To you who work hard: Trends are your strongest friend

　　Whether you run a company or a life, you can never get rid of the influence of trends.

　　Discovering trends is actually the ability to predict the future and the ability to see the essence from the phenomenon. When you discover the trend, is it already a big trend that people say is passed down by word of mouth, or is it still starting from the end of Qingping? Its meaning and value to you are completely different. The former means that you know it, but you may not understand it deeply and see through it. The latter may be that you see through it in advance and discover unlimited opportunities.

　　If you go against the trend, you are finding yourself an opponent that you cannot fight against, but if you follow the trend, you will have the strongest ally.

　　01

　　"Phenomenon is law", discovering trends is the strategic cultivation that a company CEO needs to have

　　"The wind rises at the end of the green duckweed and ends among the wild grass."

　　During the Warring States Period more than two thousand years ago, people had observed that the trend started with a slight signal: when the strong wind blew, it also gathered in places with green duckweed grass, then blew up and finally calmed between the grasslands. The graphite of all kinds of things also happened unknowingly, and after a while of great enthusiasm, it finally subsided.

　　The ancients also told us that the general trends in the future are often hidden in the very ordinary and small phenomena that seem to be very ordinary now.

　　Fu Sheng believed very much: "Phenomenon is the law." He said, "When a phenomenon occurs, there must be a certain pattern. The CEO must look at the pattern through the phenomenon. Never think that this guy is lucky, rich second generation, and knows how to market. If you look at the problem in this way, it is easy to become a critic, not an entrepreneur. If others are strong, they must represent a certain pattern. Sometimes we summarize it as luck, because the abstraction does not reveal the rules, so we have to say it is luck."

　　Discovering rules means that a company CEO needs to have some strategic cultivation. Discovering trends is the sooner the better. When others can understand this rule and discuss this rule, it is not an opportunity worth getting bigger.

　　Discovering the strong winds that will come in the future in advance at the end of Qingping is the ability to surpass others.

　　This quality is more important in the current environment because the current entrepreneurial environment is cruel.

　　Professor Zeng Ming of Lakeside University believes that the current strategy is definitely not planned, because the market environment changes too quickly and time has been greatly compressed. An industry may move from birth to disappear in three years. The real strategy is produced. Only by running first can you know what your strategy is, and then iterate continuously.

　　Therefore, many companies with strong execution do not create a perfect strategy first and then execute it. Instead, discover the trend first and start running first.

　　Xu Xiaoping said that the process of entrepreneurship is like building an airplane. Entrepreneurs have to draw drawings and build planes while driving to get things done.

　　However, if you didn't find the right direction in advance, you were flying against the wind and might have been run away before you could draw the drawings. In this case, the ability to predict the wind direction in advance determines the success or failure of things.

　　02

　　Find the small trend:

　　Independent, in-depth, continuous observation and thinking

　　Since the trend is hidden in various seemingly ordinary phenomena in the early stages, why is it still only a small number of people able to discover it in advance? This difference is caused by people's different observation abilities and by their different thinking abilities.

　　1) Observation without comments

　　Indian philosopher Krishnamurti once said: "Observation without comment is the highest form of human intelligence. "

　　The other side of observation is judgment: observation is the beginning, judgment is the end. Sometimes, we must be alert to judgment because it is too prone to errors, especially when observing the sample too.

　　A powerful judgment must come from a large number of observations.

　　Many companies that are leading in the industry never close themselves, but maintain a very strong sensitivity to the environment: data inside and outside the industry, inside and outside the company, and excellent cases in the industry are their first research objects.

　　This is how a post-90s entrepreneur discovers new entrepreneurial opportunities.

　　He runs a chain Chuanchuan store in Chengdu. During this period, many customers will ask him if he has any fruit drinks after buying Chuanchuan.

　　So, his shop began to wholesale this beverage from the outside and began to pay attention to the sales of this juice throughout Chengdu. He found that various restaurants in Chengdu need this kind of juice, and the market is large. However, there are few companies producing this kind of juice. The only large company is still in the north and the provinces and cities in the south are relatively out of stock.

　　After investigating and visiting many juice companies, he found that a northern juice factory that only sells this single product can also account for 2/3 of the latter's profits compared with a member of a well-known juice brand in the country. He and his team realized that this type of juice product can also generate large profits, and there is a huge market in the south.

　　Spend more than half a year to investigate and then spend more than half a year to polish the product. Recently, juice has been launched on the market, and as expected, the first batch of thousands of boxes are in short supply.

　　2) In-depth thinking

　　The ability to think deeply, most of the time, is the ability to reason.

　　只有靠推理，才能深入理解一个事物，才能看到别人看不到的地方。这部分的过程，是你的思维时间，别人看不到摸不着，也是人一生中占据一个显著比例的“暗时间”。

　　For the same phenomenon, you don’t think about it, it’s just a repeater of other people’s words; if you ask further, “Why? What is it? What else?”, you can only reach the essence of things step by step. Didn’t Newton discovered the phenomenon of gravity through this deep thinking?

　　Let’s talk about the importance of deep thinking ability based on the issue of “discovering trends”. Some people say, "The reasons for the success of most companies are nothing more than two points: doing the right thing, that is, choosing the right attack point; catching up with the good opportunity, that is, doing it with the flow."

