“Are you telling me that you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?”

Marty McFly, Back to the Future

IN A CITY that is both mar and muntanya (sea and mountain) Barcelona has no shortage of stairs. There is, however, a set that is less well-known. This secret stairway winds itself up from the upper part of the Sarrià neighbourhood, starting at the world-renowned Montserrat school and delivers you into the main square of the village of Vallvidrera. Now, if you were to climb these 477 steps you would surely be tired but happy to enjoy the best views of the city of Barcelona.

Let’s say you devise a strategy to make those 477 steps a little less daunting. Good practice in fields such as learning or athletic training would advocate breaking a big goal down into bite-size chunks. Maybe taking 40 steps at a time then pausing for breath would seem a reasonable approach. So where do those 40 steps take you? A little less than 10% of the way to enjoying those fabulous views (and perhaps a well-deserved refreshment in the town square), right? What if we change the scale? Do you know where 40 steps would take you if we substituted the linear scale for an exponential one? The moon!

We present this vignette as a way of understanding the shift in mindset that is happening today in many areas of society, from technology advance to population increase. Many people believe we are at a tipping point in human history, with an artificial intelligence-driven near-future ready to bring about unprecedented levels of change.

Arriving at the moon is an appropriate image, with ‘moonshot thinking’ being increasingly employed by ambitious, innovative, and disruptive organizations worldwide. First coined by Google X in 2010 (now simply X after the group name change to Alphabet in 2015) moonshot thinking is inspired by the original moon landing in 1969 – an incredibly difficult thing to do, with little actual understanding at the time of setting the goal of how to actually do it. Aiming for the impossible and starting from scratch are therefore two of the defining factors of moonshot thinking. The combination of “a huge problem, a radical solution to that problem, and the breakthrough technology that just might make that solution possible” is, according to X, the essence of a moonshot.

Though pioneered by a business, much of the focus is on grand challenges that face society as a whole. Examples within the X portfolio include Waymo, the self-driving car, and Project Loon, which aims to bring the internet to the most inaccessible parts of the world via hot-air balloons. Projects ‘graduate’ when they are mature enough to be developed within another part of the business, including Google Brain, which is driving development in artificial intelligence.

Aiming for the impossible and starting from scratch are therefore two of the defining factors of moonshot thinking.

The change in thinking where failure is celebrated (even encouraged) and short-term value is eschewed in favour of the deep learning that drives long-term leaps needs a supportive environment, of course. It also needs people who have a deep passion for what they are doing on a day-to-day basis. Will we be able to create a critical mass of these passionate, supportive environments to truly realize a shift to exponential progress?

Tim Urban covers many of the key points related to the changes likely to be driven by artificial intelligence on his popular Wait But Why blog.[1] He presents an accessible and amusing overview of AI, introducing concepts such as the Law of Accelerating Returns developed by the futurist Ray Kurzweil. In a nutshell, the next 30 years will return a far greater level of progress than the previous 30 years, and so on. As an example, Kurzweil suggests that the progress of the entire 20th century would have been achieved in just 20 years at the rate of advancement experienced in the year 2000.

Figure 1.1. Human progress through time, adapted from The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence by Tim Urban

Why is it so difficult to fully absorb the difference between linear and exponential progress? After all, the concept of exponential growth as related to the internet age has been gaining momentum for several years – ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in 2010 that “we create as much data in two years as we did from the dawn of civilization up to 2003”, yet it remains a difficult concept to grasp. More recent commentary, such as ‘what happens in an internet minute’, often takes on the numbers-heavy tone of world economics that results in most of us simply glazing over.

Getting to the moon through 40 exponential steps may allow a greater impact of the scale of change to hit home. A possible explanation for the general difficulty may be appreciated in the figure below, which helped frame Urban’s analysis. Simply put, we can’t see into the future. And the near future, according to Urban and many other AI commentators, is likely to yield significant advance due to the current status of computing power. Today, a $1,000 machine has around the equivalent processing power of a mouse (around 1/1000 of a human brain), yet continuing this trajectory using Moore’s Law and other accepted historical trends will yield the equivalent of human intelligence by 2025 – with the sum of all human brains on Earth to follow soon after.

Figure 1.2. Human progress to the present day, adapted from The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence by Tim Urban

We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.

Not everyone agrees that this line is about to dramatically kick-up. When we arrived at 21 October 2015, the date at which Marty McFly was shown to arrive in Back to the Future Part II, there was a societal shrug of the shoulders and a palpable sense of disappointment.

On more careful reflection, 21 October 2015 did indeed have an abundance of innovation and progress in comparison to 1989, when the sequel was originally released. Many of the future ideas, including virtual-reality movies, roll-up TV screens, and drones do exist in some form today, while the really big ideas, such as flying cars, may not be as far off as we think, given the rapid development of drone technology and the start of services such as drone-powered flying taxis in Dubai. In general, it’s hard to be too critical when we consider that the World Wide Web only came into existence the same year the film was released, with the first web browser not coming until the following year.

