Predictability is great because it allows us to make plans and investments, and to feel some degree of security.
If we know where we’ll be living for the next handful of years, we can invest in nice furniture and buy plants for our home, confident that both sets of assets will have time to pay dividends.
If we have predictability in our relationships, we’re more able to commit to other people in ways that may feel precarious or fraught, lacking that certainty.
Predictability provides us with experimental baselines, so if we want to try something new—a different workout routine, a novel procession of morning rituals, an unfamiliar jumble of hobbies—we can more easily compare and contrast with our defaults because the vanilla approach to all of these things is steady and stable enough that we can flip between them and revert to that existing standard if we ultimately decide to do so.
Too much predictability, however, can make an otherwise wonderful life seem stale and even suffocating.
Aspects of life that we enjoy, today, might become oppressive if we’re told they’ll be exactly the same ten years from now; familiar comforts and hard-earned conventions can degrade into burdens and hobbles if not periodically reassessed, refreshed, and (if necessary) revised or replaced.
We can invest huge volumes of effort and resources in what seems to be the perfect life, only to wake up one day and realize that if we don’t change something—upend some aspect of that carefully cultivated perfection—we’ll stagnate as people.
The oracle-like foreknowledge we derive from the well-paved paths we deploy for ourselves can diminish our capacity to both experience and benefit from surprise, awe, valuable frictions, and (newly prudent) pivots.
Ideally, we’re able to strike a moderated stance in which we have just enough predictability (and its concomitant sense of stability and security) to feel comfortable investing in ourselves and our lives, but not so much that anything feels fundamentally immovable.
Confidence-inducing sturdiness, yes; possibility-constraining fixedness, no.
As with any balancing act, establishing this posture takes practice, and there will almost certainly be moments in which we over- or under-compensate, boxing ourselves in or failing to provide ourselves with suitable footing.
When we find ourselves tipping too far this way or that, it’s worth asking ourselves how we might loosen things up or tighten too-slack lifestyle components; something that in the moment may feel like uncontrolled wobbling, but which can help us (over time) reestablish a more optimal balance (for that season of our lives, at least) of dependability and potential.
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My new book is about growing older with intention, if you’re interested in reading more about that sort of thing :)