If you’re always keeping your options open, you’re constantly second-guessing yourself and that makes you unhappy.The moment we commit to something, we start being happier with whatever we decided on. This downside is only relevant when there is no new information coming in. Adapting in uncertain situations, when we're still learning new things, makes us better.

Always adapting and never committing

In the last decades, organizations are increasingly becoming more global, complex, and demanding of workers’ time. In the always-on, always-connected work environment, boundaries are overlapping and combining.  If you can’t adapt, can’t see situations in versatile ways, can’t find meaning in the most dreary circumstances, you might not survive.

The modern workplace

Why am I doing this?  Ask yourself why until you understand your actions and decide how to reach your goal. For instance, ask yourself why you are doing this job. If your answer is to get paid, then ask yourself, Why do I want higher pay? If the answer is so you can have a better life, then force yourself to answer the third “why”: Why do I want a better life?

Start with “why”

The downsides to always adapting, always flexible, always changing gears could lead to a lack of direction and commitment. In turn, a lack of direction could lead to failure. We don’t want to entertain the possibility that it might fail. We just imagine that things are definitely going to work.

The downsides of too much adapting

It is probably better to say "this might work" when you start because you’ll be much more alert to take in signals, new information, tweak it, adjust it, adapt, or maybe just stop. Think about your actions as experiments that generate information rather than definitive decisions. It will make it easier to move forward, adapt, and adjust.

“This might work” vs. “This is going to work”

There needs to be a balance between adapting and committing.Committing–and concrete thinking–might be what’s needed in a strictly controlled environment where no new information is coming in. But, change is inevitable. The visionary, abstract thinking–the adaptive, who sees the big picture, will be able to apply learned lessons, respond to change, and stay relevant.

Find a balance

In a crisis, what is it that enables some people to push through and come out the other end seemingly unscathed, while others crumble in the face of extraordinary challenges? For the prominent neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, it was the search for meaning in the experience of the Holocaust that gave him the will to survive.

Always adapting and never committing

This is how to reframe your thinking and find more meaning in your work

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