Precautionary principle

Precautionary principle is this idea that we should avoid everything that isn’t known to be safe.

This is the challenge of our time.

We don’t have to lead. We don’t have to initiate. We don’t have to make a ruckus. We can almost always choose to let someone else go first.

And so, when given the choice we choose to hide.

We hide behind phones, emails, screen names and think this is what productive work looks like.

Heres the thing, the person who invented the ship also invented the ship-wreck.

You’ll never build anything great without criticism or without consequence. And what most of us end up confusing is the difference between real risk and perceived risk.

Running away from a saber tooth tiger is not something we have to do anymore. Yet, this is how our brain still operates.

So even though there is plenty of food, clean water, a warm bed to keep us out of the rain…it’s not enough to satisfy the lizard brain. It’s not enough to silence the loon noises.

Clicking send, standing up and standing out in a crowd, being the lone voice against the status-quo, writing and publishing a blog, giving a TED talk…these are the scary, emotional things that we get to do. Each of us now has a platform now available to us.

But this might not work. (And it probably won’t work for a while until we get better.)

And because this might not work, we feel like we are taking a huge risk. Someone might not like it. The critic might boo us. The boss may fire us. Haters may hate.

So, we hesitate. We wait for things to be perfect before we ship. No shipwrecks. We want a map from A to Z, a step-by-step set of instructions without any detours or potholes.

There is no growth in comfort zones and no comfort in growing zones.

Stepping out of the box, shipping our work only feels risky. A one-star review is hardly the same as staring death in the face.