MAADness — mentoring as a duty

It’s time to fill tech’s humanity gap

What’s eating the world today? Is it software, as Marc Andreesen once famously said? Data? AI? Machine learning? There’s a lot of hungry tech out there, but all of these would be predators seem to share one thing in common — an enourmous, terrifying, rapidly widening gap of humanity.

A new dating app crops up daily purporting to make meeting your future avocado-toast eating, Game of Thrones binging, love of your life,as easy as putting on your shirt in the morning, yet a 2018 report by Cigna put 46% of Americans reporting feeling lonely sometimes or always. According to the US census bureau, urbanization has grown from 64% in 1950 to closer to 90% today, yet despite more of us living right on top of each other, that same Cigna report said 43% feel isolated from others. What is going on here? We are speeding towards maximum efficiency, but what are we tossing aside in the rearview on the way there?

Yuval’s “Sapiens” was a fascinating read on how humans developed over time and does a wonderful job explaining how different cultural traits drove, and were driven by, the interaction of societal/evolutionary changes. In one example, in the wake of learning to farm, we saw two explosions, one in populations and the other in unintended consequences, including a worker class forming with much poorer quality of life than was previously had. So what unintended consequences follow when we learn to hand over the keys to our future in exchange for efficiency?

Feed your LinkedIn profile, twitter stream, and “like” history into an algorithm, and it might claim to spit out an accurate personal dossier, but I don’t buy it. What about the doors slammed in your face, the opportunities given or out of reach, the catalysts in your life that have brought you to this point and the ones that have yet to arrive, and critically, the individuals making an impact in your life. Our lives are a web of complexity that may begin at the individual level, but multiply exponentially when we account for the ~150 relationships that will shape our future, and in many cases, our fulfillment.

As they say though, when you’re a hammer you’ll see a nail, and at least for now, the smartest computer chip is no match for the complexity of the relationships driving our lives. And so instead, we focus on what can be understood, throwing aside the most important, but too difficult to data-fy, facets of our life.

What university best matches our 52-point personality survey? I bet the top 3 answers will be great options, but without getting out there, experiencing the campus, hearing from teachers, and meeting potential classmates, you’ll never know what school colors are truly running through your veins. A dating app might connect you to the highest probability companion, but if you don’t have the courage to make yourself vulnerable and give it a real shot, you’ll be part of that Cigna 46%.

Apps can do a lot, but humanity is up to you. Interpersonal relationships drive a helluvalot of our lives, and while your iPhone might point you in the right direction, you’ll run right into a brickwall if you don’t look up from your screen long enough to notice who’s around you.

So if interpersonal relationships really drive the world, and tech eats all of the world except interpersonal relationships, what should you do about it? Aside from unplugging more often to nurture the relationships around you, there is one form of relationship that can go a long way to filling the gap left behind in today’s society — mentoring. Listen to any great person’s life story, and sure enough you’ll hear about at least one, but probably many more, mentors that they could not have gotten where they are without.

New online career resources are great, but ask someone how it went when they submitted their application to the black-hole of Google’s job portal. Or try unearthing the confidence in yourself to chase an audacious goal with AI. Some things, many times the most important things, require good-ole human relationships. People need bonding, interpersonal growth, a coach, a friend who will be screaming at the top their lungs from your corner as Rocky pulverizes you to mince-meat in front of the whole arena. There is no way I could have even come close to reaching my goals if my brother-in-law never sat down and taught me the basics of investing, or if my former portfolio manager didn’t believe in me enough to give me a shot at joining the team.

At an event with my mentee in iMentor [a great non-profit program for high-school students], a speaker referred to mentoring as “optometry”. Maybe you are struggling to pay next month’s rent, or maybe your main priority is topping the company’s sales leaderboard; you might not feel you have the most to give, or you might not feel it is worth your time, but you’re wrong, you have your life experiences, your mistakes, your idiosyncrasies –a unique perspective to approach the world, your world. Mentors can open doors apps can’t, they can build confidence algorithms don’t understand, and they can change a future in such an impactful way that data could never dream of. So let’s thank tech for bringing us efficiency, but instead of letting ourselves be wholly gobbled up by it, let’s fill the gap left behind, let’s make mentoring our personal duty.