Not only is society changing rapidly, but the speed it’s changing is getting faster.

When my brother Davood went to the U.S for his pilot training, the only way we received news from him was via a slim blue airmail letter that came maybe every two months. 

One sheet of very thin paper, extra light and easy to transport. The postage was printed on it, no stamp was necessary, and it required the tiniest handwriting possible. Not many people remember these  “aerogrammes,” that were replaced by postcards and letters, then long-distance calls, then cell phones and email.

For my generation, knowledge was power. Our early years were spent accumulating information. Doctors, scientists and engineers were expected to memorize vast lists of facts. A PhD is still expected to mentally store an encyclopedia in their brain. 

Today, this paradigm is shifting. Why memorize when you have a smartphone? It’s not that we no longer have to retain information, but the ability to store vast amounts of knowledge will no longer be a barrier to entry. The real test is what you do with those facts, how you synthesize and use them to make new discoveries, create new technologies or change society in a million different ways.

In the space of my oldest daughter’s lifetime, we have progressed from clunky desktop computers, dial-up internet, and flip-phones the size of bricks, to supercomputers smaller than a deck of cards. We have launched rockets that can land back on earth, put self-driving cars on the road, and gotten our first glimpses at black holes. I expect that before my youngest daughter graduates high school, artificial intelligence will have progressed to the point where computers actually possess the ability to have rational thought. 

Despite this, your challenge does not change. Your challenge is to know yourself, and with that, which of your skills provide unique value in a rapidly evolving world.

Which type of problem is it?

When NASA puts a rocket into orbit they need an exact solution to the problem. They need to know that this exact rocket, launched at this exact time, will go exactly where they want it to go. Lives are at stake and billions of dollars and years of effort are on the line. If something goes wrong and a rocket fails, the engineers can’t just shrug it off and say, “Oh, well, back to the drawing board.” 

To guard against failure, aerospace engineers work every conceivable problem from every conceivable angle. They brainstorm absurd failures that will most likely never happen, then think of solutions for those failures. 

They test for every possible outcome including ones that seem impossible; building double and triple redundancies into their systems, so if something breaks down, there’s always a backup. Only after all that painstaking work, accounting for every single danger they can imagine, they finally risk the launch.   

In that situation, with no chance for a do-over and so much at risk, solving to the exact problem is essential.

This is literally a moonshot problem. Most of us only face a limited number of these types of problems in life.

More common are rapid correction problems. Imagine going to an archery range and trying to hit the bull’s eye in one hundred tries. You have one hundred arrows, so the consequences of failure on the first try aren’t high. In this case, you wouldn’t take the first arrow, measure its weight, calculate the distance to the target, take into account the thrust of the bow, factor in the wind, and so forth. Why put all that time and energy into a single arrow when you have a hundred? 

Most people would just take a shot and see where it lands. Miss on the first try, correct your aim and shoot again. If the first arrow goes wide to the right, adjust your aim to the left. Miss again, correct again until you hit it. 

In other words, you’d make rapid corrections after each shot. 

Most of life involves this kind of decision-making.

We are constantly making small decisions, without too much worry about the consequences, trying to get it right.

Musicians spend hours and hours practicing and constantly making mistakes. If they hit the wrong note, they go back and try again. Their fingers learn through repetition. Steph Curry makes one hundred throws from the three-point line after every practice. He’s always been a natural shooter, but with this practice drill, he regularly hits ninety-five out of one hundred shots. This is after a full practice. 

Rapid correction problems are ones where the consequences of a mistake are low. Moonshot decisions are the ones where making a mistake is costly in terms of time, resources and emotional stress.

Risk is neither good nor bad, it just needs to be understood and systematized.

This is the art of risk-taking because there is no objective standard you can apply, and the only productive way to approach it is by evaluating how the outcomes will affect you. Yet, most moonshot decisions – like my decision to start Life Time – involve risk which is why we need to not only take our time but be conscious, systematic and productive. 

I usually start by imagining the best possible result.

After all, you’re taking the risk because you believe it will lead to some reward. So, imagine that things work out exactly as you hope, and you reach the best possible outcome. Allow yourself to feel how great it would be and embrace that feeling.

Then imagine the opposite;

the worst possible scenario that could result. What would be a complete failure, an outcome that would make you regret your decision? Now allow yourself to embrace that feeling. Once you have truly experienced it ask yourself if you can you deal with that result. Would you be able to recover emotionally, or would it devastate you?

Try this same thought exercise with other possibilities that fall between the extremes.

How would you feel if things didn’t go well, but weren’t a complete failure? Sometimes you’ll find that even the worst-case scenario is not as devastating as you had assumed. On the other hand, you might find that even a slightly bad result would be more than you could handle.

Next, weigh the probabilities.

Many people are afraid of flying yet have no trouble jumping in a car, despite the fact statistics clearly show riding in a car is more dangerous, per mile traveled, than commercial air travel. So, fear of flying does not reflect the probabilities. 

If the probability of the worst-case scenario is only one in a million, even though you couldn’t stomach failure, you might take the chance anyway because the odds of success are so overwhelming. If the chance of success is only one in a million and you couldn’t handle failure, you will probably not take that risk. 

Some people love racing motorcycles. I can think of few things riskier than hurtling across pavement at over 130 miles per hour with nothing between you and the road except your leather jacket. This is a matter of physics. If your car crashes into a wall at 35 mph, the front of the car crumples, absorbing energy. Just that extra fraction of a second allows you to decelerate to an acceptable negative G level. (G force is the backwards push you feel when the car accelerates. Negative G is the force pushing you forward into your seatbelt, which is keeping you from flying into the windshield.)

On a motorcycle, in the same crash at a moderate 35 mph, there would be no seatbelt, no crumple zone. Your body hits the wall with no chance to slow down, causing what’s effectively an infinite negative G force. All the energy of the crash goes into your body, damaging every organ. 

For those who love motorcycles, it’s easy to write off the worst-case scenario, saying the probability of crashing is low. However, where that risk analysis is flawed is the high probability of death if you crash. The odds might suggest that it’s unlikely a crash would occur, but if the consequences of crashing include a high probability of death, is it a risk worth taking?  

Many will say yes. They believe the thrill is necessary and outweighs the risk. Once again, as with so many other things, there is no right answer. No one can decide the appropriate level of risk for you except you. We all know people who can’t seem to handle the smallest amount of uncertainty and yet there are others (though rare) who can suffer a disaster and shrug it off. The only thing that really matters is how success or failure would impact you. Could you handle failure, or would you be unable to recover?