So, I bumped into the name Alex Kirshner a while back. Didn’t know much, just that he was connected to some folks thinking about the future, like, the really long-term future and AI and all that jazz. It got me thinking, not about robots taking over, but more about just… planning ahead properly in my own small world.
Trying to Think Long-Term, Sort Of
At the time, I was tinkering with a community garden project. Nothing fancy, just trying to get a few neighbors together to grow some vegetables in a shared patch. We kept running into the same problems season after season: tools breaking, people losing interest, arguments over who watered what. Pretty standard stuff.
I thought, okay, maybe this “long-term thinking” thing applies. Instead of just fixing the immediate problem (like buying a new shovel after it breaks), maybe I should plan better. So, I decided to actually try and map things out.
- First, I sat down and tried to list all the things that could go wrong over, say, the next five years. Broken tools, pests, drought, neighbors moving away, funding drying up (we collected like $5 a month from folks).
- Then, I tried to figure out preventative stuff. Buying better quality tools upfront, setting up a clearer schedule, maybe even a small “emergency fund” from our tiny collections.
- Next, I actually brought this up at our little garden meeting. I pulled out my notes, feeling a bit silly talking about five-year plans for a patch of dirt.
How It Actually Went Down
Well, it didn’t exactly go like some grand strategic masterstroke. People mostly just nodded along. The idea of a tool fund got some traction, so we started putting aside an extra dollar each month. That was a small win, I guess. We bought one sturdy rake that hasn’t broken yet.
But the five-year projection? Mostly useless in practice. What actually happened was completely different. We didn’t have a drought; we had massive flooding one year that washed away half the topsoil. Nobody predicted that. A new family moved in who were super enthusiastic and basically took over organizing everything, which solved the ‘losing interest’ problem in a way I hadn’t planned for.
What I Learned (or Didn’t)
So, my attempt at applying some high-level, Kirshner-inspired long-term thinking to the community garden was… okay? It didn’t revolutionize anything. The main takeaway for me was less about predicting the future and more about just being slightly more prepared for general bumps in the road. Having that slightly better rake and a tiny bit of cash helped, even if my grand predictions were totally off.
It kind of reminded me that you can have all these big ideas, whether they come from reading about folks like Alex Kirshner or wherever, but applying them to messy, real-life stuff is always unpredictable. You just try things, see what happens, and hopefully learn a little something. Mostly, I learned that predicting floods is hard and enthusiastic neighbors are gold.