Nevertheless, dissenting, disappointed, and underwhelmed voices exist. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel wrote in 2010[2] that the technology industry had let people down, saying that “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters” (in a clear reference to Twitter).

Taking a more optimistic stance in his role as guest editor in the November 2016 issue of Wired magazine, Barack Obama said that now is the best time to be alive. The core message of Obama’s editorial is people coming together to achieve big things. In spite of the undoubted progress that underpins his principal statement, he notes with optimism the great challenges that lie ahead, including climate change, economic inequality, cyber-security, terrorism, and cancer. The final months of his administration in Autumn 2016 also included the formation of a taskforce to tackle a Cancer Moonshot.

Part of the inherent logic in Obama’s statement is that any present date is the best time to be alive, precisely because of the progress we make as a human race. So tomorrow, next week, and next year should be viewed as the best times to be alive respectively. Apart from being a boon to mindfulness advocates worldwide, the predictions of our move to more exponential progress should see the relatively near future as providing ever greater appeal, provided we adopt the right mindset to deal with massive change; change, of course, not being the most palatable concept for most of us.

Healthier than ever before, and happier?

There is no doubt we are progressing as a human race. Even for the most fervent sceptic of the modern world, all the data points to now being the best time to be alive. Though some argue that we are not moving fast enough, many of the major global development goals, with the exception of income inequality, are going in the right direction. Extreme poverty is decreasing around the world, average life expectancy will soon hit 90 years in certain developed countries, and people including Bill Gates – given the significant strides made by the Gates Foundation – hail the achievement of major milestones such as the virtual eradication of polio.

Figure 1.3. The world as 100 people in poverty, education and literacy the past 200 years, adapted from Our World in Data by Max Roser (ourworldindata.org)

Figure 1.4. The world as 100 people in democracy, vaccination and child mortality the past 200 years, adapted from Our World in Data by Max Roser (ourworldindata.org)

So levels of health, wellbeing and prosperity are unmatched in human history. Yet are we really happier than ever before? The first World Happiness Report by the United Nations was released in 2012. Since then the UN believes there to be increasing evidence of happiness being considered the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy – something we look closer at in chapter four. Norway tops the happiness rankings in the latest report,[3] while also experiencing a significant drop in oil prices. Note is made that the country “chooses to produce its oil slowly, and invests the proceeds for the future rather than spending them in the present”. The other countries in the top four – Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland – rank highly on all the main factors found to support happiness: care, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income, and good governance. Other highlights which link to some of our points in this chapter include the fact that China is no happier than 25 years ago, while happiness in the United States continues to decrease from a high of ten years ago.

We look in greater detail at the concept of happiness in the workplace in chapter four. On a basic level we think most would agree that the working world today is characterized by a work-life balance that is increasingly out of kilter, while levels of work-related stress and poor health are on the increase. People complain about being overworked and plagued by ‘busy-ness’; and happiness, at least for the professional class, remains as elusive a concept as ever. Does the happiness strategy being promoted by the Government of Dubai point towards a future wellbeing society, or does it merely support the thrill-seeking stereotype of the Gulf hub? In sum, more people are working than ever before, but more people are workaholics.

When did we lose our understanding of what actually brings us fulfilment, serenity, and peace?

The materialistic and capitalistic drive to accumulate more things, more money, and more of everything is destroying our happiness. How did we let this happen? When did we lose our understanding of what actually brings us fulfilment, serenity, and peace? After the devastation of World War II the world was in survival mode. Everybody was driven by a need to recover, rebuild, and restart. This necessity gave people a purpose and the Western World, at least, was happier than it had ever been. Once societies were back on their feet, and disposable incomes were higher than ever, instead of pausing to appreciate the wealth and the success, we careered off course. We took the wrong road. Money, money, and more money somehow became the only goal, the only pursuit, the only valid measure of success. In the long-run this addiction could destroy us individually and also as a planet. The excesses of demand, and the subsequent cost to the environment could be our downfall. Over the last 50 years, per-capita incomes in developed countries have increased several-fold, and the increase in average happiness within these countries has been zero.

We recognize the need for security and betterment in one’s life. We have witnessed poverty and how the lack of money can have a detrimental effect on the quality of life. Our home country Scotland, while being a well-functioning and generally prosperous country, is not an affluent one. Many wellbeing programmes at companies now include financial wellbeing, a dimension of one’s life that can cause significant stress if not managed correctly. The economists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton looked at the correlation between happiness and income for a sample in the United States.[4] They looked at two measures of happiness, day-to-day emotional wellbeing (how are you feeling today?) and life evaluation (looking back on your life, how satisfied are you?). Day-to-day happiness increased up to an income of $75,000, after which it topped out. They concluded that: “High income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional wellbeing.”

