Sorry for publishing this issue a day late. Still trying to reestablish my rhythm after taking a week off…
After taking last week off to spend some time with a friend of mine and his family, I'm back this week with a new issue rather than republishing an existing essay. This week I want to talk about life scripts.
Some of you may already know this, but I used to live and work with a learning and problem-solving community called Exosphere in South America. Having dropped out of college for the second time, I joined this group in Chile around September 2014 to participate in their entrepreneurship bootcamp. On the very first day of that eight week long program, the founder Skinner Layne took us through an interesting exercise I'd like to share with you.
Here's how it goes:
Go through your memories and write down the 15 or so most significant moments of your life, good and bad
Now draw an x and a y axis, with the x axis measuring time and the y axis measuring negative (low) to positive (high)
Place the 15 moments in time on the graph, then connect them all with a line
Take a moment and reflect on the shape you see before you, then write down anything you find meaningful
In the real exercise, we would then discuss what we saw on our respective papers and compare it to the script that most people are taught is how life goes: go to school, get a college degree, get a job, etc, all on a slowly upward inching path with blissful retirement as the endpoint. And while that script has worked for the generation of our grandparents, it may not for us or even our parents, if the debt based financial system that supports it collapses. What's more, the industrial era that gave rise to this script is rapidly being replaced by the information age, which also radically changes how society is organized not only economically but also institutionally and sociologically.
The real kicker of the exercise for me though was the insight that my graph was far from a smooth, linear, upward trajectory. I don't have the real drawing available to me right now, but it looked something much more like this:
Point being of course that the real chart looks much more jagged and rough than the ideal script we get taught as the model to pursue, with plenty of downturns and plateaus along the way. So if you accept that that's the case, and if you also understand that the global institutional and financial system as it was built after World War II makes the order we take for granted inherently fragile, then simply following the script may not be a smart choice. Don't get me wrong, it does make things easier (at least upfront), especially emotionally, but it will also blind you to the opportunities and dangers out there.
So what do you do when you throw out the script?
There are a couple of lenses I like to view this through, each of which can be helpful in its own way and none of which are exclusive to each other.
New scripts
Where do you look for new scripts? One place I see is among the people who seem to know what's going on before everybody else does. An even better measure may be those who seem to break rules you thought were fixed and yet somehow still become and remain successful. You can also take a bit of time to learn more about what changes are happening in the world on a macro level and then try to align your path with the ones that seem least likely to change.
An example in this category of course would be the digital nomad script. I myself have ample experience with it, living in a country I wasn't born and working with people from all over the place. With Covid having changed the game of working online for people everywhere, this script seems to have branched now into digital nomad and digital sessile, with plenty of the older generations taking advantage of the WFH situation while not actually moving around.
Improvisation
If the world around you is changing quickly, another response to this may be to learn to "flow" with it. If you know how to be a pleasant person to be around for others, if you have some basic communication and writing skills, if you can learn quickly, you can simply jump into various opportunities as they become available or as you create them. This isn't just the realm of entrepreneurship, but acting entrepreneurially more generally.
By being willing to sacrifice some of the comfort of more structured and stable jobs, you can build up a relatively broad base of experience fairly early on in your "career". This makes it not only more likely that you'll have little issue finding jobs or gigs later on, but it also allows you to take some risks that may pay off handsomely.
Self Knowledge
Another response to unstable conditions in the external world is to invest in creating a strong internal world. If you know what matters to you and why it matters to you, staying the course against both distractions and challenges along the way is that much easier. Even when you do inevitably fail in some pursuit, you know yourself well enough to take an honest look at why and how, which makes true growth and learning possible.
Self knowledge also appears to me as one of those investments that continue to pay off the further you get. Of course the pursuit itself also paradoxically opens you up to manipulation if you fetishize it, since that makes you susceptible to people willing to take advantage of your self-perceived lack of self-knowledge – there's always more to find out about yourself and there's always someone willing to take your money to supply "revelations".
What’s your approach?
Reply to this email or comment on the Substack post itself to let me know whether your approach fits into one or more of the lenses above, or whether you have an entirely different one. And if you're curious what else my friend and mentor Skinner Layne has to say on this subject, click here to read the essay that was instrumental in my decision to join Exosphere down in Chile all those years ago and begin my own journey of writing my own script.
If my writing sparks something in you, hit reply and let me know. I respond to every email.
Hey Moritz,
You've been on my mind lately. I went to find you on FB and remembered that you'd left that platform... So I came to twitter and found some good content from you there.
I recall not long ago you made me an offer to buy into an organizational program for 'getting all your different ideas organized', and it was tempting, but I was still preoccupied with plans already in motion. Well that's changing fast. I'm certified now as a 'release coach', and I have seed money to start both my coaching business and my visual arts biz... And other projects too. But it's happening now and it's happening fast.
Thanks for the above article... It's encouraging. Mostly because I already find myself doing the things you've described. It's a confirmation/affirmation to find your writing here today.
The last think I recall wanting to ask you about was some program similar to 'scrivnr', that you'd recommended over the above product... And I can't recall the name of it just now.
If you want to write back you can get me at zurv33z@gmail.com or hit me up in the twitter DMs. Thanks man!
-sb