Imaginable: How to see the future coming and be ready for anything

When you take a mental time trip ten years into the future, your brain starts to think with a different point of view. This isn’t a metaphor—it’s a literal fact. Scientists describe this as switching your imagination from first-person to third-person perspective.

One of the most important sources of foresight that I rely on, and that I’ve been using for the past fifteen years to gather up future forces, is the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report.

A core mechanic, in game development terms, is whatever action players do over and over while playing the game. The core mechanic of soccer is kicking a ball. The core mechanic of playing with Legos is stacking bricks. The core mechanic of Scrabble is making words out of letter tiles. And the core mechanic of social simulations is writing quick sto

A signal of change draws your attention to where the ideas, technologies, and habits of the future are being actively experimented with, tested, seeded, and invented, today.

MOMENT OF CHOICE: Imagine waking up on Thank You Day ten years from now. Are you going to say “Thank you” or “No thank you”? If you do choose to participate, whom will you send your thank-you dollars to today, and why?

What are you good at? What do you know a lot about? What communities are you part of? What’s something you’re more passionate about than most people? What values drive you forward in your own life, no matter what obstacles or setbacks you face? I’ll help you draw out your answers to these questions in a moment. But first, I want to encourage you to

Here are some prompts to help you write your journal entry from this future. Set the scene. Where are you when you receive the emergency alert? Is anyone else with you? If so, what do you say to each other? Describe the moment in detail. Feel the moment. What emotions are you experiencing in the moment? What physical sensations? What thoughts start

Alan Watts wrote, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

This has to do with a psychological phenomenon known as time spaciousness. It’s the relaxing and empowering feeling that we have enough time to do what really matters—to consider our options, make a plan, and act more confidently to create the future we want. It is almost impossible to create a sense of time spaciousness when we’re thinking in a ma

When you freewrite about a scenario, I recommend setting a timer and spending five minutes—and only five minutes!—describing what you might think, feel, and do if this scenario actually happened to you. Your goal is to visualize this future scenario as if you’ve already lived through it, as if it were a real memory you could look back on and descri