Welcome to NextLetter, where Frederik Pferdt helps you become one step closer to your next opportunity.

The Surprising Way to Map Your Future

As a passionate sailor, I have always had a deep fascination with maps. 

While today’s generation is somewhat spoiled with our map apps and blue-dot locators that can tell us exactly where we are in the world, there’s something beautiful about old-school navigation: Just you, a vessel, the sun, the stars, the wind, and the currents. Where you go is a majestic concoction of human skill and the unpredictability of nature. 

If you look at older maps of the 1600s, you’ll notice something along the edges: Monsters and scary figures. They were drawn perhaps as decoration, but their message is more than ornamental: Hey sailor, this is not a place where you want to be. Don’t go to the edges, don’t go to the unknown, don’t go to places where you don’t know what awaits. Don’t follow your curiosity.

Even 400-some years later, we still receive the same messages in our environment. Children, most notably, are signaled very early to know their boundaries—and there are consequences if you cross them. Don’t use your tongue and fingers to learn about the world. Don’t climb too high. Don’t touch that dirt. Don’t you dare lick that chili pepper!

We set those boundaries out of care and concern, of course, but what we’re doing on a societal level is stifling the very thing that’s so important to discovery and to your future. Questions, exploration, curiosity.

Every great discovery and all of our progress as a society comes from one of the dimensions of a future-ready mindstate, which I cover in my new book, What’s Next is Now:

Compulsive Curiosity. Ask, ask, ask.

Employ the greatest tool of scientists, detectives, and journalists—the question.

It’s the question—and the constant commitment to questions—that keeps us driving forward to learn about the world. And it’s the same thing that will drive us forward in our personal lives to create our futures.

What we already know about our work, our worlds, and ourselves serve as the edges of our map. We all put up our own monsters—the place where scary stuff exists, because what we don’t know takes us out of our comfort zones. But there’s so much more to discover if we constantly ask questions that we might not normally do. Ask questions to the older gentlemen standing behind you in the coffee line. Ask questions about what’s next for your company. Ask your family about what they’re thinking about. Ask yourself if you’re exploring the world as much as you could be. Ask yourself what’s next. 

The point in life isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to keep asking questions.

If we want to really shape our futures, we have to learn to live like an old-time sailor—never knowing quite where you’re going to end up, never knowing quite where the wind will take you, but always being open to explore what might be on the edges of your map.

How One Question Can Give You a Lift

I recently met a professor who had “I Don’t Know” tattooed on his arm.

What a powerful message: here’s someone in a role that’s perceived to be “all knowing,” but rather he tells the world that it’s ok to not have the answers. It’s ok to not know something. It’s ok to ask, rather than to tell.

That mindstate toward being compulsively curious is what will lead you to new places.

One of my favorite examples comes from one of my friends at Google, Newton Cheng, a mental health expert. Throughout his 20s, he was a break dancer, but it was really rough on his body. So in his 30s, he started looking for something else to do. He went to the gym and did a deadlift (an exercise when you bend down and pick up a loaded barbell off the floor). He picked up 300 pounds and thought that was pretty darn good.

But then his curiosity kicked in: What’s the record for deadlifting for someone his size? He found a 132-pound lifter who deadlifted 600 pounds. Newton wanted to know what his body was capable of, so he set off to master the techniques. A decade later, Newton was lifting 500 pounds and now has one world championship and four U.S. championships. All because he had a question: What could my body do?

One key aspect of all of this: Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. That is, if you have a problem and come up with a solution you think will work, what happens when the solution doesn’t? You lose interest in solving the problem—because the solution you invested in fell flat. 

Instead, if you fall in love with the problem—and the questions that are needed to solve it—you are open to many solutions and approaches. And thus, you have a better chance of figuring out the answers. 

That’s the way it was for Newton, right? He didn’t just say this was a way to lift more weight, because what if that way didn’t work? He had an overriding question about what his body and his mind were capable of—and used his curiosity to explore the various paths to get there. 

Most of us have it backwards. We think we need one great solution. Instead, we need one great question—and let our minds create many possible answers.

Quote I Love

Just Curious…

An excellent exercise for practicing curiosity (especially self-reflective curiosity) is the Why Why Why strategy. That is, you keep drilling deeper and deeper until you get to some core answers about yourself.

An example: You have a headache, and you can quickly treat it with ibuprofen. Problem solved! But what if you decide to take a more introspective look at what seems like a simple problem. Why do you have a headache? “Because I walked into a door.” Why did you walk into a door? “Because I slammed it after an argument with my partner.” Why did you have an argument with your partner? “Because of finances.” Why were you arguing about finances? “Because they spent money on something we didn’t agree to spend money on.”

Now, you’ve got some deeper meaning to something that originally seemed rather simple, and that allows you to think and reflect and talk and build more engaging relationships because you’ve gotten past the surface and not let problems linger.

Take any problem you’re currently having—and ask yourself as many levels of WHY questions as you can. Does the final answer lead you to a place that can give your more meaning and clarity? Most likely, the answer is yes.

A Question You Have Probably Never Asked Yourself 

Find a private location in your home or office. Press record on your favorite audio app. Now say this aloud, “What dreams would I chase if fear wasn’t in my way?”

Think. Then answer the question. Out loud and honestly.

You can let that answer sit with you for as long as you like, thinking about the possibilities, your direction, and your future. And, if you’re so inspired, maybe you’ll even start acting upon them right this very minute. Finally, go to your calendar and one month from today, log an entry: “Listen back to afraid audio.” Then when that day comes, listen to your answer. 

Embrace the unknown and let curiosity guide you, for a life driven by wonder is far richer than one constrained by fear. 

Think on it and ask yourself: Have you confronted the monsters and made any progress toward the edges of your map?

Let me know about your experience with this subject and this exercise. Reply to this email, and I may share your experience in a future NextLetter. My new book, What’s Next is Now, is available now.