Modes

It’s amazing how easy it is to shift between modes of thinking.

As you may have read in Trust Agents, I write using the Dvorak keyboard. Just now as I sat to write a post about something else entirely, I looked down and began typing the way you probably do– the way it says on the keyboard. This came out– “gls.dotsfojdaheldk” — before I realized what I was doing. So I shifted the layout and kept going. Easy.

It seems simple, but we don’t really think about the daily shifts we do. If you speak several languages fluently, you shift between one and the other, like I do at home with my parents. Same if you drive manual instead of just automatic. But we need to train ourselves to become that versatile– it takes time. Not only that, but we have to know what to adapt to– in advance.

Who will we learn this from? I suspect we’ll learn it from those who thrive in highly chaotic environments– probably business, nature, and sports. Those whose bodies and minds are capable of changing quickly based on an infinite variety of circumstances will teach us what we need to know. This is why we need to be Renaissance Men more than ever– because some of our modern challenges, we’ve never faced before.

On another note, I just moved, and with that, all my habits became disrupted. I have to find new ways to make work the same gears that were already in place beforehand. But it’ll take time. It requires experimentation, and I won’t know what my ideal method is for a while.

How did you figure it out when your life changed? What event took place that disrupted everything? How did you recover?