The next ten years will separate the alive from the automated.

Here's how to make sure you're on the right side of the line...

Exploration and Expression are the final frontiers

I’m writing this at 35,000 feet above Earth; I’m flying back from Bhutan after 4 weeks in the field and Mount Everest is on the horizon out of my window. For the last month, I have lived an extraordinarily simple life of walking every day, one epic campsite after another. On the trail, separated from the trappings of modern life and disconnected from a digital world, it focuses the mind on what is truly important and what is not.

Below me, there is a world that is full of people staring at screens, (the irony is not lost on me that this is how I am writing and how you are reading this) optimising their comfort, consuming content and outsourcing their thinking to algorithms that know them better than their closest friends do. Every second filled with endless doom scrolling and noise. Boredom and critical thinking a thing of the past.

Above the clouds and heading home I wanted to share my thoughts about what I think is coming, what it means and what we can do about it. I should say before I start, I am super optimistic about the future, I just think that there will be a decade of turmoil before we get there. We are entering one of the most volatile, exponential and complex times that humans have ever had to deal with. This isn’t alarmist, it’s the truth and it’s happening, hidden in plain sight. The next ten years are going to be the most disruptive in human history.

Not because of war, climate change, cost of living rise, or any of the other existential threats that we face in real life, but because for the first time in history, a machine is going to be able to do your job far better than you. It’s going to be smarter than you, quicker, more productive, more creative, make less mistakes, make more money, not take sick days, not get tired, the list goes on. In return, it will offer you quick answers, reduce all friction and optimise your life into a perfectly comfortable, endlessly stimulated, utterly hollow existence. Most of us will take this deal without even realising that we have signed the contract.

What’s actually coming.

I’m not a tech guru, economist or futurist, I am a former Royal Marines Commando Sniper and adventurer that has spent the last 30 years operating in some of the world’s most extreme, remote and hostile environments. War zones, Pandemics, Volcanoes, Jungles, Oceans and even below them, where high risk equals high consequence. It’s in these situations where I’ve witnessed people find out who they really are, when ego, status and comfort are stripped away, where the truly unique experience of being human comes to the fore. This is where we have evolved from, but millennia of linear and local thinking have not prepared us for the speed at which we are traveling to a Global, Stellar and exponential future.

What I know, is being human, what we need in crisis, what we break without and what we become when we are truly tested. And what’s coming is going to be the greatest test of what it means to be human that any generation has ever faced.

Artificial intelligence eventually will replace most routine work, digital creativity, the economy and cognitive labour while robotics will automate almost any manual job more efficiently and cheaper than the human equivalent, meaning that everything that we have built our identity, family and income around will need to be rethought. Think this is exaggerated? Look at the figures of unemployment of newly graduated students, often the worst hit at this early stage of giving agency away to the machines. Soon, Ai and the supersonic tsunami of exponential tech will be infinitely smarter, more efficient and capable than the collective of all humans that have ever existed, solving problems that humanity has struggled with for centuries. So where does that leave us?

The things that can’t be automated.

Here’s what I know from a life of leading at the edge. We need to find a way to separate the signal from the noise. A machine cannot stand on the summit of the world’s highest mountain and feel humbled, exhausted and struck with awe, as the sun casts it’s shadow on earth. It can’t be overwhelmed with fear as the chaos of an ice dive unfolds, it cannot build bonds and trust with teammates through shared suffering, and it can’t lead people through a crisis with brute force, leadership and character. The machines cannot build true, meaningful human relationships and community.

Adventure, Tribe, Leadership, Awe, Service, Courage, Compassion and Resilience aren’t just fluffy words used in self-help books, they are truly the very foundations of what it means to be human and more than that, these are the very survival skills that will be the most valuable assets in the human world.

In a time where we are no longer the smartest beings in our solar system, The premium must shift away from intelligence towards aliveness. Towards the things that make us truly unique and human.

The five things you need to develop now

I’ve spent most of my career distilling what separates people who thrive under extreme pressure from those that don’t and it maps perfectly onto what the next ten years will demand from us all.

1: Resilience Mindset:

Physical, Mental and Emotional resilience will be key. The winners will not be the digitally literate, they will be the ones who manage their sleep, control their nutrition and prioritise exercise & recovery. We can’t know exactly what is going to happen or how it will affect us, but we can prepare for the uncertainty. Building and developing a strong, fit and resilient body will go a long way to shielding you from the psychological stress that is potentially coming your way. It’s well documented that a fit healthy person can deal with stressors and recover more quickly from setbacks than someone of ill health and physical condition. This is non-negotiable, Show up as a capable member of society. Using adventure and the outdoors is a perfect way to build capacity, confidence in coping and courage. A resilient, growth mindset will be your biggest alai.

