The complexity of the modern world presents a novel challenge

Unintentional living has never produced the abundant life, but living passively today is much more likely to lead to a harder life than in times past.

The modern world is more complex than anything humans have ever seen. Human history until now has consisted of tasks that were:

• Immediate. Much of historic human action provided instant feedback. In the present day, it is not unheard of to need to wait years before the efficacy of choices becomes evident.
• Obvious. Many historic tasks featured predictable pairings of cause and effect, with readily-recognizable markers of progress and early indications of successful solutions. The modern world is full of problems that are sufficiently arcane that large numbers of people attempt each available option, many of which lead to catastrophic results. Meanwhile, many poor choices have strong short-term positive incentives, and many poor choices come with little accountability.
• Focused. Historic life featured very few streams of largely consistent information. A normal environment today consists of constant interruptions from multiple streams of everchanging information.

Short. Daily life used to entail mostly short-term tasks, many of which would be completely finished inside of a day. It is possible to go days in the modern world without feeling like you’ve finished anything of import.

Simple. For almost all of human history, each choice was based on limited information and limited options. Today, choices with unending information streams and situations with seemingly unending options are becoming more and more numerous.

Clearly completable. Historic tasks featured defined finish lines: you were done when you completed the hunt, sowed the fields, or completed the harvest. Today’s tasks are often ended by a time limit, not a noticeable state of completion.

Physical and mechanical. Many labors in the past were physical or mechanical, leveraging pre-existing pieces or processes, but many of today’s problems are primarily mental, requiring outsized creative discovery, contemplation of fuzzy ideas, and evaluation of many components that do not yet exist.

Modern times feature an explosion of the incidence and extremity of stress, anxiety, fear, and insecurity. Some have argued that these conditions demonstrate that our default ways of thinking and feeling are much better suited to the historic ways than the present ways. Whatever the cause, the cure is finding ways to effectively arrange an intentional path through the increasingly numerous and unclear options for action.