Do you feel like you’ve grown more in the last few years than you will in the next few years?

I came across the end-of-history illusion the other day, and it hurt.

The end-of-history illusion is a psychological illusion in which individuals of all ages believe that they have experienced significant personal growth and changes in tastes up to the present moment, but will not substantially grow or mature in the future.

[…] Overall the study concludes that at all ages individuals seem to believe that their pace of personal change has now slowed to a crawl, while evidence points to this being an underestimation.

Wikipedia

Owwwww! I have grown and changed so much in the past few years. It doesn’t seem possible to repeat that rate of growth in the next few years. What else is there to learn? How else could I possibly change? I’m an idiot, but hey, apparently so is everyone else.

One of the conclusions of the original study was that “not only do people underestimate how much they will change in the future, but in doing so jeopardize their optimal decision making.” That’s terrifying.

Growth is one of my 2 values and a few weeks ago I realized that I should pursue growth rather than happiness. Now I’m realizing why that took me so long: because I assumed I couldn’t continue to grow at the rate that I have.

Make mistakes of ambition, and not mistakes of sloth.

Niccolò Machiavelli

My takeaway is there’s no speed limit on growth. There’s no point of diminishing returns. The more I look, the more I’ll find.

I can’t make decisions based on the assumption that growth will slow down. I can’t make mistakes of sloth. If I’m going to make mistakes, they better be mistakes of ambition.