As a marketer, I’ve heard it over and over: today, consumers have more power than ever before. Easy access to information online lets us compare thousands of products, services, and ideas. New platforms and ever-widening social networks constantly create opportunities for discovery.

With all this information at our fingertips, we have more power to choose. But we don’t just have more power over our purchasing decisions. More importantly, we have more power over our professional and personal lives. Technology is changing how we stumble upon the major experiences that end up impacting the trajectory of our lives.

The schools I attended (and chose not to attend), the relationships I’ve entered and left, the jobs I applied for and accepted – these and many more are key decisions that have significantly changed my life. And looking back, I can see how technology has played a role in enabling each of these experiences. It brought me serendipitous exchanges, information, and people I otherwise may never have come across.

But we can’t just rely on technology to do all the work for us. We need to choose to act. Our life-altering experiences are born in the fleeting moments between discovering an opportunity and deciding to act.

I remember applying for internships during my junior year of college. It was an uneventful evening; I had already applied to five or so jobs, and I was about to close my laptop. On a whim, I took a look at Facebook’s Careers page. I saw an exciting position that sounded right up my alley, but I shook my head, thinking there’s no way I would hear back from a simple resume drop. But screw it. I was in a particularly optimistic mood, and I decided to apply anyway. Fast forward a grueling interview process and a few months later, and I landed the job. It’s terrifying to wonder what would have happened if I had navigated away from that page instead.

Today, when we apply for jobs, we can browse sites like Glassdoor, where anonymous employee reviews reveal what it’s really like to work at a particular company. The discovery of one company or position leads to ten more, and down the rabbit hole we go. And then there’s LinkedIn and Facebook for identifying connections we may have to the companies we’re interested in. Asking for a referral or an introduction is only a click away. Someone in our network can help us get our foot in the door (and often, that person is not in our closest circle of friends, but a second-degree connection).

I’ve seen technology create mini-miracles in my personal life as well. After ten mediocre first dates, I was fed up and ready to deactivate my OkCupid account. But just then, I received a new message that was intriguing enough. He seemed different from the rest, and why not? It’s just coffee. Coffee turned into dinner, which quickly blossomed into an amazing, enriching relationship. And even after the relationship ended, it gave me a close friend for life and an experience that I would never trade.

Technology has the power to bring forth these opportunities, but we still need to decide to act. Sometimes, it comes down to the quiet lull between the moment you discover an opportunity and the moment you decide to go for it or click away to another page. It’s up to us to keep our eyes open, identify those chances, and know when to act – and that may end up making all the difference.

Written by Ashmi Pathela

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