Lemonade?
Forty Fifty; Volume 82
I’ve been working on something new for Forty Fifty that takes into account the five years since we started this space, the two years I have been running it on my own, and my background as a designer, systems theorist, author, and futurist. Throughout this time I have had more conversations than I can count with more incredible people than I could possibly name. It’s been such a gift. So much of a gift that whenever I feel disheartened about the momentum or lack of traction, I can recognize that maybe that was never the point. That this “slow marketing” is the intention. To reach the right people at the right time. Timing.
As I have been working on this latest project (to be shared sometime this spring) I have been fortunate to steep myself in all of it: past, present, and future. I am a bit of a research nerd, and the convergence of all of these topics that I have built a career on and gone deep into have a common thread. Signals > Designing with intention > Togetherness > Collective futures. Let me unpack this.
We are living in unprecedented times. Or are we? In my future studies I have learned, time and time again, that the past does not repeat itself but it rhymes. Which grounds me in a place of knowing that while uncertain change is, well, just the nature of things, we still have power, agency, and opportunity to help tactically shape our future state. Not to be corny. But srsly tho. If we choose, we can pay attention to the strongest signals coming at us nonstop. Exhausting. I literally just said this week to my husband, “How can I possibly make lemonade when the lemons are coming at me at a pace I cannot keep up with?” But then the weaker signals. Those are the ones that can lead us to understand and shepherd in a preferred path. What do you know and see around you that gives you hope? I could almost guarantee it seems like the small things. But those glimmers are everywhere, and cumulatively they mean something. So that then we design intentionally the path we wish to create.
As I have been going through all of the research, story submissions, essays, guides, and data, one (of several) findings bubbled up. An Anthropic report on the labor market highlighted five key areas of AI’s impact on jobs. One of them: “Workers in the most exposed professions are more likely to be older, female, more educated, and higher-paid.” The amount of anxiety that shot through my body when I read that. But it quickly calmed, because it wasn’t something I didn’t already feel from my own personal experience. And not to speak to AI specifically, but since I (forcefully) left tech three years ago, it’s been a journey of finding where I belong now. Then a woman I befriended recently, someone who prompts me with such thoughtful insights every time we speak, shared a tweet with me, and there it was. Two different conversations happening in the same space.
She then told me to pay attention to what people are asking from me. So when I lean into that, there is so. much. more. What’s being said versus what is being felt is a personal experience, but one that keeps driving me in a direction that feels right. And as in the past I have written about the disappearing woman, this week I thought: what if the disappearance is also a part of becoming who we want to be and what we want to be doing? It’s teaching me more and more about myself, and my work, and the opportunities that have yet to unfold.
provocation: Pay attention to what people are asking from you.
So, how does this speak to you, dear reader, the signals you are taking in, the signals you are experiencing, your environment, and why you shouldn’t only listen to what’s being said, because it is inevitably contractive but also indicative. And what more would you like to see and feel, that would make it that much more attainable?
XO
Ali, Forty Fifty
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Thank you, Ali. This brought me hope on multiple fronts. I'm a coach in the education sector, and what people are asking from me right now is for more and more coaching. My approach--finding the intersection of effectiveness and sustainability so educators can do the work they love well without burning out--is deeply human-centered and especially targeted to mid-career women. It's about finding both adaptive and technical solutions to the challenges that make teaching and leading in education so difficult. The fact that people seem to want more of this kind of deeply personalized coaching, in a field that often focuses on technical changes to produce quick, surface-level wins, gives me hope that my vocation will survive whatever is coming next.