The lockdowns have crushed serendipity. No more water cooler talks or random encounters in a bar. It was a way to hear about new things we were not directly interested in, have opportunities for entertainment or professionally. In short, pretty much everything we would get by acting on auto pilot or wandering around was gone.

There are two things here: serendipity and relying on bling hope. Serendipity, as being open to free options, is a good thing. On the other hand, hope is not a strategy.

Since it is currently broken, let’s replace hope with intentions. We cannot merely hope for things to get better with time. I don’t mean that things will not get better for reasons beyond our control, but it shouldn’t be Plan A. And a plan involves taking deliberate actions*.

If we are to take actions, they need to be directed toward the right things. Things to gain experience. For some reasons, it is misunderstood (voluntarily?). What matters for experience, is the deliberate practice of something. Spending years doing some easy stuff doesn’t make someone more experienced. And absolutely not prepared for hard things.

The power of being intentional is nothing new, Benjamin Franklin was already saying “If you want a thing done – go. If not – send.” But I seemed to have downplayed its effect.

I found two mental models useful when thinking about being intentional.

• First inertia, as in physics. Inertia leads to continuing what we were already doing, without asking why. To be intentional, we need to break the inertia of some past behaviors. We can do it by closing doors or creating abrupt changes.
• Activation energy: the minimum amount of energy to provide to start a chemical reaction. It means the energy we need to put something in motion and get momentum**. As in chemistry, adding anything below the activation energy doesn’t do anything. It means that below that, we need to do everything ourselves. This concept applies well to group work. Some amount of effort has to be provided for things to start***. It applies equally well to kids and to adults (sadly).

Serendipity still exists and the main things in life haven’t changed. But now, we have to be intentional about them. Because we won’t have an easy replacement. It feels like an additional responsibility we always had but kept ignoring.

*: I consider not acting, if done intentionally, as a form of action.

**: We have momentum in real life when 100% of the progress doesn’t come from us only.

***: It works only if there are the right elements for the reaction to happen in the first place.