Though I have approached the subject in many ways, the immediate inspiration was the title of this post – The Allergy to Uncertainty. As is my wont, I projected it onto myself, and began (over?)analysing. 😀
Reasons & Seasons
Why do I have the allergy? At one level, I could answer that I am (at least partly) a product of my past. I think I had a lot of uncertainty in my formative years – change of schools and friends, change of homes, change of what I’d call a security system. And as a child, I think certainty in the context of academic/ singing/ quizzing results brought validation and less punishment. It created the “false self” constructed to survive childhood – something I learned from this excellent book.
I first read Kavi’s post on tattoos, which started with how he turned down even a temporary one. I could relate to that, and the post made me wonder what was my discomfort with getting a tattoo.
My immediate thought was optionality. But thanks to some excellent coincidence, right below that post (in my feed) was one by The Marginalian which gave me a different perspective.
We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in, ideologies to think in — and yet some primal part of us knows that none abides, knows that we pay for these comforting illusions with our very aliveness.
It is freedom weekend in this part of the world. We make an impromptu lunch plan, and use the metro. Then go to a mall for bubble tea, our new comfort drink. There is something metaphorical about that – our bubble inside a messy reality. I noticed that at the restaurant, on the roads, in the mall, there weren’t a lot of smiling people. I reflect that maybe it’s a sign of the times. After all, if you go by social media, everyone else is doing better.
And it isn’t just online, it’s a reality too.I think specifically about the service staff in the restaurant, security guards at the metro station. They are working on a day when everyone else has the day off. Waking up early, going back late. They are living lives of precarity, something I read in Eula Biss’ Having and Being Had.
“…depending on the will or pleasure of another was the original meaning of precarious, and that it comes from the Latin for prayer. Precarity is everywhere, it seems. Maybe it is, as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing writes, the condition of our time. It is also the defining feature of an entire class of people, the precariat.
Illness or disability can force somebody into the precariat as can divorce, war, or natural disaster. The precariat is composed of migrant workers and temp workers and contract workers, and part-time workers. People who work unstable jobs that offer “no sense of career.” There are few opportunities to advance in these jobs, and no way to bargain for better terms.
I chose pre-tirement a year and a half ago, in my mid-40s. Yep, it’s a thing – the space between full-time work and retirement – a reduced workload in return for $ that meet my needs and some wants. Monika Halan’s recent column reminded me of the real question I grappled with: “Will I outlive my money or will my money outlive me?”
I agree with her take on the learn-earn-burn model and sketchy finfluencers, but I don’t think the classic career peak-in-your-50s idea will last. Here’s why.
1. Short-termism is now baked into most companies. Layoffs, shrinking business cycles, and the fast pace of disruption mean you’re constantly solving new problems with new tools. That’s largely fluid intelligence, which peaks around 40. Until now, we’ve extended careers beyond 40 largely with crystallised intelligence (experience, wisdom), but AI is catching up with both. Soon, someone younger, faster, and AI-enabled might do the same work cheaper.
2. That also means even a decade-long career may be a stretch. Once humans turn knowledge into rules, rules become algorithms, automation happens and jobs disappear. Damn AI learns!
3. This shift is especially brutal for Gen X and Millennials who weren’t prepared for it. Add subpar savings, unhealthy lifestyles, and rising stress, and mental and physical health issues are inevitable. And no, companies won’t support you.
Since I’m aged enough to offer unsolicited advice: if you’re in your 30s/40s, aim for pre-tirement by 50. Think of it as a Pascal’s wager. Better to have financial freedom so you can grow on your terms, and are not forced to make money-driven choices.
The path? Good old compounding – of intelligence, wealth, health, and relationships. 1. Stay curious. Keep learning. Solve new problems to keep your mind sharp. 2. Spend and invest consciously. Don’t finance today’s wants at the cost of tomorrow’s needs. 3. Stay healthy, not just fit – body and mind. Saves you meds money and lets you enjoy your freedom. 4. Find people in whose company you can be yourself. It aids the above three too.
In the near and mid-term, AI’s quick evolution will question not just work’s efficacy as an income provider, but also its ability to deliver a sense of purpose. On an existential scale, I think the second will cause more damage.
A theme has been emerging, even more stronger since I wrote “Living a life of Intentionality“. Pithily summarised as “At this age, I prefer an identity that provides the least friction and regrets in the life I want to lead.” How do I get there? A key factor I identified for myself is acknowledging the difference between my wants and likes, and deeply questioning my wants. Where does that get me? From that post, Intentionality helps you have your needs and considered likes as anchors. When that happens, a whole lot of clarity emerges – what you spend time and money on, people whom you will go overboard for, how you plan your days, weeks and months, and what can get you out of those lil twinges of envy and seemingly deep pools of a mid-life crisis.
But while I was trying to get there, I encountered a strong opponent – myself, or rather, my identity. I first brought it up in Marshmellowing. The key point in the first was how in my approach to getting what I needed/wanted, my larger desire for ‘freedom’ led me to optimising for optionality – a huge bias for scenario planning. I think the identity I created thanks to this is aptly called the Marshmallow mind (by Frederik Gieschen), and its best expression is a poem I read in Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, attributed to A.E. Housman
The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers’ meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.
In Marshmellowing – The Prequel, I wrote about my path to this identity/self image from childhood. A great description of it appears in Robert M. Sapolsky’s Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. In the personality section, Sapolsky practically described my (former) Type A personality down to a behavioural “time-pressuredness” (research by Meyer Friedman and colleagues), default hostility, and a persistent sense of insecurity, the last being a predictor of cardiovascular problems. Add to it disciplined, discomfort with ambiguity, and (formerly) repressive in terms of emotional expression, and you have my profile! Damn!
My self image, and increasingly my identity was the kind of person who thought in a certain way and behaved in a certain way. While its origins was my ‘responsible child’ identity that possibly repressed my freedom of emotional expression in favour of (parental) attachment, in adulthood, it transformed into a “responsible adult” self image that ironically optimised for freedom and optionality, and underplayed the need for attachment. It became an identity, and many of my decisions were biased in that direction.
It is only in the very recent past – through reading and reflection, that I have begun to be at least a little fine with unplanned-ness. As I wrote on LinkedIn, the universe’s tendency is randomness! An excellent read in a different context was The Tao of Physics. I realised that In both quantum field theory and eastern philosophies, physical phenomena (including us) are mere transient occurrences in an underlying entity. How humbling that is!
I think I have made progress by moving from fixed goals through fixed strategies to fixed goals through flexible strategies. I hope, after we are confident of financial freedom, that I can move to flexible goals and flexible strategies. Meanwhile, the biggest task in all this is the mindset. Mindset made the identity, and now it has to dismantle it. Erich Fromm wrote this a long time ago – “Life, in its mental and spiritual aspects, is by necessity insecure and uncertain…The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself, is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity without panic and undue fear“. Decades later, we have a pithier version.
