This posting is about leaving behind irrelevant outmoded ideas and ways, and being adaptable enough to survive and thrive in today (rather than yesterday’s world).

Today I heard a story about some grandparents who always rush through meals when going to a restaurant for dinner. As soon as they get there, they have their entree, their main meal and dessert as quickly as possible, and then leave.

The reason for this is that was the way that it was done in London during World War II when the city was being bombed by the Luftwaffe. You’d have your meat first, then everything else next in case you had to run to the bomb shelter when the air raid sirens sounded.

So behaviour that made sense over 60 years ago in war time in London is still being applied today in a city on the other side of the earth. It apparently causes family consternation when the grandparents fit and fidget between courses at restaurants. Whilst respecting the impact of war on these people, this is an example of being controlled by ideas and rules that are no longer relevant.

This reminds me of a story I heard about a woman who always cut the ends off her roast. Her husband wondered why and asked her and said that was how her mother showed her to do it. Next time they saw her mother, he asked her why, and she that was because her mother had done it that way. The grandmother was very old, but next time they visited her, he asked her about it. She laughed, and said that she always did that because she had a small oven. So again, a rule that was relevant in the past is no longer useful. In fact it just results in extra work for no return.

It is easy to not adapt to the world, and wonder why life is passing you by. This is just a matter of following the old rules which applied to a different world and not thinking for yourself and finding out how things now work.

For example, in the Great Depression, the safest and most profitable course of action was to find a secure job and stay there. Now this advice is no longer relevant. The most profitable companies regularly lay off thousands of staff. In today’s environment, the best approach is to have your own business and have flexible skills and be employable, rather than spending an entire career developing skills that may be of no value elsewhere. Playing the game based on the wrong rules leads to an unfortunate outcome.

The old way might have been to keep your money in the saving account in your bank at 0.01% per annum. Now, a cash management account may be better, or you might have your investments in a bond fund instead.

The principle is to be pragmatic and adapt. The adaptable person survives and thrives no matter what happens. The inflexible person who doesn’t think for themselves goes by the wayside.

If what you are doing is not working, then the answer is to not keep repeating the same activity, but to look for another way. Your rules are obsolete and no longer effective or useful. There is a difference between persisting in something that is getting you closer to a goal and repeating an activity which is completely ineffectual and just wastes time and effort.

The world changes over time. Some principles are timeless strategies, other rules are tactical only. Once the scenario changes, discard the old tactics and get some new ones. Don’t be a slave to worn out conventions of the past.

Tags: adaptability, obsolete, strategies, tactics

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Living free. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.