Transcriber: Francesca Blasi Reviewer: Antonio Cuerpo-Sánchez
Comfort zones are self-created mental barriers:
they theoretically enable us to be anxiety-neutral,
and risk-free, theoretically.
We create them ourselves, we put things inside our comfort zones
that make us feel loved, and secure, and happy, etc.
There is one common theme throughout all our comfort zones
and that is that everything inside 'our zone' is familiar,
is what we know, is what we are used to,
[what] we are comfortable with,
that's why they are called comfort zones.
So today is a story about
how my comfort zone was poked, or destroyed,
and what I did afterwards.
You see, what made my comfort zone comfortable
was knowledge, knowing stuff.
You can't probably see it from where you are
but underneath here is a head full of absolutely useless information.
I know lots about stuff that is pointless to really know about,
but that kind of made me comfortable
because I felt that if I knew loads of stuff
then I was covered, I kind of had my back covered.
And it made me really good at pub quizzes,
but obviously in the knowledge seeking I realised something really disturbing:
what I realised was that the more I looked
and the more I learned, the more I realised
the less I actually knew.
That was extremely disturbing for me.
The theory was that I would look and learn more,
and then I would know more.
The reality was I looked and learned more
and I realised I knew far less than I thought I knew.
Now, I sought solace from Confucius,
the ancient Chinese philosopher, who said that:
"Real knowledge is to understand the extent of one's ignorance".
So I thought ok, well maybe this is ok,
realising that I know pretty much nothing.
That's ok, right?
But it didn't kind of play well
because my comfort zone had been obliterated
by realising that the things that I thought I knew
I probably only knew a fraction of.
This is a problem because
when your comfort zone is constructed by knowledge
to understand that you don't have knowledge
means that you don't have a comfort zone,
means that all of the things that we create as a comfort zone
inside our mental barriers,
didn't exist.
When I was at college I studied social biology -
one of the first years to recognise behavioural economics.
I thought I had a handle on existence and evolution,
I thought I got the way that things went from creation to extinction.
And then all of a sudden, you know what happens?
I learnt about de-extinction.
I learnt about the fact that DNA
actually has a half-life of 512 years,
meaning that theoretically anything backwards of 6.8 millions years
can be reconstructed.
And at the moment, at the time of this, in 2013,
the sequence that is the most intact
has gone back as far as half a million years.
Now, just before you are thinking wait, are we talking about Jurassic Park?
Now at the moment, because they were wiped out 68 millions years ago
that would remain on the screen, for now.
But the Dodo bird?
And the Saber-Toothed Tiger?
Hopefully this is the skull of a Saber-Toothed Tiger
and not a Dodo bird, but...
It just suddenly shook apart everything that I thought I knew.
By the way, if you want to find out more about de-extinction
I'd thoroughly recommend checking out Stewart Brand,
a fantastic hero of mine who talks about this in a recent TED Talk.
But then I thought I also knew about politics and warfare,
I thought I really understood the way that it all worked,
I was really scared about these drones,
have you seen those drones, those pilot-less flying planes?
These kind of small, little flying pilot-less planes?
So I kind of looked into those things,
and I thought well I need to understand
how these drones work because I need to know.
If I know then that means I'm ok.
You know, I construct my comfort zone like that.
And that was ok until I found out about
the millions of mosquito drones
which can invisibly fly onto your skin and inject and reject, and then leave.
And then all of a sudden
the drones that we see on TV look like children's recorder playing
in comparison to a show-park level of terror
from mosquito drones.
Then I started thinking about the fact that people call on me
to be this kind of, futurologist, this futurist.
I thought I really understood augmented reality, in-virtual reality,
I'm the go-to guy.
I'm the big thinker, the thought-leader,
the guru, and all of the other terrible adjectives.
Until I understood, actually,
this whole thing about google glasses was already old.
The augmented reality contact lenses,
and the under-retina technology from computer chips was more real.
I didn't realise that
if you extend the way that things are growing at the moment
the average size of a computer chip in 2025
is the size of a blood cell,
and it will be a billion times more capable than now.
The more I looked, the more I learned,
the more I realised, the less I knew.
And I am not even going to start talking about spray-on wi-fi paint
that means that you can have a wi-fi hotspot
on a wall that you spray it onto...
there's no point in going there. You know what, moving on.
The deal is this:
my comfort zone was fundamentally rocked by one thing,
and I looked and looked and looked and looked,
and thought why can this be...?
how can I possibly understand enough to feel comfortable
and I realised that I was threatened by one thing called exponential growth.
It is my archenemy - of my comfort - or was.
Let me describe what I mean by exponential growth:
I want you to imagine a football stadium,
there might have been a visual clue behind me at some stage recently.
I want you to imagine a football stadium
and I want you to imagine inside that football stadium
a magic tap, now bear with me, a magic tap,
and the magic tap is in the middle of the football stadium over the center spot
and it is magic because every minute, into the football stadium,
it drops a drop of water, that each minute is twice the volume.
So, minute one the magic tap has one drop.
Minute two the magic tap has two drops.
Minute three the magic tap has four drops.
Minute four the magic tap has eight drops.
You get the picture, that's exponential growth.
I want to ask you a question:
you are in the football stadium, at the top of the football stadium
in the highest possible seat,
and you are looking down at this.
My question to you is:
if the tap started: drip, drip, at midday, twelve midday,
how long do you thing you've got until the entire stadium is flooded,
and you drown to death?
Weeks? Months? Years? Couple of?
One day? Yeah, ok so you know what it is?
