Don't Sweat the Small Stuff in the AI Era

Excerpt from a conversation I was having with one of the leaders at a customer organization:

“Feeling overwhelmed and that uncomfortable feeling of being left behind is a feature of AI era, not a bug.”

With so much happening around us, the pace of change at work and in life, and the constant feeling that everything needs an answer right now, I have realised that every once in a while you need to step back and look at things from a different angle.

That’s what I tried to do this weekend. I picked up a book I had read some years ago, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson.

My inference after I was done reading: this book is even more relevant today than when I first read it.

If you haven’t read it yet, the heart of the book is simple. Most of us live as if life is one big emergency, so a small delay, a careless remark or an unfinished task gets treated as a crisis, and we spend our energy reacting instead of living.

Carlson’s answer? Check out some of my notes from the book:

• Ask yourself, “Will this matter a year from now?” Most of what feels huge today won’t.
• If someone throws you the ball, you don’t have to catch it. Not every problem handed to you is yours to solve.
• Do one thing at a time.
• Allow yourself to be bored. A friend of the author put it well: “People are no longer human beings. We should be called human doings.”
• Choose your battles wisely. Most of them aren’t worth the energy.
• Life isn’t an emergency. Almost everything can wait, and most of what feels urgent today turns out to be small stuff.