We’ve seen that the evidence for day-to-day happiness and wellbeing are completely unrelated to financial status. We spend a significant amount of time teaching in Latin America. In any country that is significantly poorer than anywhere in Western Europe what impacts us greatly is how happy the people are. They choose to be happy. If you open your eyes and observe street market sellers, passers-by, people just sitting around – all mostly seem happy. We then fly back to Europe and see the crowds in the luxury duty-free shops, with all of their wealth and not a single smile anywhere! Have we replaced happiness with the pursuit of wealth?

The good news is that the solution to the incessant thirst for more beyond what we really need for our wellbeing is merely a change in attitude. Major surgery is not required. Many cultures already assert that peace, serenity, and happiness are the answer, and are worth more than possessions. All we have to do is adopt part of their philosophical approach to life. We’re not talking about becoming hippies, living in a commune and only eating organic vegetables, rather taking a different perspective on where we’re going and what we’re doing. Maybe the following story better illustrates what we mean.

A wealthy, successful, and very busy US businessman found that he increasingly enjoyed his vacation time in Jamaica. He flew there for two weeks every year and it always seemed to bring him so much peace and inner harmony. He relaxed for the only time in the year. He felt real and like himself. He felt good and healthy. He even found he slept well and didn’t have to take any of his pills to relax and sleep. He always chartered a small boat and went fishing with the same old man who was a relaxed, happy, and friendly sort of chap. They would fish and generally pass the time chatting about sports and life. No high-level business-strategy discussions. No posturing or acting. They were just being themselves.

One summer, on arrival, the businessman found the old man sitting on the dock by his boat and told him excitedly that he had been thinking… He said that the immense pleasure and value he reaped from his Jamaica time could be monetized. He told the old man he had drawn up a spreadsheet and developed a business plan for him. He could send down a stream of friends, a guaranteed market, who would also love to rent the old man’s boat. In fact, the businessman said, he would help the man raise capital in order to buy a few boats. Even a fleet of boats! He said he might also want to invest in a taxi and that way vertically integrate his business and make money on the transfers each time from the airport. He may want to think about getting into the accommodation and lodging business, too.

The businessman highlighted that the initial investment may be a bit stressful, but after a few years of growth, the old man would begin to amortize the cost of his fleet of boats and taxis, and after five years would be set. This business was a sure thing and he would be able to retire in a few years and not have to worry about a thing. He could then spend the rest of his life in his little old boat, taking it easy and going fishing every day with friends.

Progress is undoubted, yet the direction of some of our present attitudes remains worrisome. There is no guarantee that the positive trends of the past will continue into the future. Perhaps the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a framework with which we can measure future progress, and guide our actions of the present. Designed to build on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), they are a set of 17 goals, including health and wellbeing, education, and sustainable cities, and which represent “a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity”.[5] Sustainable business expert Simon Pickard believes them to be a significant improvement on the MDGs for two reasons: while business had little engagement in the definition and delivery of the MDGs, the new goals are seen as valid criteria to shape long-term investment decisions material to core business. Furthermore, the statistical progress towards the MDGs (signed in the year 2000) was massively distorted by China’s development, meaning that the global picture looked a lot rosier than the reality.

Whatever path we follow, the next 50 years will bring an unprecedented level of change that requires us to adjust our mindset for a fulfilling life.

Many cultures already assert that peace, serenity, and happiness are the answer, and are worth more than possessions.

THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

01 No poverty 02 Zero hunger 03 Good health and wellbeing 04 Quality education 05 Gender equality 06 Clean water and sanitation 07 Affordable and clean energy 08 Decent work and economic growth 09 Industry, innovation, and infrastructure 10 Reduced inequalities

11 Sustainable cities and communities 12 Responsible consumption and production 13 Climate action 14 Life below water 15 Life on land 16 Peace, justice, and strong institutions 17 Partnerships for the goals

Almost at the top

This is a personal story. The story of two Scotsmen who met in Barcelona, each having made the city their home after a similar path that included Scotland, the US, and Spain. The secret stairway we introduce at the beginning of this chapter links Steven’s home in Sarrià to Rory’s in Vallvidrera, and we aim to share a love of Barcelona through some of our own experiences, the city’s rich history, and the showcasing of moments that have allowed our own wellbeing to soar as our careers have progressed. We aim to play our part in making Barcelona a world leader in workplace wellbeing, a place global talent is drawn to as people wish to leave their mark for a better world, and have fun doing it.

Steps have been central to human progress throughout history. The pyramids of Egypt, the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu, and the Phoenician Steps in Capri have all allowed human beings to climb ever higher or connect with previously inaccessible parts of their world. The next time you walk the 40-odd steps across one of your rooms at home, imagine for a second where those 40 exponential steps would take you. Our aim in Chief Wellbeing Officer is to accompany you on those steps as a means of changing your mindset to the world around you.

Rather than reserving such a mindset for a technology-focused context, what is the moonshot you can aim for in your own life? We hope you enjoy the journey, and the steps you take through the chapters of this book. Our wish is that the impact these steps have on you, for both your personal and professional life, will result in your very own moon landing. Let’s keep climbing.