“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.” — Seneca
A crisis is hitting our industry. Company net losses are here and there and there are layoffs and freezing hiring strategies because of this. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Twitter, and many more companies are in the same situation. Seeing this disaster landscape, it’s understandable that people may fear losing their jobs.
But, what can we do to overcome and dominate these feelings? The sentence I selected for this post explains the basic approach to handling uncertainty. Seneca said another sentence related to longevity explaining to us that there is no such thing as a short life but a life in which too much time has been wasted.
The thing is we spend a lot of time wondering about what the future has planned for us or thinking (and sometimes suffering) about events from the past instead of taking care of the present moment. The past is immutable and the future is not assured, the only time that remains for us is the current moment. This is the baseline of the current mindfulness movement but stoics already know about the importance of being present 2000 years ago.
By applying this principle we can fade those fears. Of course, we can set long-term goals but, once they are set, we just left them alone and focus on our current tasks, things should come up eventually. Whatever our companies decide about their workforces is not up to us. What is up to us is preparing ourselves for adversity: being up to date with the newest technologies and doing our work the best way we can every day.
And when hard days come, you must be calm because you will have the same tools you have right now to handle whatever future situation. You will be fine.
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Stoic knowledge in the tech industry