Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas & Predict The Future

(even if it doesn’t seem exotic or far away)

REAL LIFE ADVICE (3 WAYS TO BE MORE FICKLE TODAY) Save Ideas Offline – Thanks to wonderful productivity apps like Evernote and plenty of browser plugins, there are many ways to save information online, but they can sometimes be lost in collections you never return to and the connections between them are hard to visualize. Instead, I routinely print

Proving Questions - How To Quantify a Trend Is the trend idea unique enough to be described as new or fresh? Has anyone published research related to this trend idea? Is the media starting to uncover examples or focus on it? Are there enough examples across industries to show adoption? Is it likely to continue into the foreseeable future? As you go

“As soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them become afraid of challenges. They become afraid of not being smart. I have studied thousands of people … and it’s breathtaking how many reject an opportunity to learn.” —Carol Dweck (from Mindset)

The 5 Habits of Trend Curators BEING CURIOUS – always wanting to know why and always seeking to learn more about the world and improve your knowledge by investigating and asking questions. BEING OBSERVANT – learning to see the small details in stories and activities that others may ignore or fail to recognize as significant. BEING FICKLE – moving f

What broad group or demographic does this story describe? What is the underlying human need or behavior that this idea is an example of? What makes this story interesting as an example? How is this same phenomenon affecting multiple unrelated industries? What qualities or elements make me interested in this story?

The Haystack Method describes a process where you first focus on gathering stories and ideas (the hay) and then using them to define a trend (the needle) that gives meaning to them all collectively.

A non-obvious trend is a unique curated observation of the accelerating present.

Naming Questions - How to Ensure You Have an Effective Trend Name ... Is the name not widely used or already well understood? Is it relatively simple to say out loud in conversation? Does it make sense without too much additional explanation? Could you imagine it as the title of a book? Are you using words that are unique and not overused or cliché