Thinking Beyond Current Standards

It's natural to be satisfied with the way things are, especially when things are going well, life is smooth-sailing, there are no viable competitors and there isn't incentive to charge anything.

But Life is about change. It's about constant movement, and if you are not moving forward all the time, you are either stuck, or worse, sliding. Besides, when we settle, we give up the chance to find out how things could be.

One of the most striking examples of how important constant evolution is in the business of electronic gadgets. Who would have thought that smartphones, for instance, would take over the world, almost overnight it seems? And you can be sure that the Jobs' and Gates' of the world are already thinking of the next super communication slash entertainment tool that defies convention and would be unimaginable to most of us today.

That's the essence of success - consistently staying a few steps ahead.

Most people will be happy with current standards. There is certain reverence given to them it seems... We often hears terms like "time-tested", "classic", "tested and proven", "traditional" and so on when it comes to the way things have always been done.

This love for the status quo occurs not just in career or business. People can become attached to the prevailing standard in their personal lives as well - they can become attached to places, to environments, to possessions, to ideas, to other people, to repetitious acts that give them temporary or superficial pleasure.

These people can get sucked into this artificial world - a world where things don't change, where things and people remain where they want them to be, a world where any change is snuffed out forcefully or artificially. While the real world continues to move on, they retreat deeper and deeper into their artificial world until they become obsolete and out of touch within the real world.

The truth is - the world moves on, people move on, fads come and go, technologies emerge and fade, cultures and contexts evolve. Over time, things and people who don't steadily develop themselves will get left behind.

The only way you can remain ahead of the game is to constantly thing beyond the current standards - once things become relatively stable, it's time to think about how they can be done better, how they can be further enhanced.

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Eugine Loh, 938Live, MediaCorp Pte Ltd