Ignoring a billion people reminded me to be mindful of gradual changes

We’ve all heard the fable of the frog being slowly boiled alive. It’s used as a metaphor for our inability to react when things change gradually rather than suddenly.

If you put a frog in boiling water, it will jump out. But put it in tepid water and slowly bring it to a boil, and Kermit won’t realize what is happening and be cooked to death.

I recently had my own “frog in the kettle moment”. I noticed the world population has crept up and is projected to cross 8 billion in just a couple of years.

I realized I need to update my mental model. Its been anchored to 7 billion for the last 10 years. The truth is we’ve entered a decade where our planet is now home to an extra billion people!

Here’s some perspective: It took all of human history up to the year 1800 for the world population to reach even 1 billion. A billion is not a small amount of people.

As a side note, the industrial revolution was a real game changer. In fact, during the 20th century alone, we grew from 1.65 billion to 6 billion.

So from today until about 2030 we should use 8 billion as our new approximation for the number of people on earth.

It did get me thinking. What other things have been changing gradually in the world and require me to wake up before I boil?