Building a successful business or pursuing your dream career can be a terrifying, titillating and altogether roller-coaster ride of an experience. The basics to starting off vary depending on your chosen market of trade, but a few golden rules apply to virtually every market you can think of. This article will deal with one of the fundamental rules of both business and lifestyle, which is rooted in a centuries old adage: History repeats itself. This expression has been passed down from generation to generation for one reason alone, it’s as useful as it is factual.
Due to the fact that history repeats itself, the working girl with an A in social studies is already a step ahead of the competition. The reason for this is quite simple. Flipping through pages of the international past is like gazing into a crystal ball and stealing tiny glimpses of the futuristic landscape. Picture your career as a voyage through time where in order to arrive light years into the future, you must first delve deep into the past.
Time Travel 101: Building a Blueprint for Advancement
One of the most lucrative business strategies of any trade is to be one step ahead in brainpower. In order to do so, studying inventors and innovators of the past is a great way to learn how to build something new. For example, a brief look at history will teach you that the person who invented the bicycle is not the same person who invented the wheel. The lesson in this is that the world’s best inventors know how to expand on a successful creation, twist it and tweak it and make it their own. Evidence of this is in the fact that the bicycle and the wheel are still useful elements in the modern world. The person who invented the bicycle recognized the wheel as a staple product, something that would be necessary for years to come. He then took that staple product and used it to create a new staple product that was also a commercial success. Whether you’re inventing a new social media platform, constructing a luxury condo, or drafting up the next hit novel, expanding on a classic is a tried and true recipe for success.
Hopping in Your Time Machine and Knowing Where You Stand
Knowledge of history is only beneficial when applied to the modern day world. For this reason, staying up to date on current events and recognizing trends is critical because the power of the past can only be harnessed if you understand where it puts you today. The landscape of today is most comparable with a period known as the Second Industrial Revolution, a time when a science based manufacturing boom changed the economic and social structure of the world. During this “Age of Synergy” inventors thrived while workers struggled and survival was heavily rooted in adaptation. This should tell you something about the type of inventions likely to impact today’s economy but studying the period after the “Age of Synergy” will give you an idea of what to expect ten years from now, once the world has settled into the post technological boom.
In the world of entertainment, ages or periods are often broken down into decades and these decades are likely to follow each other in consecutive order. As of right now, pop culture is taking cues from the nineties in terms of fashion and cues from the seventies in terms of sound. Pharrell Williams’ Girl CD is quite reminiscent of seventies music in the vein of The Bee Gees, and Earth, Wind and Fire. The difference is this music has an electronic feel that should give you an idea of the sound of the future which will likely be an eclectic mix of the early 2000’s synth driven anthems and the peace-loving 60’s or even further back. Elements of big band are relevant in Bruno Mars’s musical approach which is dazzled with fuller sounding live instruments.
In short, having a background in history will make it easier for you to recognize trends and understand where they come from. It will also give you a good idea of what to expect not just now, but five or ten years down the line. Since most overnight success is ten years in the making, understanding yesterday can help you build the bridge to a brighter tomorrow.
[photo credit: plantronicsgermany via photopin cc]
[infobox title=’About the Author’]Cynthia Griffith has been juggling music, fashion and literature for almost a decade. In 2012, Cynthia went on to publish her debut novel, The Sun Village Project, which broke into the Amazon Top 100 at number 92. Today, Cynthia is an avid blogger for the Live, Work, Play Wilmington community. She enjoys blogging about events, shops and restaurants in her community and proudly supports all local non-profit organizations. Cynthia Griffith is also the great, great, grand daughter of James Fennimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans and many other classic American tales.[/infobox]
