Perplexed

Happy Saturday!

Have you heard of Perplexity.ai?

It's an AI search engine. Enter a question, get instant results scraped from the web.

Maybe one day it'll replace Google.

Experimenting with it this week, I was once again wondering, where will be in five years?

AI is changing the landscape faster than any tech I've seen in my (admittedly short) career.

How can we future-proof ourselves? Is it even possible?

Jeff Bezos tells the story of how he is frequently asked what's going to change over the next ten years.

He said it's an interesting question. But a more important question is:

What's not going to change over the next ten years?

It's more important because you can build a business strategy around things that are stable in time.

Investing energy there will continue to payout.

For Amazon its 1) low prices 2) vast selection and 3) fast delivery.

It's impossible to think of customers wanting less of those things.

Amazon can spend time and energy there and continue to grow.

Jeff Bezos on building a business strategy

What is stable in time for us as Salesforce professionals?

AI could be (probably will be) writing formulas, building flows, generating reports, writing code, and drafting customer emails better than all of us.

One thing that probably won't change though, is human nature.

Human psychology came to be what it is over thousands of centuries of evolution.

Our basic wiring is the same today as it was long ago.

Therefore mastering psychology, and how to apply it in life, will remain useful as long as our basic wiring doesn't change.

Charlie Munger provides a great list of 25 standard causes of human misjudgement:

1. Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency: People strongly react to incentives and penalties, often more than they realize.
2. Liking/Loving Tendency: We tend to favor people, products, or ideas we like, sometimes ignoring their flaws.
3. Disliking/Hating Tendency: We often reject or criticize things we dislike, even if they have merit.
4. Doubt-Avoidance Tendency: When faced with uncertainty, we often rush to make decisions to avoid doubt.
5. Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency: People resist changing their beliefs or habits to avoid seeming inconsistent.
6. Curiosity Tendency: Humans have a natural desire to explore and understand the unknown.
7. Kantian Fairness Tendency: We want to act fairly and expect others to do the same, following a "golden rule" approach.
8. Envy/Jealousy Tendency: People often feel envious or jealous when others have something they want.
9. Reciprocation Tendency: We feel obligated to return favors or kindnesses given to us.
10. Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency: Our opinions are swayed by associating things with positive or negative feelings.
11. Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial: We ignore or deny uncomfortable truths to avoid mental pain.
12. Excessive Self-Regard Tendency: People often overestimate their abilities and importance.
13. Overoptimism Tendency: We tend to be overly optimistic about outcomes, underestimating risks.
14. Deprival-Superreaction Tendency: Losing something feels worse than gaining the same thing, leading to strong reactions.
15. Social-Proof Tendency: We look to others for cues on how to think and act, especially in uncertain situations.
16. Contrast-Misreaction Tendency: Our perception is influenced by contrasting things, often leading to skewed judgments.
17. Stress-Influence Tendency: Stress can cloud our judgment and lead to poor decision-making.
18. Availability-Misweighing Tendency: We give undue weight to information that is easily recalled or recent.
19. Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency: Skills and knowledge deteriorate if not regularly used.
20. Drug-Misinfluence Tendency: Substances can impair judgment and decision-making.
21. Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency: Aging can affect mental faculties and decision-making abilities.
22. Authority-Misinfluence Tendency: We tend to follow authority figures, sometimes without question.
23. Twaddle Tendency: People often engage in trivial or meaningless talk, which can distract from important issues.
24. Reason-Respecting Tendency: We are more likely to follow requests or advice if given a reason, even if it's weak.
25. Lollapalooza Tendency: Multiple biases and tendencies can combine to create a powerful effect on behavior and decisions.

Assembling psychology-based knowledge like this, and using it checklist-style can let us:

• Persuade our company to take on a profitable project
• Negotiate a raise
• Build an amazing family life
• Win friends
• Work more effectively in teams
• Become a leader

And more.

My thinking is that, mastery of human nature will still be valuable 10 years from now.

I don't see myself thinking ten years from now: "I wish I knew less about how to persuade and be successful interacting with everyone I meet."

There must be other skills that will AI proof our lives and careers.

Skills that age in reverse. Skills that exhibit the Lindy Effect.

So I'll now attempt to crowdsource some knowledge from you...

Reply to this email and tell me what skill you think will still be valuable in 10 years!

Best,

Nick

P.S. Two weeks ago I wrote about using custom metadata in a Flow.

Many of you wrote back asking to see an example so I made this 30 min YouTube video on how it works.

Feel free to check it out :)