Listen louder! The small necessities and details matter. Opt out! If you do, you may realize that you have got all you need already.

There are plenty of exquisite foods in the world: delicate cheeses, hand-made chocolates, fresh pasta, fresh salad – uhmm. Imagine if we bought groceries to last us an entire week in order to ensure that we had well-prepared treats ready at hand and at our free disposal. Do you know the feeling when you look in the fridge, thinking:
“Oh dear, it’s stuffed in there”? “There isn’t room for anything more. I have to buy a bigger fridge”?

Here is the solution to solve this problem forever.
It is called life hack:
Empty the fridge and clean it. Take all the items that you use everyday and place it in the fridge door. Throw out everything you haven’t used within the past month. And who the hell ever manages to get through those oversized jars of beets and pickled cucumbers?
Get rid of them and make sure to buy small jars of better quality next time. Buy neat and capacious plastic boxes for cheese, salamies and anything else that has a strong smell (if cheese is removed from its wrapping and stored away in sandwich paper, it can keep for weeks. The same concept applies to yeast when stored in a jar. Salad rinsed out and packed in a clean dish towel doesn’t go slimy).
This leaves plenty of room for new delicate goods without you having to spend extra money on a larger fridge (read: problem).

The fridge of life follows the same principles.
Many of us reached the breakpoint of the ‘added crap’ curve ages ago. It doesn’t matter how exquisite the latest new invention is. As soon as the crush has evaporated, it becomes part of the junk and rubbish pile of items that we don’t have a need for. The first 30 years of our life are spent on gathering stuff. The rest of our lives is spent on trying to get rid of it again.
And if we are not careful, we will get caught in the big hamster wheel of life. We will be forced to run faster and faster in order to avoid discovering how much the fridge really stinks. And one day the hamster is dead whereas the wheel is sure to continue spinning.
In the future, it will be a great trick to be able to prioritise and choose the right thing. That is, the best for all of us and our children. It might be that life hands us many can openers but which cans should be opened? What creates room and comfort in your life’s fridge?

One of the key solutions is to learn how to ”listen louder”. And listening is actually incredibly hard. There are four specific suggestions one can utilize in order to become a better listener:

1. Stop talking (and at this point a couple of us have already fallen by the starting line).

2. Stop ”downloading”
Most people do not really pay attention to what is being said but instead hear what fits into their precast categories. “What has this got to do with me?” or “I fail to see the relevance” are typical thoughts in one’s mind when downloading. A way to stop doing this is to repeat every word said out loud aloud in one’s head. This leaves no time to do anything else.

3. Pay attention to what is meant and not only what is said.
Not everyone is verbally strong. For example, there are a handful of people in our office, and we are continually surprised by the difficulty of communicating in such a way that everyone understands. Communication is hard, it takes time, and it is important that everyone is given an opportunity to offer their interpretation of the meaning that evolves.

4. Pay attention to ‘the big picture’ and to what is not being said.
What is interesting about being a good listener is that new and meaningful images suddenly arise. Many people actually talk about the same issue but just use different words. Whoever manages to come up with the missing pieces and assemble the other pieces into one unit is the one, who creates the future – be it solutions, new products, services or agreements.

The act of listening is essential in relation to innovation.
Still, when asking a range of CEOs at large corporations they cannot remember ever having been given an advice. They only remember the advices they themselves have given to others. Developing – as a human being, a company or as a workplace – does not have to be that difficult. However, the world is perceived to be still more complex, and many experience difficulty with the creative process. The increasing flicker of information to be digested and interpreted can prove overwhelming, along with the several other issues that must be decided on and paid attention to in everyday life. Therefore, it can be difficult to delve into new and unknown processes – however great those processes might be – because we simply cannot contain any more. Moreover, it is challenging for many leaders and executives to obtain the peace needed to be able to think innovatively, when there is a countless specific problems to consider. Once in awhile, it is beneficiary to stand in the eye of the storm. In the centre of your life, with the absolute stillness, you have the opportunity to take in the complex world whirling around you, and it is exactly that distance and equanimity which enable you to see connections and tendencies not noticeable when you are whirled around in the world yourself.
There has to be time, room and peace to reflect on and allow all the everyday impressions to settle down. It should be possible to take time off without having to do gardening or mend the house façade and to take a maternity leave without having to write autobiographies or build carports.

This past Spring we had one of the world’s biggest producers of frozen bread as our client.
Part of their business strategy was to enter the Chinese market. Since there are no Chinese among our staff, we took our search to a handball arena, and, with camera in hand, we let him tell us about life in China. We listened, he talked. During the interview he said, ”but, of course, we have no ovens in China”.
All things being equal, it might, then, prove a bit difficult then to sell frozen pastry in China… The point is that we assume too much. “If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me”, we say at Future Navigator, and it is never wrong. The Chinese will not call to tell you that they don’t have an oven, and we forget to ask because we expect their life to resemble ours. Or perhaps it is because we are not really listening to what they have to say. However, it can end up costing a lot of time and money, before such discrepancies have been remedied.
”But that is just one person”, our client said. “Yes, but at least he is more Chinese than both you and me”, his colleague replied. If you listen loud enough, you don’t need a thousand voices.
So, use your ears – they aren’t only for stylish glasses and ipods – you never know when you will need to hear what you do not know others are trying to tell you.

Visualizing feelings on the web

Link:
[ We feel fine ]

Points of interest
Do you want to learn about
insight, tools and how to create
your own futureOrder our book:
The Future Navigator

Link:
[ The Future Navigator ]