Over the last few years, I have been in school working on my degree and chipping away at building my consulting business with eyes wide open about the future and the possibilities. Along the way, I started lifting my eyes from just seeing beyond completing my degree and building my business to what was in store for the world around me. How could I help others be successful in their own pursuits and dream accomplishments? That is when I landed on becoming a futurist and learning the skill of foresight.
Most of us look into the future in a couple of different ways. Some of us dream about the future, how we would like our future to look, what accomplishments we want to achieve, and what experiences we want to have. This look into the future is grounded in our passions and filled with hope and possibility.
The other way we look into the future is by reading the trends around us, projecting where the trend will lead and beginning to make decisions to prepare for the perceived future. This look into the future is based on data, real-life circumstances, and deductive reasoning toward projections. For instance, if you worked in a manufacturing job and you recognized the evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) will replace most manufacturing jobs in the next 10-20 years, you begin to make decisions to prepare for retirement, pursue a degree in a new field, or go to trade school to learn a new skill not being threatened by AI. As a parent, you may steer your high school student toward a future in a different field to ensure their future success.
For many, this second kind of look into the future can be overwhelming, can feel uncertain, and can even be scary to the point where there is the temptation to avoid it and pretend like such a future is not possible. What the trends show us about the future has little to do with how we feel about it, and has everything to do with what we choose to do about it.
When the projected future is something that we invite and are ready to embrace (such as driverless cars or automated house cleaning devices) then we need to make decisions to take action to prepare for such a future. It could be buying stocks in a company that will usher in a technological breakthrough. It could be moving to a different location to start a business that will flourish in the coming future.
But, when the projected future is something that we don’t want to see come to pass, then we can take action to change the future to one we want as well as make preparations in case we can’t.
We can’t escape the future, but we can change it, prepare for it, and help others get ready for it. That’s exactly what I am going to try and do for all of you who join me here on Modern Inklings Field Notes. We are going to look at what is going on in the world and project out to what that means for the future we are all moving toward and cannot avoid. I will do my best to prepare you for the future to ensure your success, happiness, and fulfillment of life.
