Stop asking when the downturn will be over

On every other business website you are being polled today about when you think the downturn will be over. Consultancies and research institutions chase headlines with surveys of executives or other "downturn experts" (like financial analysts) on that same question. And everyone is looking for signs of an upturn. Of course, when you search for these signs, you will find some. But is all this waiting for the end of the downturn really helpful?

The assumption behind the worried question about the duration of the downturn is that after a while, things will go back to normal. A bit more patience, a period of hardship, and then, alas! it will be business as usual and this feeling of vulnerability and uncertainty will go away. However, going back to 2006, 2007 or 2008 is the least likely thing to happen.

I think that our brains are playing tricks on us in this matter. Adjusting to a different concept is always costly for the brain and before it rewires its little nodes it prefers to filter out information that does not fit into the concepts that it invested in before. In this case, the dominating concepts are concepts of growth. Information that says you will NOT own a new car soon, you will NOT get a promotion and a salary raise, profits of your company will NOT pick up again surely cannot be true. Or at least, they cannot permanently be true. Says your brain. Well, I don't know exactly about your brain, but many of the surveys seem to have been filled out be people with brains that project the future as a linear continuation of the past, with just this awkward gap in between.

However, sticking with the old concept of growth is disabling as it leads to passively waiting and to being worried. Being worried is a waste of energy, though, energy that should be spent on agility, flexibility, adaption. Once we can accept that a fundamental change is happening, the fearful waiting can stop.