PREFACE - INNOVATION OF MEANING: What’s on your mind, monkey mind?
It’s been a decade since I published my first book ‘Creative Personal Branding’ which provides the tools needed to cultivate creative thinking, personal development and branding in order to position yourself and answer what’s next. It offers a structured method to explore what you have to offer the world and how you could position yourself in it through ‘knowledge and imagination’, as well as communicating your personal ‘substance, style, conviction and grace’ to better connect with and contribute to the wider world.
Since then, my journey through life has been blessed with wonderful encounters with many people from diverse backgrounds all over the world. I have had the opportunity to travel, teach and contribute to the workings of companies and governmental organisations, as well as academic institutions. The process of researching and writing this book allowed me to personally observe and experience how groups and communities search for new ways to connect, collaborate and contribute in order to develop meaningful projects. Yet, it has been the exponential rise of information (e.g. fake news) and innovation (e.g. technologies changing the way we work) combined with social (e.g. people falling off the grid), political (e.g. immigration flow), economic (e.g. wealth distribution) and environmental (e.g. climate change) challenges, as well as unexpected events (e.g. Covid-19) over the second decade of the twenty-first century which have shaken not only the limits of capitalism and democracy, but especially our human capacity to deal with them, rationally and emotionally.
Our minds are under constant attack from a wide range of influences from ‘Trump tweets’ to ‘man vs machine’, all of which affect our physical and mental wellbeing.
Moreover, the way we contribute and add value professionally is not only questioned; machine culture might also logarithmically multiply inequality. It reminds me of a cartoon that I saw recently with the title ‘The company of the future’. There was a man, a machine and a dog. Beneath the cartoon was the explanation: “The company of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to make sure the man doesn’t touch the machine.” It was French philosopher René Descartes who first defined humans as ‘divine machines’. As a prominent figure in the rationalism movement which provided a method of understanding the world using reason to obtain knowledge, he developed the first concept of ‘androids’. This concept saw the merging of humans and machines, a notion which fascinates many of us today. However, this idea often results in the creation of overwhelming expectations on human performance. Humans are made to feel the technological competition and start questioning their purpose, soul and meaning.
The common understanding is that we are not machines, neither robots — though we sometimes feel like ‘robots’, not even androids — at least not yet. The beginnings of the ‘robot’ started harmlessly. ‘Robot’ comes from the Czech word ‘robota’, which translates into ‘forced labour’ and refers to the two or three days a week when serfs were made to work for their feudal lord for free. The current term robot was used for the first time in a play called R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) in 1920 by Czech writer Karel Capek. It means a ‘humanoid machine’ or ‘automated gadget’ and, thanks to literature, comics and film, robots gained popularity. Although initially perceived as a threat, they were later portrayed as an invaluable aid to humans, representing modernity and progress.
Ultimately, we want to work with robots, but not for robots. We certainly don’t want to be replaced by robots.
The ‘CTO — Chief Technology Officer’ of a ‘unicorn’ company introduced himself at the Mobile World Conference here in Barcelona by asking the audience in the crowded room if they knew anything about tech.I found this a daring question since I assumed you only spend that much money on the entrance fee if you are professionally interested in tech. Well, 80% of the people in the room were confident enough to raise their hands. The rest were advisedthat it was okay to stay but were warned that they might get lost after a few minutes. People laughed but were still feeling confidentwhen the speaker showed a statistic about how many truck drivers will be replaced by autonomous trucks in the next decade.Three minutes later, when he began explaining the technicalbackbone of digital efficiency across different industries, the confident ones started turning pale, as if he was speaking another language. So that’s the case: ‘digital’ is a different language, and it explains by definition the ‘digital divide’1. This is the divide between people who have access to information and communication technology and people who don’t; people who speak the new language and people who don’t. I would go one step further and call it the ‘digital consciousness divide’, the divide between people who know how to use, curate and apply digital information and communication and people who don’t. Our synapses — the part of our nervous system that passes signals from one neuron to another have a tough time developing the information metabolism required not to fall into the divide. There is a constant flux in processes shifting from data to information, knowledge and wisdom. Usually, we have around 60,000 thoughts per day, but nowadays a large number of knowledge workers reach more than 100,000 thoughts per day.2 This is the point where we start to call our mind the ‘monkey mind’, a Buddhist term meaning ‘unsettled, restless, confused or indecisive’.
Sound familiar? It’s also the reason for our ‘cognitive backlog’, or emotional resistance when the mind decides to shut down when full. In times of constant learning at the centre of our work, we need to consider this. We humans need silence between all the noise. We need better ways of connecting, collaborating and contributing. We need better ways of growing as people and focusing on our human needs. We need direction and purpose for the soul as much as we need sufficient sleep and healthy food for the body. We need other people to share what we have inside, as well as what we experience outside. We humans need more time to grow than machines, and we relish in the pleasure of a good chat, a little fiesta, an extended family meal and a healthy siesta. It gives meaning to our lives.
