Three Big Lessons from 2020, Three Big Questions for 2021

What did 2020 reveal to you? This new y??ear is already full of people selling us on what 2020 really meant. Big decisions that change your world will be justified by those lessons-learned. So we can’t afford to stand-by and let others learn the lessons for us. To participate in the Great Response, we all need to form a personal view.

In 2020, instead of writing public essays, I hosted public conversations each month. Here’s my one-page summary of 2,000+ people’s reflections from every continent on the year that just was.

Read Three Big Lessons from 2020, Three Big Challenges for 2021.

Think Bigger, Together in 2021

On Jan 16, I’ll be hosting my next public conversation (in affiliation with basecamp). After 2020, it’s clear that we need to greet this new year with eyes wide open. What aren’t we seeing? What aren’t we asking?

Alone, these are impossible questions. Together, it’s a simple matter of listening to diverse perspectives. 

On January 16, don't miss me and other smart, thoughtful, generous dot-connectors like you from around the world as we do just that. Together we'll define the best and biggest questions to help you flourish in 2021. We’ll do a mix of small-group conversation and large-group reflection. Everyone will take away a logbook of collected insights and opportunities for action. Join the conversation here.

Timely and Timeless

Trump fiddled. Now Rome is burning. 

How did things get to this point in the United States, with a pandemic raging and blood on the floors of Congress? 

To chart the descent into hell, check out this piece I wrote in 2018 about the long-term costs of short-term thinking. 

If you want to make sense of the mob that stormed the Capitol, here’s my summary of how the American Dream, pushed too far, leads to Fantasyland. 

If you want to put your finger on the root cause of populism, skim this piece on why modernity has become so difficult.

Twitter banned Trump. Will that fix fake news? When it comes to social media and fake news, do we even understand what the real problem is? In my TED Talk, I argued: No, we don’t. We’re solving the wrong problem, and until we recognise the real problem, we’ll never fix fake news.

The world keeps getting bigger. So we need to keep thinking bigger. It's an unfair game — unless we do it, together. -Chris