I remember when a friend of mine bought a first-generation iPhone. It was back in 2007 when all of the worker bees will still using Blackberrys and Palm Pilots. Nobody used their phones to surf the web. Browsing the internet was available on the Blackberry but it was slow and unusable. There were no apps or App Stores and big companies didn’t even allow iPhones to be used for corporate email.

We were so attached to our Blackberrys. People had leather holsters on their belts and would walk around like gunslingers in a Western. We cherished our hard-wired QWERTY keyboards, tap tap tap…that’s how indoctrinated we were to the status quo.

I remember trying the iPhone for the first time. It was like playing with something from another planet. I bought one as soon as I could and had two phones with me until my company supported email on the iPhone and then I ditched the Blackberry forever.

I’ve heard that people who are serious about cars have the same experience with Tesla. There’s no going back.

Video conferencing services like Zoom are like Blackberry 2007. I wonder what the iPhone equivalent of video conferencing will be in 5 years’ time.

So what’s the point of this story? A lot of people accept the status quo like a shitty Blackberry, an unsatisfying job or living arrangement because they don’t know what else is out there. They won’t explore the great unknown because they don’t like how change makes them feel.

Uncertainty and stress is the tax we pay for the change. If you want to experiment with new ways of doing things or change the status quo then get ready to pay the tax. Most of the time it’s worth it!

Photo by Randy Lu on Unsplash