Daily Inspiration – Personal Motivation : “If you always end up doing the same thing, you’ll never end up doing the right thing!”

“If you always end up doing the same thing, you’ll never end up doing the right thing!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

You’ll never do the right thing if you keep doing the same old thing – because doing the same old thing is always the wrong thing! Got it?

The photo in today’s quote is from my keynote last fall for the Western Growers Association out in Hawaii. The WGA represents mostly family farms in California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico; the talk was on the impact and opportunities of artificial intelligence in the farming sector.

And today’s quote? Think about the modern farmer of today – in the face of new technologies and methodologies, they certainly can’t keep on ‘doing the same old thing.’ Years ago, I would joke about the imminent arrival of ‘weed-zapping robots.’ Today, it’s no longer a joke – it’s a fast-emerging reality. Trends in the industry are very much impacted by access to and management of scarce water resources – particularly in this region of the world – and so there is a never-ending flood (if you pardon the pun) of new irrigation concepts, ideas, and sophisticated technologies they can try out. Science has a major role to play, and the modern farmer of today’s world could probably be called a scientist-farmer.

Everywhere you look there are new ways of doing ‘things,’ and the only to do the ‘right thing.’

And that’s the situation in pretty much every single industry, job, career, and profession today – nothing is ever the same, everything is changing, and the only right thing to do is to change with it!

So some simple advice? if you are stuck in a rut, get out of it. Avoid getting trapped in routines – make a new routine. Refuse to do something the same way – try a different way. Chasing the same old idea? Find a new idea! Talking to the same old people? Reach out to some new ones! Finding your day-to-day actions dull? Find something to shake them up! Running into the same old barriers? Ignore them and go around them.

That might all sound trite and easy to say but think about this – aligning to the future and mastering tomorrow isn’t just about finding and thinking about the trends – it’s even more so about your mindset of what you are going to do with them.

Some people see the future and never do what needs to be done to get there. Innovators see the same future and change everything they do to be a part of it.

Mindset! It matters!