At 12:49.
Forty-nine minutes.
But here's the kicker, here's the kicker:
when do you think the football stadium was 93% full?
The answer is at 12:45.
Sorry 93% empty I should say.
At 12:45.
So at 12:45, four minutes before the entire stadium is flooded,
all you can see is just the football pitch covered in water.
It's like heavy rain.
Four minutes later the entire football stadium is flooded.
That is exponential growth.
So in our comfort zone, at the top of the football stadium
we look down, we look at the tap,
there are some feeble water drops coming out.
We don't need to move, it is insignificant to us.
You may have heard of the analogy about putting a frog into boiling water:
if you put frog into boiling water it would jump straight back out again;
if you put a frog into cold water, and turn the heat up,
it will gradually boil to death.
Exponential growth.
What I realised about my comfort zone
was that I was under attack, constantly, by exponential growth.
I couldn't predict anything, I couldn't know everything.
And all of a sudden,
everything I thought I was comfortable in thinking, didn't exist.
Or it did, but by the time I had formulated the thought in my head,
it had moved on.
So, here is the thing: I had to deal with this.
As soon as your comfort zone is shaken you have to think:
what can I do about [it], what is the antidote?
Because when you realise
that there is probably 1% of the stuff we know we know,
and another percent of the stuff we know we don't know,
there is probably 98% of stuff we don't know we don't know.
What the hell do you do about that, then?
Well you know what? I reckon there's a spectrum.
Here is the spectrum:
On one end of the spectrum you could live in an environment
where you have a bubble of clarity,
you just have the things that you understand,
and you reject the stuff that you don't know you don't know,
or reject the stuff that you know you don't know.
But either way round you live in that bubble,
and you hope to God that the stuff outside of the bubble
isn't going to affect the bubble.
You hope, in your stadium seat,
that the tap is just a feeble, non-magic tap,
and order a hot dog.
On the other end of the spectrum,
you could seek to understand all knowledge - everything.
And, exponential growth.
Now, Google would find that admirable,
but, a - you are human,
b - I think you'll go crazy in the process.
So we have two sides of the spectrum.
Personally I've chosen my comfort zone to be in the middle.
My comfort zone, where I live now, in my comfort zone,
is what I would call "balanced curiosity".
It is a comfort zone where it's borderline paranoia, (Laughter)
and borderline curious, but not too much either way round.
And I give you three models that I use to do this,
because it is easy to say, but I've realised
and it has taken me forty years, this journey,
and only recently, in the last twelve, eighteen, twenty-four months,
I've been able to be in the centre more.
There are three models that I use,
and maybe you can use some of these things as well,
or you have your own versions.
The first thing that I've realised, - there's only three -
the first thing I've realised
is that I now feed on serendipity. I feed on that.
So, I know it sounds a bit crazy,
but I would get lost, intentionally, in a city.
So rather than taking a taxi last night,
from the speakers' drinks at the 'Nitrogen bar',
I didn't get in the cab,
and I didn't turn my mobile data on, or wi-fi,
I just started walking.
I allow chance to happen.
Getting lost is ok, now.
Me and randomness are getting better friends,
we are on speaking terms.
I've realised that this chance that I have allowed into my life
has meant that I've met, and experienced some absolutely mind-blowing things,
that you would never orchestrate yourself.
The result of serendipity, the result, is extreme luck.
People ask me how I'm so lucky - how did you get to be so lucky?
How did you meet these people? How did get into that circumstance?
What did you do? How did you buy into that?
Is there a qualification you need for that?
No. You allow chance to happen.
That means you are allowing luck to happen,
and you what happens? Luck does.
The second model I've used,
and I use this on a constant basis
to maintain my comfort zone is one of reference.
What I mean by reference is that in my serendipity chasing, or allowance,
I use anything that I experience
as a reference point that can impact my life for the better.
It could be a zoologist talking about natural environments with certain species,
and I can map that,
and reference it back to my life thinking about walking into a place
where people are only speaking one language, and I don't speak it,
and I can cross-reference that
with a polyglot, who can speak maybe a dozen languages,
and the importance of understanding cultures, for that,
and I can impact myself thinking
well if I want to to be on stage more, in front of people,
maybe I need to be able to speak in different languages.
You see I've taken a zoologist and I've taken a language expert.
You can learn a lot from expert window cleaners about precision.
You can learn a huge amount from tramps
about the importance of warmth and safety in your life.
You know what this reference has made me? It has made me extremely humble,
because I've realised that no one is without a story that can benefit me.
But that's just the two parts, and is a little bit selfish so far.
The third part, is the payback. The third part is the sharing back.
So, in these knowledge economy, if you like,
I've allowed chance to happen,
and I referenced points back from other experiences into my life.
But then the sharing part, this is the third model that I use,
is what I do a lot of the time on stages, and in rooms with people,
is I reverse this stuff outwards, so that the knowledge economy can balance.
It leaves no footprint, it's neutral.
It is an incredibly great equation,
because basically I can fuel my own comfort by sharing,
not by knowing everything - because I don't.
And this sharing part, the result, has made me extremely happy.
It makes me happy to share,
because I see the effect once I've shared,
and I see other people then sharing their versions,
and I love having information shared with me by you.
So serendipity has brought me luck.
Referencing has bought me humility.
And sharing has bought me happiness.
That's the construct, the syntax, of my comfort zone,
that was poked beyond recognition.
In closing I'd like to say that for the rest of the day,
for the rest of our lives, knowing each other if we can,
please share with me your story, now you've heard mine.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)