The future is almost here, I thought to myself as I turned the calendar page to November. I felt that way in part because my 50th birthday arrives later this month. But I also noticed that this is the last year that for nearly everyone will have the number 19 in it.
Seems strange, doesn’t it? As a child, I noticed people thought of the year 2000 when they thought of the future. Popular media also promoted 2001 as the year of the future thanks to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I grew up and spent my early adulthood with a 19 in the year. Now we’re less than two months away from the decade of the twenties. What’s more, it’s (almost) certain that I’ll die in a year without a 19. There’s no more safety in knowing there’s a year with another 19.
For me, that realization is both sobering and compelling. Because the number that’s driving me isn’t 50, but 20.
So, I’m going to end 2019 by building on the knowledge I already have. I have the E-Myth Revisited and E-Myth Mastery books on my bookshelves. I use tools from the Swiss Avenue Partners Think Big and Think Bigger programs. And now I just signed up for Business Made Simple University (BMSU), produced by StoryBrand. BMSU provides courses on a regular basis for only $275 per year.
The future is almost here. How will you build your knowledge, tune out noise, and make life better for your customers?
Life expectancy at birth in the world has been going up about 0.33% per year for the last 55 years. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.dyn.le00.in We got much of the low hanging fruit when it comes to longevity, like lowering infant mortality. But we’re at the cusp of retiring sudden heart attack as a cause of death, treating and rolling back Alzheimer’s and there’s no end in sight to the potential to keep increasing life expectancy a little bit every year.
If life expectancy for those still alive starts increasing 1% a year, we will hit “actuarial escape velocity” within the life time of some people living now. Life expectancy can rise faster than people age. If children in the US can have a less than 1 in 7000 chance of dying, it stands to reason that old people could too with sufficient advances in medical technology. Getting from a life expectancy of 52 to 74 since 1960 reduced the average risk of dying in any particular year of life by 1/3. We only have a bit less than another 2/3 to go. It seems like science fiction, but is it? http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1496/1
Hi, Sam. Hopefully we’ll be around to find out!