Humans have developed the amazing power to think about the future, but we waste it preparing for life in all the wrong ways. People obsess about their educations and careers, even as these become more and more likely to twist and turn in totally unforeseeable ways. Good luck deciding in advance what you’d like in a partner (or a child!) Retirement plans, contingency plans, birth plans — largely doomed.

The only preparation worth making for an uncertain future is continuous improvement in one’s character.

Good qualities are gifts that keep on giving: kindness, curiosity, resilience, temperance, continence, courage, equanimity, etc.

Right now, you probably have some good traits, some less good ones, some underdeveloped potential, and some painful (or potentially painful) deficiencies. They get you through today. But what’s going to happen tomorrow? Life can demand anything from you, at any time. This is the kind of preparation that matters.

How does character development happen? — Not just in fits and starts, but all the time in bits and pieces.

Can you accelerate your own character development? — yes, but it’s not going to happen by accident.

How does character development happen?

On the commonsense view of character development, life is kind of like a video game. You go about just doing your regular stuff until the music changes and you find yourself facing a boss. You know, the stuff that ethics textbooks cases are made of: opportunities to lie, cheat, steal, or make some kind of literal life or death choice.

If you beat the bosses and handle these discrete, occasional moral crises well, you level up and become a better person. Moral growth happens occasionally, when inflicted on you by external circumstances. Your performances at these pivotal times partially reveal who you already were, and partially determine who you are to become.

This leveling up view of character development is not accurate. Like it or not, you are in fact developing your character all of the time, through all manner of seemingly mundane circumstances. It is not possible to avoid developing your own character on a continuous basis. Each choice to do what comes naturally or just to do what you’ve always done is, in effect, an endorsement of your current habits and a choice to strengthen them by repetition.

Life is not set up to increase your chances of success

Most importantly, life does not necessarily provide an environment conducive to stepwise moral growth, with levels arranged in anything close to ascending difficulty. If there is a God, He certainly can and does give people more than they can handle.

Moral issues can develop at any speed, and at any time. You might face what turns out to be your most challenging moral dilemma when you’re very young and ill-equipped to grapple with it.

Some people spend their lives slowly coming apart at the seams instead of slowly but surely becoming better people. Wise old men and women exist, and we should look to them for life lessons. But they are exemplars of how your future could be, not guarantees.

The Zone of Proximal Moral Development

People who are trying to learn something don’t benefit much from tasks that are too easy or too hard. Too easy, and the task can be completed on autopilot. Too hard, and the student gives up (perhaps not before frustrating herself in a counterproductive way).

Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky contributed a now-foundational idea to educational psychology: that of the “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD). Within the sweet spot of the ZPD, a learner is able to complete a task if and only if she has appropriate assistance from a “MKO” (more knowledgeable other, a.k.a. teacher). Eventually the teacher’s assistance can be withdrawn as the student learns and her ZPD shifts upwards in achievement level.

In much the same way as students must find their ZPD in terms of reading level or mathematical ability, adults must find their zones of proximal moral development. Sometimes life will serve up situations in your sweet spot, but you can’t count on it.

Instead, you must go out of your way to find opportunities to become a better person right now. This means: patience in the grocery story, mindfulness in the car. It means foregoing convenience and expedience when the harder, slower way is better (broadly construed).

Deliberate moral development now can’t guarantee that you’ll be “ready" when fate knocks, but it’s better than the alternative.

Just-in-time character manufacturing

Here’s a little story to illustrate, I’ve been thinking about this for a year now.

On Mother’s Day in 2018, I flew from New York City to Atlanta with my 5-month-old daughter on not even 24 hours' notice. My father had suffered a seizure out of the blue, been quickly diagnosed with a brain tumor, and wanted to meet her for the first time before he went under the knife for brain surgery.

It took me a day or two to fit the initial puzzle pieces of information together, but his condition was essentially terminal right out of the gate. I showed dad the baby with a smile and ate Mother’s Day breakfast alone at Waffle House before flying home in a daze.