Editor’s note: If you missed last week’s edition of the newsletter, I encourage you to give it a read because it explains the direction I am taking my career – and life. For those interested or curious, here are a couple posts I wrote this week which also reflect this emerging direction: A Spiritual Futurist, To Wander in the Wilderness and Wanted: Ministers of the Sacred.
Think About the End: If I were to encourage you to read only one article from this week’s newsletter, it would be this one: “It’s Called a Pre-Mortem: And It’s the Most Productive Thing You’ll Do This Year.” (It is a Wall Street Journal article and it may be behind a paywall but I believe the paper gives people 3 free articles each month.) The truth is this: If you want to lead a better life, it helps to think about our death. Trust me: This is not a depressing exercise, it is an empowering exercise!
Think Optimistically: Yes, the world is full of serious, wicked problems but it is also getting better in many ways. It’s healthy and beneficial for our souls to occasionally remind ourselves of the latter and here are 144 ways the world got better in 2024. Many are relatively small actions and may not seem particularly consequential but when viewed holistically they serve as a reminder that we too can create a better future every day through our actions–however modest they may be.
Think Ahead: Here is a link to LinkedIn’s 25 fastest-growing jobs of 2025. Not surprisingly, three involve artificial intelligence – which is itself a sign of the times.
Think Fast: Self-driving cars may be here much sooner than you may think. While I’ve been saying this for a while, don’t just take my word for it. Swiss Re, one of the top insurance company’s recently came out with an analysis that shows that Waymo drivers are over 10 times safer than human drivers and are getting exponentially safer with every mile (this is because every Waymo vehicle shares its learnings with every other Waymo car).
Think Smarter: Harvard Business School put out its Seven Trends to Watch in 2025. While I recommend you read all seven trends, the first discusses how nearly half of the publicly traded companies in the US are now focused on climate solutions and services and the number of companies doing so is only going to grow in 2025. While the new administration may roll back some incentives, people and businesses continue to understand the importance of creating a better environment. In 2025 and beyond I expect to continue to see a rise in the creation of B-corps.
Afterthought: “A man who is drenched is not afraid of the rain.”–An ancient Persian proverb
