Nassim Taleb calls this type of event a Black Swan - an event which is fundamentally unpredictable, and causes the status quo to change. In his books (which have become very popular), he seems to focus a lot on Black Swans in the "macro" world more than how they impact your personal life. But if you think back on your life, it might now be obvious that it is not defined by little, predictable steps, but rather a series of very defined and unpredictable events.
A review of my life shows that there are a multitude of small events that have had a massive influence on where I am now. Most of these escape my memory but they remain important nonetheless. Had a friend not dragged me to a university dance, I would not have met Michela; had my parents not decided to move to the Western Cape, I would never started surfing... I could go on and on. The point is that each of these events could not have been predicted, and each had a vast impact on my life.
What many people (including younger Machiel) sometimes seem to miss, is that no matter how hard you try, it is not possible to predict much of the future, and that means it's usually futile to even try. We can make predictive judgements on risky behaviour, but most other prediction is fraught with difficulty. The inherent randomness in nature and complex collective behaviour of humans makes it unrealistic for us to plan our good and bad fortune.
What you can rather do, is to expose yourself to good fortune and protect yourself from bad luck. This is what Taleb calls being "antifragile". There are ways of being antifragile in most spheres of life, but is sometimes a counterintuitive way of approaching life. So far, finding ways of being antifragile is a little hit and miss as well, and I have seen how two people approach the same problem with an antifragile mindset and get two exact opposite answers. Luckily, it is quite easy to test which answer is really antifragile, since time should eliminate the weaker answer. (Spot the equivalencies here to gene mutation, social order, and investing strategy?)
So, how do you make your personal life more antifragile and susceptible to positive, unpredictable events? Here's a list of things I recommend every now and again:
- Travel to new places
- Force yourself to do new things
- Talk to strangers at social events
- Read history to learn from others
- Actively expose yourself to adversaries
This list is not extensive, but it is definitely a good start. It also leads to one of the main goals of the blog, which is to document how I practise what I preach, and the impact it has on my life.
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