Big decisions

How many of these have one taken over my lifetime? How many of these does one need to get right?

I was with my sis A last weekend. She had moved her family to Melbourne, very much for the sake of the kids and their education. I asked my 10 year old niece what she thought of the schooling system in Australia, and she felt that it was less academically inclined but more holistic.

I am now keenly exploring the implications from the digital disruption phenomenon to society. One of the danger spots is indeed that the education systems of today are not quite producing people who can thrive (ie being gainfully productive) tomorrow. Most tasks can and will be automated. Those who will do well in the future are those who can function beyond the tasks, ie make the connections within the system or better still design the systems. Education today therefore has to evolve, and produced less students who master tasks from rote learning but those who can creatively connect the dots.

So, my sis and her husband have made a big decision right. It's never easy to uproot a family, but as a minority ethnic group in a still not racially integrated country, the push factor is also high.

Then again, we come from a long line of migrants. Firstly being Hakkas where the very name of our ethnic group suggest we are not local to the place we were living in. My grandfather was a migrant.

photo credit: humanosphere.org

As for me, I have made several similar big decisions, including also moving my family to another country, as well as taking leaps of faith in career moves. However, the way one goes about making this decision differs. But for me and D, and even J and increasingly M, we use a decision matrix. It's our training from management consultancy or even our grounding in information science. Break the decision down into key parameters, weight each parameter and score the competing options.

This form of rational decision making does require one to be unemotional. And to me, that is the magic of making big decisions. It's all about trusting the thinking process.

Mind over the heart in this case. Over dinner last night, M asked me about loneliness and I repeated a a construct I have held dearly: that being alone and being lonely are completely different things. One can be lonely even when amongst friends and vice versa. The key is the active, even proactive intent. If spending time alone is what you'd like to do, then do it and you won't feel lonely. if you don't want to be alone, then mingle and that act would ensure you won't be lonely.

But doesn't all these just make us more like the AI-infused machines and robots that are threatening to disrupt us? Well, yes and no. And no in three respects: we think to overcome melodrama (and the fact that we are sentient makes us special), we think differentially on big vs small things (showing we know the difference and can see the long game) and finally we can think beyond the task (and we can see the big game).

Being able to out think the machines mean we can decide big and get them right every time!