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

“I saw people in states of shock over the last eighteen months. But for me, the future simulations were a bit like martial arts training—you’re practicing skills and techniques in a safe environment so that you can be quicker and more effective whilst remaining calm.”

can teach you my other favorite brainstorming game for inspiring future scenarios. It’s called One Hundred Ways Anything Can Be Different in the Future. Here’s how it works: First, you pick a topic, like work, or food, or learning. Then you list one hundred things that are true about it today. The simpler or more obvious the fact, the better. Next,

RULE #1: Take a Ten-Year Trip. When you think about the future, focus your imagination ten years out. A ten-year timeline will lift the ceiling on your imagination and give you that magical feeling of “time spaciousness.” It will help you open your mind, take in new information, reduce your blind spots, increase your empathy, set more optimistic go

Keep in mind, as you look for clues, that signals aren’t general trends like “artificial intelligence” or “the decline of religious affiliation among young people.” They are vivid, detailed, specific examples of innovation, change, or invention—like “Mindar,” a six-foot-tall, aluminum, androgynous robotic priest that preaches Buddhist sermons insid

This makes sense: vividly imagining a possible future creates memories of things we haven’t actually lived through yet, so the pandemic felt familiar to him. And research suggests that “future memories” have a real psychological benefit if and when a traumatic future we imagined actually happens. It’s not just that we’re less surprised by what happ

Future Scenario #1: Thank You Day February 2, ten years from now

Within the next decade, “face search apps” will likely be as common as internet search engines are today. You’ll be able to get vast amounts of information about a complete stranger just by pointing your phone, smartwatch, or augmented reality glasses at them. Can you imagine how face searches will change your life? Can you imagine how your friends

But hard empathy is easier to practice when you’re not just guessing, when you’re actually getting direct information from others about what they want and need. It can be as simple as asking two questions: What keeps you up at night when you think about the future? What makes you leap out of bed with excitement in the morning when you think about t

Studies show that this is also quite common: We become more open to the possibility of change as we get closer to achieving a long-term goal.1 We anticipate the end of one journey and look ahead to a new one beginning.