “If you knew the answer, what would it be?”, which comes from Sir John Whitmore’s book “Coaching for Performance”.
It’s an annoyingly good question because it shifts the perspective a little. It’s not just asking what the answer is (to which “that’s the problem – I don’t know!” is a common response), it’s asking the person to imagine a situation where they already know. It subtly creates courage in the responder, because they’re asked to imagine that they know and that what they know is correct. I say it’s “annoyingly good” because it’s essentially using mind games to get us to move us past not knowing.
Mike’s asking us to write a note to ourselves from ten years in the future is framed similarly. He wants us to imagine a world in which we’ve got through the next ten years, and we now have the benefit of hindsight. He wants us to look back at 2015 with hindsight, to point out that a thing we were going through at the time would work out okay (or maybe the opposite), and then give ourselves similar advice about the thing we’re in now. Essentially, he’s asking, “If you knew you were going to be successful, what would you do/feel differently?” He wants us to prod ourselves into action about something in the world.
For me, I’ve just turned 51. I remember turning 31 and finding it’s still one of the more jarring age-changes I’ve had. Something about changing from “thirty” to “thirty-something” felt like I had entered a different phase of life, and I’m trying not to feel similar this year now that I’m “fifty-something”. Looking back at being 41, and imagining what it might be like to be 61, it’s interesting.
Ten years ago the world felt like it was changing quickly. And now it feels like it’s changing even quicker. In another ten years, I suspect the rate of change will not have slowed at all, although there is a significant chance that a breaking point might have been reached along the way. Ten years ago we had no idea of the events that were coming. Australia had seen five changes of Prime Minister in the previous ten years, but despite only having two more changes since then, the impact of fires, lockdowns, and other global events have made the world seem vastly different.
My advice to 2015 me is to ride with the big waves and to not sweat the small ones. I don’t think I did let the small waves knock me around, but I know there were times that were harder than I’d like. I’m still here though! Data is still data, whether the tools change, or the trend is towards or away from relational, or whether we’re working on-site or remote. Basic needs of society are still the same, and businesses still need their data to be good, insightful, and well-looked after. New ways of doing things might change the day-to-day activity, and people might be dealing with jarring stresses from the world more than ever, but the core needs of society and data-focused businesses are mostly unchanged.
I suspect I’ll feel similar in 2035 looking back at now. I have no idea what will happen in those ten years. AI is bringing change, bringing new tools (as I wrote in August), but I don’t think it will change what people or businesses need – just how we deliver them. People still need people to be there for them, and businesses still need to trust their data and have insight into it. This year I passed 20 years of running the user group in Adelaide, and in another 10 years I might have just gone past 30 – which will be just about half my life by then. The pandemic caused a lot of change to community, and even within the local user group things feel different now to then. But people do still need community, and I will try to help make that happen, whether that’s in the technical community, the comedy community, or the church community.
So the advice I’m going to give myself from the future is to make the right decisions. Keep doing the things that I should be doing, and find the right balance between pushing myself and going easy on myself. Tonight is a case in point – my back is sore, but it often is so I shouldn’t let that stop me going out to Monday night open-mic comedy. I haven’t been in a long while, but I need to get that back into my weekly schedule.
If current me knows things are going to work out, what will I have been doing to help that? Yeah – doing those things that I know are what I should be doing. I’m pretty sure hindsight will thank me for making those good decisions.
@robfarley.com@bluesky (previously @rob_farley@twitter)
