Posted by The world’s nothing if not unpredictable at the moment. Between economic uncertainty, rising living costs and global events that can move markets overnight, oil prices alone jumped around 25% earlier this week following the US-Israel conflict with Iran. It’s easy to feel like long-term planning has become a bit of a fruitless exercise.
With changes happening on a daily basis, the concept of future-proofing has never been more relevant. Every day seems to bring new challenges to navigate. But can you ever truly prepare yourself?
While a crystal ball would be nice, there are far more practical (not to mention realistic) steps you can take to build resilience and adaptability into various aspects of your life. So this week, I want to look at where you can future-proof your life, but also why it doesn’t always work.
Future-proof… your career
Back in the day, you’d choose your career when you left school, and then that was it till retirement. Sometimes you’d even stay working for the same company for your whole working life.
Now, pivoting to new sectors is far more commonplace, and future-proofing your career means staying relevant in a world where some jobs disappear while others appear almost overnight.
The best thing you can do is develop transferable skills that can move from industry to industry. Critical thinking, communication, creativity, and emotional intelligence are never going to go out of fashion, so keep yourself sharp!
By the same token, don’t underestimate how important it is to embrace new tech developments too. Just look at how AI has exploded over the last two years.
It’s too easy to get aged out of your own position if you don’t keep up to date with new platforms, software and trends. Whilst you might not need to update your skill set for where you are now, you never know when the rug could get pulled out and you find yourself in competition with people who’ve made it a point to stay abreast of developments.
Industries are changing faster than ever, whether through automation, economic shocks or rapid shifts in demand, so it’s on you to keep up.
Future-proof… your money
Financial resilience is the foundation of a future-proofed life, and there are a couple of things it’s worth giving thought to.
Firstly, diversification of investments: spreading your investments across different assets to mitigate the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket. If you’ve got all your money in just one asset, and that asset goes under, you’re sunk. Spreading your pot across different assets can go some way to safeguarding your cash and leaving you less exposed. The last few years have been a reminder that markets can move quickly and unexpectedly, so diversification is as much about resilience as it is about returns.
Next, you have to think in the long term. What are you going to live on when you retire? Whilst it might seem dull or boring if you’re younger, start thinking about your pension now. Do you have one with work? Are you in a position to put more money in it now, so that you’re not scrabbling around for cash in your twilight years?
Spend some time looking at what your current cash reserves are. Do you have any kind of emergency fund to act as a buffer if things go sideways? If you’re living from paycheque to paycheque, look at what you’re spending out on and see if you can make any cuts.
It can be quite uncomfortable to add up how much you’re spending and on what, but that kind of discipline will stand you in good stead in years to come.
Future-proof… your health
This might be where you have the most control when it comes to the longer-term. Your health is your wealth, but it’s something that’s all too easy to take for granted. If you’re fit and healthy now, continuity bias might make you think that you’ll stay that way forever.
Obviously, you can’t predict every health challenge you’re going to come up against, but you can build physical and mental reserves that will improve your odds across countless scenarios.
Preventative health measures such as regular exercise, nutritious eating, enough sleep and robust stress management will all build your resilience and give you a good foundation if problems do emerge.
If health and fitness is something you need to work on, think about building sustainable habits that will be easy to maintain. It’s an investment in yourself: play the long game so you can reap the rewards in the future!
Future-proof… your home
When I talk about future-proofing your home, what I really mean is future-proofing the value of your home (or any property asset).
Look at where you’re living now: you might be really happy with it, but if you came to sell it, where could you add value to increase its selling price? Things like upgrading the kitchen, putting in a new bathroom, or improving the insulation in the attic to boost the building’s energy performance are all worth thinking about for any property you own, so that you protect, and ideally grow, the value of what is likely to be your largest asset.
If you’re not quite on the property ladder, or you’re looking for your first investment property purchase, always look for ways you can add value. It’s not just about buying a property and hoping it performs well, it’s about how you can improve it to create equity in the deal.
Future-proof… your resilience
Personal resilience, or how well you can withstand and recover from difficulties, might be the ultimate future-proofing skill. While some aspects of resilience are innate, many others can be intentionally developed.
The things that are key to building up your resilience are:
- Perspective: in a tough situation, always try to step back and look at the situation objectively. Has it impacted your health or, even worse, does it impact the health of your loved ones?
- Acceptance: you can’t bury your head in the sand over tricky situations, otherwise they’re likely to snowball into something really horrible. Similarly, you have to take accountability for situations where you have a degree of responsibility – try not to make the victim mindset your default.
- Resources: you might lose some material resources along the way, but learn how to stop and reflect on the resources that you do have when things go sideways – your knowledge and your network. Lacking in either of these? Work on building them up now.
There’s some truth in the saying ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’: there will always be lessons you can learn from a challenge, which you may well end up being very thankful for one day!
Take everything I’ve said with a pinch of salt
Perfect preparation is impossible: the world contains too many variables, interactions, and potential disruptions to anticipate everything.
Similarly, health challenges can strike at any time, no matter how well you eat or how many times you run in a week. Without wanting to end on a pessimistic note, there’s only so much you can prepare for, and very little that you can control.
That said, it’s not entirely out of your hands. Last week I talked about your three circles of influence, which shows you where you should be directing your energy. The key is to focus on what you can directly control, and to a certain extent, forget the rest.
So what should your takeaways be here? Future-proofing your life isn’t about achieving perfect preparation or eliminating uncertainty. Instead, it’s about building flexible foundations across the parts of your life that increase your options when (not if) change arrives, whether that’s gradually or suddenly, welcome or unwelcome.
After all, it’s better to have something and not need it, than to need something and not have it!