Think Bigger, Think Better

Issue No. 14 : The four skills to future-proof your life + more road trips for the people

Taking the road by letting the road take us is the plan. Photo: Per Håkansson.

Reading 15+ books on Longevity has really changed my perspective on life and living. Just like anything my generation has innovated – from entrepreneurship to working anywhere – we have now also the opportunity to live differently.

A switch was flipped in my head and I now understood why I’ve been so focused on freeing up my time, attention, and creative energy over the past 20 years: it’s to explore how we’ll live when the imperatives of evolution are being satisfied.

Them being of course reproduction and accumulation. Imagine you’ll live to one hundred; the first fifty percent will go to initial education, work, and child-rearing. But what will you do with the second 50 percent if you can stay healthy?

I don’t believe that previous generations ever thought about post-consumerism. They were still deeply scarred by a world of scarcity and followed loyally the one path that lead to a few years of retirement and then the inevitable end.

But for us Gen XYZ:ers who have had access to the Internet since collage and experienced a world of abundance, material accumulation doesn’t really make any sense anymore. What we all have in common is the drive to explore better.

Of course, I cannot speak for everyone. I know Baby Booming (1946-1964) Minimalists and Millenial (1981-1996) hoarders. They say that believes and values can originate all the way back seven generations, so it’s no one’s fault.

The most valuable skill I learned from getting involved with the Internet at the time of the first web browser in 1994 is that you have to experiment. Back then, there were very few people that believed that the world would one day be digital.

So whoever experimented had a great advantage by being ahead of the curve by at least 10 years, sometimes even 20 years. This might sound unimaginable from the noisy and busy center but I can assure you it was clearly visible from the fringe.