Future Here Now: Future Ready You

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So since we know that an epochal change is unfolding, and we know that a lot of our frustrations are resulting from the mismatch between our assumptions and this changing reality, it wouldn’t make any sense for us to stick our heads in the ground and pretend none of this is happening. But it’s very easy for us to do exactly that.

The real challenge is that we’re talking about changing very deep, hard-wired assumptions and expectations, and as a species we don’t do that readily. But we can — and brain research backs this up. The key is to practice these new expectations and behaviors, just like you practiced learning to ride a bike or shoot a basket or drive a car or any other skill. We have to do the thing over and over again until new neural pathways form, and the skill becomes second nature.

The problem is that when we’re trying to learn a new skill, it’s hard. We fumble. We mess up. We get hurt. We get frustrated. As adults, we tend avoid learning new skills — because it’s hard, and because we don’t want to look bad to others — or to ourselves. And that lack of practice, our avoidance of situations that require us to think or move or do in a different way, makes it harder for us when we have to. Which is a big piece of why so many adults struggle with, and fight against, any change to their status quo.

And if we struggle with learning new sport skills as an adult, you get an inkling of how much work it takes to change our assumptions and expectations.

The thing is, though, the future isn’t waiting for us to finish complaining and start working on the rewiring. The longer we wait, the harder it will be for us to adapt.

So, if we care about future-ready organizations and communities, we have to work on our own personal future readiness as well. I can affirm that this is a long process — I started more than 10 years ago, and I’m definitely a work in progress. But we can start building those habits with a few small steps.

The first section below lists the most important future-ready habits you can build. You won’t be able to transform all of this, across all of your thinking habits, immediately. So use the first list as a sketch of where you’re trying to go — beginning with the end in mind and all that.

The second section below gives you four very concrete things that you can do today to start moving in that direction. These may feel awkward, or weird, or difficult. But they’re little — they’ll take you no time at all. So give it a try. And for the conventionally motivated among you, you can even get extra credit! :-)

Future Ready Skills

• Get in the habit of challenging your own assumptions. Why do I think that? What evidence do I have? What else could be a possible reason or alternative?
• Listen to people who are outside of your usual experience. What can I learn from their perspective? What do they see that I don’t? How are they encouraging me to think and act differently?
• Examine your binaries for evidence of continuums. Is there evidence for experiences that fall between the two (or three or however many) categories that I’m used to? Are there situations that are a blend between categories that I normally think of as set in stone? What am I missing when I rely on those categories?
• Interrogate how you respond to change, uncertainty, ambiguity. What do I do? How do I feel in my guts, or jaw, or shoulders? Do I want to fight back? Do I tend to be curious?

First step

• Pick out an assumption that you make regularly — about yourself or others — and list three possible alternatives. What other explanations are there (I don’t have to agree for them to exist)? Extra credit — do this three times so that you get more comfortable and start to see patterns.
• Find three sources for information about something you care about — sources that fall outside of your normal. You can use YouTube, Goodreads, Media Matters, TikTok search and more to find someone talking about that subject who looks or sounds or has a different background from what you usually ezpect. Do use your critical thinking skills — your different sources should still be reliable and not crazy disconnected from reality. Extra credit: find sources that are talking about the issue you made the assumption about in the first bullet.
• Pick a binary, like work-home or water-land, and see what you can find that falls between the categories. You can do this as a thought experiment or a funbresearch rabbit hole. Extra credit: note how the discovery of things between the binary makes you feel — intellectually, and physically. Pay attention to whether your shoulders tighten, or your stomach gets squirrely, or you have an urge to throw it aside and do something, anything, else.
• Identify a time in your life, preferably recently, when something changed unexpectedly, or in a way you didn’t like. How did you respond externally (your behavior)? How did you feel internally? Were your mind and body together or on different pages? What came of that experience?

If you had to do it over again, would you act differently? What would you tell your inner self?

Extra credit: write a note to your inner self and stick it in your underwear drawer or someplace private where you’ll find it every once in a while.

Let me know what you think!