“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
When it comes to a crisis - personal or community, time becomes the ultimate currency. Everything I’ve been thinking about over the past few days has been around buying more time. As a salary man my current plan is divided into two segments:
1. Buying more time for the medium term (3-9 months) - this means aggressively saving money and looking for opportunities in repurposing, upgrading or scaling businesses post-virus.
2. Looking for signals on what the world will be like 12-18 months from now - Would there be a vaccine by then? What technology and sociological shifts should I be paying attention to so that I’m not caught off guard when the post-virus economy kicks off?
It’s also been a forcing function to think about time differently.
The sense of a foreshortened future is replaced by a scramble to figure out what the future holds and how I should orient towards it.
Here are a few curated links that I hope will help orient yourself for the future:
OODA loop - The OODA loop was a tool developed by military strategist John Boyd to explain how individuals and organizations can win in uncertain and chaotic environments.
It is an Acronym that explains the four steps of decisions making: Observe, Orient, Decide Act
Freedom Forge - Explaining the industrial organization in America during World War 2
World 2.0 - A snapshot of a speculative future
Economic Carnage - The businesses that will be destroyed and the ones that will be accelerated