The Future Series: Article #1. Learning How to Be A Futurist: One Best Practice to Get Us Started.

1 minute read.

Note: This is the first of a series of articles on how to be a better entrepreneur, product developer and – well – human. I base these learnings on decades of work innovating across cultures while imbedding a fascination with neuroscience findings. I am also in the process of writing a book based on the above and these are snippets of some of the content that will in it. If you are so inclined and have the time, please do let me know if you like the style and “voice” and content.

Are you a futurist? Well, you can be. It turns out that developing our empathy and aesthetic sensibilities muscles leads to growing our ability to see interconnections in human systems and capturing developing trends before others.  As entrepreneurs and product developers we must develop this skill. If we can’t sense the future and adapt how you do things, our businesses will suffer. Or even die. Just think of the graveyard of brands that were bad at this: Border Books, Kodak, Blockbuster, Blackberry, Nokia, Toys Are Us, etc.

Developing this skill requires developing your own “algorithm” composed of many vectors and mind feeds that are largely dependent on our individual way of processing and filtering reality. Afterall, we know now, that our brains are all individual and different. As the filters that they are, we learn differently. Some of us are visual learners. Some of us learn by doing. I have developed my own algorithm over years of studying the subject and practicing, but there are some common practices that we can all use and that I will share here.

One is being hyper aware. Simply being present and taking notes of what we see and feel will get us started in this journey. Simpler said than done, right? Try this: Get purposefully lost (we have GPS to save us) and be present and hyper aware of what you see and feel. This is a mindfulness exercise taken to the next level. Take notes afterwards and benchmark those notes and new sightings with your own experiences. What is different? What is the same? But - very important – during observation, do not let your mind wonder and start judging what you are seeing. Just observe and take notes. A person is walking a dog. What kind of dog? Is she talking on the phone while walking? How is she using it? What kind of leash is she using? What color? What is she wearing? Every observation is relevant. Our visual sense is the sense we most use in filtering reality, after all. This practice is a good way to developing that observational muscle. Seeing new landscapes and objects, puts us in a state of discovery and heightened perception. This is the reason why travelling can be so exciting and addicting. All good things for the mind and our awareness of the world regardless if we become successful futurists.

Ironically, being hyper aware, suppressing our judgement, listening and observing with intent, will go a long way in finding your very own algorithm to anticipating the future and developing fore-vision.