Futures Thinking and the Urgent Optimism of Midlife
Being called an opportunist is hard to mistake for a compliment, but maybe it’s just gotten an unfair rap. It’s really a matter of principle. Pursuing opportunities at all costs has never been a good look, but assuming one’s intentions are ethically sound, approaching whatever possibilities the universe might present with openness and equanimity seems like a pretty solid modus operandi. At least this is what I’ve been telling myself all these years. Like the main character in Memento, but if he were influenced by eastern religions and moral philosophy, I’ve tattooed various notes to self on my body to affirm my commitment to my lack of commitment.
Serendipity is scripted on my inner left wrist, its curliqued terminals held aloft by two skywriting doves. On my right shoulder, the spinning commas of a samurai tomoe: I change or transform my life. On my back, nunc stans, the eternal now, the timeless present. I’m not sure what the half sleeve of fruits and vegetables on my left arm is saying exactly, but it certainly does make a statement.
Understandably, I’ve grappled some with this way of navigating life. It’s true that my brand of opportunism has served me well, leading me down roads that might have remained far less or possibly untraveled were I to have been more steadfast in my orientation to some north star goal. However, now that I’m roughly midway through this journey, I’m starting to feel like I should probably have at least some sense of direction as I pitch my way ever-forward towards a distant yet increasingly perceptible horizon.
If the future is now, then it’s never too late to start thinking about it, right?
Right. Except that first I’ve had to come to grips with my constitutional rejection of plans. That’s not to say that I exist wholly in chaos mode. Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, darling. Planning works for me on a micro level; I am very good at throwing dinner parties for example, and am a certified slayer of mise en place in any kitchen. I thrive in a six-week project sprint. Just don’t ask me what I’m doing after that. Beyond the basic adult responsibility of chucking money into an interest-bearing account whenever possible, thinking in long-term timeframes collapses my brain, and maybe it does the same to yours too. We need a better approach.
The problem with making plans is that it asks us to predict the future. Planning asks us to know what we want well in advance so that we can lay out a tidy, organized checklist of to-dos that get us from here to there. When you’re organizing an elaborate meal for many people, a checklist is absolutely what you need. When you’re trying to figure out how and who to be in this life, a checklist mentality is a recipe for disaster. Does forty-something-year-old you really want the same things that twenty or even-thirty-something-year-old you thought you wanted? Do you believe you know today what you’ll want when you’re seventy?
Writing this feels a bit condescending because of course we know that life is messy and unpredictable and non-linear. I get that a checklist gives a sense of control and security even if we comprehend deep-down that it’s essentially false. The main thing is that this approach doesn’t afford the flexibility we need for changing our minds about what we want, nor does it allow us to be responsive to shifting circumstances. Sticking to a plan sometimes leads to getting stuck. But if we let go of a need to be ‘correct’ about the future, we might have a shot at being more resilient instead of feeling like we’ve failed somehow when things go off course.
To think about the future, we need to think like a futurist. Yes, that is a real job, and it’s a pretty cool one, but there’s no crystal ball involved.
In his series for Fast Company, futurist Jamais Cascio explains it like this:
Futurism as it’s practiced today doesn’t try to predict the future, but rather to illuminate unexpected implications of present-day issues; the emphasis isn’t on what will happen, but on what could happen, given various observed drivers. It’s a way of getting new perspectives and context for present-day decisions, as well as for dealing with the dilemma at the heart of all strategic thinking: the future can’t be predicted, yet we have to make choices based on what is to come.
So how do we get into the futures-thinking headspace? It’s an approachable methodology that’s fundamentally about scanning the landscape of your life and environment and paying attention to the ‘signals,’ or clues from the future that are showing up in the present. When something sparks your interest, indulge your curiosity and find ways to follow the threads wherever they lead you. This helps generate unexpected connections that you can craft into ‘what-ifs,’ playing with different scenarios and considering different outcomes.
Cascio suggest using a few archetypes for imagining scenarios:
- What do things look like if the future is what I expect;
- What do things look like if the future is better than I expect;
- What do things look like if the future is worse than I expect; or,
- What do things look like if the future is weirder than I expect?
