We are so bad at prevention, simply because few direct reward acts on it. We only do it when our modern human brain can overrule the often stronger prehistorical brain mass🧠. Jonathan Haidt calls it ‘the rider and the elephant’ (just read his fantastic book ‘The happiness hypothesis’. A lack of training of that animal is dangerous.

There are many examples of an ounce of prevention:

• We all know we need to plan,
• sport regularly, eat healthy,
• put a lot of quality energy in our kids,
• start our day with the hardest tasks,
• finish that one chronic task,
• use sunscreen, stop smoking, etc etc.

It is only when you understand how humans act and become an observer of society, rather than a participant only, that you start preventing more than average, because you see other people’s elephants going wild. (for example yelling in traffic is a very good example of what I call a ‘lose-lose’ strategy).

The biggest problem with the climate change issue is that feedback is too slow and hence, rewards are too little. If you ask me, this big planet problem is a psychology issue, not a technology issue. There’s a lack of immediate gratification, which makes the problem so hard to solve. Can anybody come with an example of a problem of global scale that was solved with global teamwork effectively?

Preventing problems with a small, continuous effort is a very smart strategy, yet the vast minority of people understand this concept and act accordingly.

How proactive are you? Are you a preventer or a drowner? Let me know what your thougths are on Weekly Quote 3! Wim