Future Here Now: The Same Old Thing gives Diminishing Returns

SIgnals

In this issue:

• Those business incentives aren’t helping

• The fading American Dream

• Preparing for the future in middle school

In the last newsletter I raised the concept of Extinction Events – a psychology term for people’s tendency to double down on an old behavior when it stops working, for a short period before they’re forced to conclude it doesn’t work anymore. It’s like our tendency to whang on an elevator button three or four times, before we sigh and give up and try to wait patiently for the doors to open.

A similar phenomenon happens when we keep doing the same thing, even as it gets harder/more expensive/more time-consuming to do it that way… and when the results show less and less benefit to you. Even when that happens, we tend to do that thing more, for a while at least, until we finally have to admit that it ain’t working no more.

These stories show us

• A first crack in the armor of an old, expensive assumption,

• An assumption that clearly isn’t working, and

• A very accessible example of a system changing to fit a new reality.

Too often, we don’t realize that we are getting diminishing returns from our efforts until a lot of waste and damage has been done. If we were paying attention, and being honest with ourselves, that might not be the case.

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Those business incentives aren’t helping

Our mainstream news systems do a lousy job of covering