Another approach comes from games designer and futurist Jane McGonigal, whose online futures-thinking course introduces the idea of envisioning preferred futures, which are “highly persuasive, compelling visions of the changes you want to make real.” This reminds me of one of my go-to resources for coaching myself (and occasionally others) out of a slump.
In Designing Your Life, Stanford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans share an exercise called “Odyssey Planning.” Using their simple worksheet, you’re instructed to design (at least) three possible futures for yourself, and to evaluate the relative merits of each one based on the resources required and the level of enthusiasm to realize it, your confidence in your ability to achieve it, and its coherence with your values. These measures resonate with McGonigal’s thinking, too, especially as the method materializes the possibilities so you can spot potential obstacles, but also potential allies and collaborators in order to make your vision real. It’s less of a plan and more of a roadmap.
Futures thinking and design thinking are friends with benefits. Just like there isn’t a single, one-size-fits-all perfect design solution, there is no one perfect future. “In dealing with the future, said Alvin Toffler in his seminal work, Future Shock, “it is far more important to be imaginative than to be right.” So all you can do is prototype the possibilities and test, learn, and iterate your way forward, accepting that along the way, anything can change, including your vision. This got me thinking that maybe I’d been focusing on the wrong question about my future the whole time; instead of asking what do I want, perhaps I should have been asking, what matters to me? Plans change, things fall apart. But my values are stable. Values are directions, not destinations, as the therapy-speak goes.
Armed with this insight, I found myself referencing more of Jane McGonigal’s work, but this time on the side of her research as a game designer. Her 2010 TED talk on how “Gaming can make a better world” has stuck with me for years, not because I’m a gamer–I decidedly am not–but because of two key concepts she introduced that unlock a better way to think about creating our preferred futures.
First, McGonigal frames her hypothesis around the motivating factors of the epic win:
An epic win is an outcome that is so extraordinarily positive you had no idea it was even possible until you achieved it. It was almost beyond the threshold of imagination. And when you get there you are shocked to discover what you are truly capable of.
In other words, an epic win is the biggest, boldest, ‘what-if’ scenario you could design for yourself. It’s a cumulative big-picture view rather than a specific goal and a plan to achieve it. It’s more emotional than material in nature. In narrative terms, you could think of it as your odyssey, the hero’s journey of transformation. This futures-thinking mindset feels a lot more appealing to me than ticking off a list, but it’s also noticeably accommodating to a goal-oriented approach, as long as you accept that there may be some dragon-slaying along the way.
But how might one build up all the self-mythologizing energy needed not only to envision a preferred future, but also to go about bringing it to fruition? McGonigal describes the supportive conditions of the gaming environment: a mission that’s aligned with but also stretches your current skill level; being surrounded by trusted advisors and collaborators who are there to help and provide feedback; and an overarching sense of purpose guiding your way forward. If you scan your own world today, do these conditions exist? If so, they offer the signals of a successful future, the possibility of an epic win ahead.
The other key concept–urgent optimism–is what you need to get you there. Urgent optimism is a kind of extreme self-motivation which McGonigal defines as “the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, motivated by the belief that you have a reasonable hope of success.” This is how I often feel when I’m in startup mode, pulsing with energy and excitement and “…believing that an epic win is possible, and that it is always worth trying, and trying now.” In fact, I’ve been feeling this way recently; midlife seems to be the supplier of the urgency, but optimism has always been one of my core values, and I think it’s the one that’s gotten me the farthest.
For someone who’s lived most of her life without so much as a blurry blueprint of any kind of preferred future, I’ve nevertheless managed to give the impression of knowing where I’m headed. In reality, it’s been more a case of blind ambition. A lot of people ask me about how I’m so willing and able to take big risks and make big changes, and the answer is relentless optimism. I believe in my own abilities, I believe that people are fundamentally oriented towards supporting one another, and I believe that anything is possible.
Thus far, I’ve let my optimism take the wheel and steer me towards opportunities, and honestly, it’s been a great ride. But I’m ready to take it from here; the future that I prefer is a future of my own active making. In the words of David Bowie, someone who came from the future to deliver important, life-changing messages that continue to resonate in the present, “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.”
Originally published on Medium.