Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future

We can imagine what we’ve never seen before—if we practice.

Both kinds of optimism alert individuals to fresh opportunities and to the resources needed to pursue goals. Where pessimists may avoid problems, optimists cope and solve. They are specially productive because optimists are more likely to reach out for help, to collaborate and trust others. That gives them more capacity and resilience than they cou

Many of the most inspiring people and stories start with uncertainty, are saturated with doubt, yet arrive triumphant at places in life they could not see when they set out. Their successes are deeply human, derived from curiosity, imagination, and not a little bravery. They were prepared to navigate the unknown in pursuit of the ill-defined becaus

creativity of human interaction has never been more critical. We have a huge capacity for invention—if we use it. We have limitless talent for questions and exploration—if we develop it.

Accepting that the future is unknowable is where action begins. Experiments are ideal for complex environments because they yield clues about where you are; they are the best thing to do when you can’t see where to start.

Overwhelmed by complexity, we seek simplification and too quickly reach for binary perspectives, just at the moment when we need broader ones.

Our choice is not between false certainty or ignorance; it is between surrender or participation. So we need to leave simple solutions behind, to be bolder in our search, more penetrating in our enquiry, more energetic in our quest for discovery.

We have come to expect the future to be minutely and perfectly predictable. And then it rains after all, the train’s late, traffic is held up by a crash, the neighborhood is noisy, the job hateful, and the election doesn’t go our way. Trump. Brexit. The end of history. The fall of idols. A new virus. Booms and busts and out of the blue, #MeToo. The

As digital devices pervade our lives, it becomes easier to solve the so-called problem of human complexity by force-fitting a predetermined model onto human life.