Complacency always speaks softly. “You’re fine. It can wait.” It lulls us with reassurance. Yet in the age of AI, delay is not rest. It is surrender.
To live and work meaningfully now, we must hold two truths together: to smile at our rituals of denial: the unopened course, the dusty CV, the bookmarked article, and at the same time, to feel the unease beneath the smile. Humor makes our evasions bearable. Urgency makes them redeemable.
"The hammock above the volcano" is comfortable. Until it isn’t. The people whose careers will not just endure but deepen in this age are those willing to rise from that hammock. Those who accept unease as the beginning of growth. Those who act before later becomes never.
This blogpost was inspired by Manfred Kets de Vries' essay on Complacency
Complacency
Complacency is a peculiar human condition. It drifts between comfort and catastrophe, like a professional dozing in a hammock suspended above a volcano. It feels like calm, until the ground shakes. It looks like stability, until the eruption begins. What we mistake for peace is often just the stillness of denial. And when the eruption comes, we laugh at our folly even as we mourn the loss.
The tragedy of complacency is that it disguises itself as wisdom. We confuse inertia for stability, and denial for serenity. We polish the bars of our own cage, convincing ourselves that a gleaming prison is almost the same as freedom.
In the age of AI, this is not just a personal risk. It is a career strategy written in invisible ink.
Complacency in Action/Inaction
Complacency never announces itself. It whispers. “You’re fine as you are. You don’t need to change.” At first, that whisper feels reassuring. Over time, it becomes a sentence.
It shows up as procrastination: the unopened course, the bookmarked article, the polished excuses. It shows up as pride:“I’ve always done it this way.” It shows up as hope: “I’ll learn when things settle down.” And all the while, time slips quietly away.
This is not laziness. It is self-protection. A defense against the fear of failure, of irrelevance, of discovering we are no longer who we thought we were. Yet what protects us in the moment slowly erodes us over years. Talents wither. Potential fades. Relationships thin. We become smaller versions of ourselves, convinced it is safer to remain diminished than to risk becoming more.
Complacency, then, is not the absence of ambition. It is ambition deferred until it quietly dies.
Escaping the Cage
How do we step off the stage before the ceiling falls? The answer is not heroism. It is practice.
See the script. Notice when “later” becomes your default. See denial for what it is, a story rehearsed so often it sounds like truth.
Embrace unease. Growth begins in discomfort. The project you don’t fully understand, the tool that intimidates you, the conversation you would rather avoid; those are the places where careers are renewed.
Destroy the myth of “later.” In this age, waiting is not a neutral act. It is corrosive. Delay deepens the gap.
Seek witnesses. Alone, we justify our evasions. With coaches, colleagues, and communities, we are held to account.
Reframe risk. Action is uncertain. Inaction is fatal.