2: Tribe:

The quality and size of your physical, social ecosystem (not virtual followers) is directly corelated to a longer happier life but also towards predicting resilient outcomes. Loneliness is already a public health crisis, and AI is about to make that catastrophic. The research is unambiguous, humans need connection, community and shared experiences, not shared content. I remember just how bad my mental health was after being locked inside a nuclear bunker, on my own, in the dark for ten days. As Ai and the machines automate almost everything away, your tribe becomes your moat. Find your people, bolster those relationships, build them deliberately in the real world and they will be there when times get hard.

3: Nature and Adventure:

Replacing screen time for green time isn’t just a rhyme, it’s a genuine evidence-based strategy for reducing stress, increasing creativity and improving all metrics of physical, mental and emotional health and cognitive function. This is one of the biggest levers you can pull, especially if you stack tribe on top of this. Nature isn’t a luxury in the age of silicon and synthetic everything, it’s a performance tool that connects you with the wild, real world. Get outside, consistently and deliberately and compound the effects with your tribe as you play.

4: Challenge & Discomfort:

Every app, tech or machine you use is optimising your comfort & efficiency and reducing friction. This is making you physically and mentally weaker. Don’t believe me, when was the last time you read a map or followed road signs instead of the frictionless, easy mind-numbing google maps or Waze? Growth only ever happens at the edge of your capacity, physically, socially or mentally. We as humans need regular exposure to challenge, uncertainty and discomfort to thrive, without it, we become despondent and indifferent, and the only trajectory is atrophy. Actively seek friction when you can by choice, it’s the secret sauce for building an unshakable character.

5: Purpose and Service:

As we outsource our intelligence, there is one fundamental area that is set to derail the entire human population. What is my purpose? The identity crisis coming from automation is real and will no doubt affect almost everyone on the planet in some way or another. When your job disappears or morphs beyond all recognition, who are you now? The answer must come from something deeper than the thing you used to do when you exchanged time for money, or your job title. We will no doubt need to look at what makes us truly happy, what service we can provide to help others and possibly contributing to something much bigger than ourselves, that doesn’t rely on a salary. Start thinking now what you would do if your job was to disappear and make plans immediately, before you need it desperately.

This isn’t about resistance.

I’m not anti-technology, far from it, I use it most days when I am at home, writing blogs, social media and chilling out. This isn’t an article about me shunning Ai or the robots, it’s about how you decide to optimise your life going forward over the next few years and taking ownership of it, instead of passively being lead down the garden path. Every system, biological, social or technological reflects what it was built to do, and most digital systems are designed to be addictive, maximise your attention, and engagement and increase your dependency and thus your screen time.

I want to build something that maximises aliveness instead.

That’s why I am working on something new, a movement and eventually a platform, built on a simple idea. The antidote to artificial living is real community, real adventures, challenge and purpose. The most radical thing we can do in an age of Ai is become more human. It’s not a fitness app or wellness platform; this will become the counterculture to digital passivity built around the 5 pillars above, the same framework I use with my coaching clients. Designed and built to optimise your psychological and physical body armour in a time when we need it most. More on this later.

What to do next.

Don’t wait for the disruption to sideswipe you off your feet, before you start to make plans, by then that will be too late. Start small and start now. Ask yourself what you would do if your job disappeared, what’s important to you? what makes you really happy and how can you help others? What is your true passion that you haven’t been listening to? How can you start to make this a reality?

Get outside without your phone for at least thirty minutes a day. Prioritise sleep, exercise and nutrition. Meet someone in real life and have a meaningful conversation. Sign up for something that stretches you physically, mentally and emotionally and start the habit of building capacity. Learn a new set of skills that could be useful in the future.

It doesn’t take much to prepare but it does take awareness to realise that the outsourcing and automation will eventually affect you and your family. The next ten years will separate the people who have drifted into a comfortable, automated hollow existence from the people who consciously choose not to drift into digital passivity, who choose something harder, richer and more alive. Exploration and expression is the final frontier and that’s where we should live, and that’s what we should protect.

The choice is available to us all right now.

Aldo Out.