Try to imagine your future. Any version of the future you like. Some far away dream about how things would be if you were able to do the things that you have always imagined would make you happy. One year. Five years. Ten?
I am guessing that in whatever future you are imagining you look pretty good, that you have more money than you do now and of course you are alive. Maybe not. Maybe you have already mastered the one skill you need to know to have a better idea of what the future will look like. Maybe you have read Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. If not I would highly recommend it. I have been on a non-fiction kick lately and this is one of the standouts. I found the book on Derek Sivers reading list and was not disappointed. I love the way Derek puts up the notes he takes while he is reading. It gave me a kind of mini preview so that I was able to read the book with some ideas already in mind.
I guess this would be a spoiler alert but I don’t think it will ruin too much for you, however you have been warned. Daniel Gilbert lays out a really good case that surrogation is the best of our available resources to see how the future might look to us when we arrive there. By this he means that we should ask someone who is in the thick of it right now. ( By it I mean whatever future you might want to experience) Don’t ask someone who has been through it in the past. Don’t ask someone who knows someone who is going through it. Ask the person who is experiencing your future right now. I wont go into all the studies and details but it makes a lot of sense if you just think about it. Asking someone who has a ten year old child (like myself) what it’s like to have a baby is asking for trouble. Ask someone with a baby. They are sleep deprived right now. I am not. They are changing diapers and feeding with a breast or a bottle. I am not. I only have vague images of what that time was like. I feel a lot better about it now that I can see what lies on the other side. But if you really want to know what that is like then ask a source you can trust, not a source whose memory is clouded by time and birthday cake. I bet that sleep deprived bottle feeder is dying to tell you how loud their baby can cry. But here is the kicker, you have to listen to the source. You have to heed their advice if you want the future you imagine to be closer to the real future that you will experience. ( In no way am I trying to discourage anyone from becoming a parent, just trowing a little heads up your way.)
A few years ago I decided to move to Austin from Los Angeles. Most of my family is from Texas and I had gone to SXSW a few years in a row and I came home and told my wife we should move. Just sell the house and go. I had been freelancing as a Pro Tools mixer and getting by and I thought that I could move to Austin and do the same. I thought the best course of action would be to fly to Austin and talk to as many people as I could to see what it was like there. I met a bunch of amazing people and ended up moving. But I ignored nearly everything everyone told me and tried to have the future that I imagined and not the one that the people I spoke with were experiencing. And it was a disaster. I remember one woman telling me flat out that moving to Austin with my Pro Tools rig and trying to make a living would be the worst mistake of my life. I don’t necessarily see it that way but I can tell you it wasn’t pretty and what she told me to expect was exactly what I found once I set up shop. It was ugly. I made some great music but making money there was hard. The woman who told me the truth knew that, she was going through it right then and there at the moment I asked her and my experience ended up mirroring hers pretty accurately. I just didn’t listen.
So. Now you know the trick. Ask someone in the trenches. Try not to ignore what they tell you and your future may look a little closer to the one you are trying to have. Just don’t be surprised to see yourself when you get there.