Thread by @alexhillman

Thinking a lot about uncertainty, and related, the illusion of certainty.

Lots of things are hard right now, and much harder for some than others, but many people I’ve talked to in the last few weeks agrees on one thing:

If you’re healthy and alive, one of the hardest parts is having no knowable concept of the future.

It is literally impossible to know for sure what things might look like, or on what timeline.

I just watched a video that compares part of the experience of breaking a broken bone or a medical diagnosis to the current situation.

In those situations, there’s the physical pain, then there’s a mental pain of knowing “life is not gonna be the same for a while.”

In those experiences, and now, part of how we cope with painful experiences (small and large) is by seeking the comfort of the knowable.

I can also look at this through the lens of running a business. As my dear friend @amyhoy has said “starting a business is basically picking a fight with entropy” and I love this quote for some many reasons.

It frames choice as a companion, even an ally, of chaos.

Part of the reason I’ve gotten good at business is because I’ve gotten good at making choices in unknowable environments.

At evaluating the facts I have and trusting myself to make an educated guess that fills in the facts I *can’t* have cuz they haven’t happened yet.

But right now that skill is being tested in new ways.

Time and certainty are intertwined in new ways. Specifically, the amount of time I can be certain of anything is small. That is...scary.

It’s not all bad of course. Money is still being spent in lots of industries. People and businesses still have problems and spend money to solve those problems.

Commerce, uh, *finds a way*

But if you’re used to making plans by reacting to outside influences like OPPORTUNITY and COMPETITION, you’re gonna get super fucked up in these times.

If you define yourself and your choices by the outside world, and the outside world is deeply unstable, you inherently become unstable.

This is also part of why our days and weeks feel so rollercoaster-y right now. It’s like being on a ride designed to disorient and confuse and flip you upside down.

Except we don’t know how long the ride is. We don’t even really know when we got on, or what the exit looks like.

My hypothesis right now is that focusing on an unseeable exit is a very painful distraction from seeing what is right in front of us.

I don’t have a magic fix either. That’s not the point of this thread.

But I have a hunch that staring at the exit (eg “when this all goes back to normal”) is how we will miss our on opportunities to soothe and find calm now.

It’s also how we will create a better future, whenever that is.

This is also why I’m not participating in “what will the future of coworking and offices look like” discussions and instead, am staying focused on finding new ways to serve our community in ways that help them today instead of in some imaginary and unknowable future.

Oh, and here’s the video I mentioned earlier in the thread.