　　This "correct nonsense" is still a long way from knowing to becoming cognition and truly integrating into the practice of corporate management and becoming the principle of doing things.

　　Lei Jun realized the importance of trends and integrated him into his work practice, spending 16 years of youth. Lei Jun once thought painfully about his 16-year struggle experience in Kingsoft: " Why can some people only get 20% growth after 100% of their efforts? On the contrary, some people get 100% of their efforts?" Lei Jun once admitted: "These years are like planting grass in saline-alkali land."

　　From the deduction of phenomena step by step to the essence, he realized the principle of "going with the flow". It is precisely because of the truth that Lei Jun, who was in his forties, founded Xiaomi and firmly grasped the trend of mobile Internet, allowing Xiaomi to go public in 8 years with a market value of more than US$50 billion.

　　Deep thinking and inspiration are also the ability that many corporate managers deliberately cultivate. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffett have all read widely, and have been constantly inspired and gained new understandings.

　　03

　　Those opponents you can't resist: Big Trends

　　Charlie Munger once said: The macroscopic is what we must accept, and the microscopic is what we can do.

　　There are many business opportunities that can be found in small trends, but the big trend is irreversible. Our generation has to face at least the following major trends. The real life may be like this: living to the age of 120, work replaced by artificial intelligence, and multi-stage life...

　　1) Artificial Intelligence: Your job may be replaced by AI, either working for life or resting for life

　　" Artificial intelligence brings the biggest revolution of our time. We are already deeply trapped in its vortex."

　　AI is no longer a simple computer. It can learn and adapt to it by itself. We humans can also master what we have not told it. In addition to playing Go, suddenly, many things can be done by machines. They can now compose music, write poetry, and do live broadcasts.

　　In the long run, no job is safe and will never be replaced by AI. A survey by Oxford University shows that nearly half of the jobs will disappear within 15 years.

　　In the next twenty or thirty years, old jobs will disappear, and sometimes even an entire industry will disappear. New jobs emerge, but new jobs and new industries will not last long, and will change soon. A person may have to change four or five times in his life.

　　Yuval Harari said that what we should do is always learn, maintain the ability to meet changes and adapt to the environment throughout our lives, and constantly meet the challenges brought by AI. However, if you can't study for life, you may only have a lifetime of rest - AI can do the work you can do, and you can do better than you. You become a "useless" human being.

　　2) Post-company era: More and more people work from home

　　The author of "Future Work" believes that in the next 20 years, 90% of full-time jobs will now disappear, full-time employees will become freelancers, and companies will also shift their work focus to outsourcing companies and partners.

　　There will be more and more slash youth and freelancers. Monthly employment is more in line with the needs of companies in the work era. Today, when the service industry becomes the largest industry, individuals are beginning to rise, and skill owners will become valuable.

　　People begin to pay attention to their time, and pay more attention to the quality of their lives and their sense of participation in life. Therefore, more and more people are starting to work with their interests, and the rewards they pursue are no longer the only money, but also a sense of honor, participation, identity, and increase the sense of gain of experience.

　　From 1990 to 2014, data from the U.S. Labor Bureau showed that the number of full-time workers decreased, and China's freelancers also reached 3 million. By 2020, 43% of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers.

　　3) Multi-stage life: You will likely live to be 100 years old and return to school at the age of 50.

　　Confucius taught us: "At thirty, you are not confused at forty; at fifty, you know the destiny of heaven; at sixty, you are obedient; at seventy, you are as good as you want, and you do not go beyond the rules."

　　We seem to have been used to getting married in our twenties, having more than thirty children, and retiring at the age of fifty.

　　However, after reading the data below, you may have to re-plan your life.

　　According to some research institutions, the probability of a post-00 born in 2008 living to 100 years old is as high as 50%. A hundred-year-old life will become a reality in the future. The National Bureau of Statistics of China announced on July 25, 2017 that in 2016, the average life expectancy of men in mainland China was 73.64 years and women were 79.43 years. For the foreseeable future, lifespan will only get longer and longer.

　　It is highly likely that our generation will live to the age of 100. "A Centenary Life" says that the traditional three-stage life - reading, working, and retirement will no longer be suitable for the future.

　　In the era of longevity, multi-stage life is the mainstream: life is divided into many segments, each stage has a different theme, and each segment is interspersed with no clear boundaries.

　　If you live to the age of 120, you may return to school at the age of 30, take time to fall in love and get married at the age of 40, quit your job and travel at the age of 50, and start a business after you come back... These life that seems incredible today will be commonplace in the future.

　　Written at the end:

　　When you are used to looking at the world from a future perspective, everything will become different: there are business opportunities everywhere. Instead of worrying about finding a job in middle age, it is better to plan your freelancer first, and you can return to school and improve yourself after retirement...

　　Countless large and small trends gather together, continuing to change the world, but the people who form the trend are people. A small challenge for you may also change the world under the butterfly effect.

　　Change has constituted the era itself. Paying attention to the trends of the times, continuing to learn, embrace change, and constantly challenging yourself are necessary conditions for survival.