A Futurist's Guide to Building the Life You Want
Episode Stats
Summary
When people hear that Brian David Johnson is a futurist, they typically want him to offer some predictions for what the world will look like 10, 20, 50, 60, and beyond in the future. In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we discuss the importance of envisioning the future not as a set that you're helplessly hurtling towards, but as something you can actively change in shape.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast and when people
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hear that Brian David Johnson is a futurist they typically want him to offer some predictions for
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what the world will look like 10 20 50 years from now but Brian will explain to them that being a
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futurist is less about predicting the future than envisioning possibilities for it choosing the one
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you want to build and figuring out how to get there from the present Brian works through this
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process of future casting for fortune 500 companies in the military and in his book the future you he
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shows individuals how they can apply it to their personal lives he shows what that looks like with
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us today on the show beginning with the importance of envisioning the future not as something set that
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you're helplessly hurtling towards but as something you can actively change in shape we then talk about
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how to do your own future casting by figuring out what you want the life of your future you to look
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like and identifying the tools and people that can get you there Brian then explains how to get going
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towards your desired future and why that future is local and we end our conversation with what all
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this has to do with a quote from general dwight d eisenhower plans are useless but planning is
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everything after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is future you
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all right Brian David Johnson welcome to the show that's a pleasure to be here Brett so you are a futurist
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so what exactly do futurists do and what do you think are the biggest misconceptions people
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have about your profession so as a futurist i work with organizations to look 10 to 15 years
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out in the future and i model both positive and negative futures and then i'm an applied futurist
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which means that i turn around and look backwards and say okay what are the steps we need to take
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today tomorrow five years from now to move towards that positive future and move away from the negative
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so probably the best example where i've done it in the past is i was the chief futurist at the intel
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corporation the chip company and the reason why i was there is because it takes them 10 years
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to design develop and deploy a chip so it was a vital business importance for them to know
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10 years in advance what people wanted to do with technology and that was my job so i'm a i'm an
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engineer and a designer by training and really was my job to write a requirements document for what
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people would want to do with computers 10 years in the future and then we would use it for not only the
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design of the chip but we use it for hiring we use it for patents so it's a kind of a really applied
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really kind of specific process and now i work with different organizations whether it be with
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large corporations which i still do but i also do a lot of work with the government and the military
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kind of looking out at these possible and potential futures and then enabling people to take action
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that's so much about what i do and so brett i think some of the biggest misconceptions are that i
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predict the future i think that drives people nuts right is that they hear i'm a futurist and then
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they say okay mr futurist so tell me the future of this or that and the thing is is i refuse to make
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predictions really ultimately what i do and what i teach my students to do at arizona state university
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is to work with individuals and work with organizations to not only envision their future
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but really map out the steps it's going to take to get there gotcha so you're not making predictions
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you're not you're not you never say like oh while you're 2020 all the robots will have taken our jobs
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you don't do that kind of sort of stuff no no not at all but i do kind of look at parts of that so
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we can say okay well what will the effect of this technology be what will the you know where do you
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want to go and and so a lot of it really is kind of very action oriented to say okay what do you
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what do you need to do about it so yeah very rarely will i you know you know here's when the
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robots are going to rise up and take over humanity i get asked that all the time and oftentimes i i can
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answer that if you want me to answer it but a lot of times i'm like that's really not the type of
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futurist i am and what do you think when people think about the future people like the misconceptions
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people have about when they think about the future well i think the biggest misconception is that the
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future is set you know people think about the future as this place that we're all running to
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helpless to do anything about it right it's like we're all going to you know des moines iowa or boise
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idaho and people always ask me about it like you know hey bdj what's it going to be like in the future
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how do i prepare for the future you know what's the future of this or what's the future of that
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and really the grammar and the vocabulary around that's all wrong because the future isn't fixed
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and so i always tell people you know where do you want to go it's not this specific place that
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you're headed towards now granted it's based on facts you know where technology is going where is
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culture going and economics and all that type of stuff but i think people have a lot more control
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over their future than they really know yeah so like the future is not like back to the future
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part two where there's a 2015 that you can go to and everything's going to be like flying cars like
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who knows what it's going to be like there's so many factors that could change all that right and i'm a i'm
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a huge science fiction fan i'm also a science fiction author so i'm a nerd so i love back to the
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future i love the whole franchise but i always have to remind people and sometimes i'm a little wet
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blanket when it comes to it i it can be a little sobering i tell people i mean that's awesome and
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it's a great movie and it's really fun you do know back to the future is a movie right
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it's not the future it's a movie right and a movie is there to have a good time and that it does right
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it's a really great movie but it's not the actual nuts and bolts of going about and building the real
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future the capital f future and how do you think this misconception of thinking that the future is
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determined how does that sort of how does that stymie organization but also people from moving
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forward with their life well i think for most folks what i've seen over the last 25 years is
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people feel powerless people feel well the future's set and so where can i go okay what's going to
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happen how do i prepare and they they really don't feel like then that they can start taking action and
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on one level you know it gets people to feel if they have you know some agency and they feel kind
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of comfortable and they have maybe some means you know they're trying to kind of make the right moves
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to maybe prepare for the future and that actually from a business standpoint and from a personal
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standpoint is really the wrong way to do it i mean i can tell you that's that's really my job is to
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work with organizations to go no no you can actually take steps to actually help form that future in
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different ways and i work as i said with uh sort of large organizations and trade associations and
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things like that to do it but i think brett the the really dangerous part of it is when people
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are not active participants in their future right they're not actively trying to shape it and what
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that means is you're being a passive participant in your future and if you wind that out a little
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bit more it means that you're being passive when it comes to your future which means you're letting
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somebody else design your future for you and that never works out great i mean that result never
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works out great and so i always that kind of worries me about people as it takes away their power
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and it takes away their agency to really shape their lives and sometimes that can be you know
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really dangerous with folks because they really do feel like they're kind of unmoored and kind of
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they don't really have the ability to make changes and make decisions in their lives and that's why i
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always want to kind of remind people and i i've seen it in their faces it's one of my favorite things
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and and why i like working with individuals and talking about this stuff is you see people
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you see their faces light up and their eyes light up all of a sudden you see oh my gosh
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i can actually start shaping that future and that to me is is really exciting well you started
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working you work with individuals but you're you're bread and butter is working with large
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organizations to help with their high level strategy how did you start working with individuals and why
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did you end up writing a personal development book from a futurist perspective yeah that's a that's a
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great example brett and that's a really interesting ride over the last 10 to 20 years so you're right
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i mean my day job is you know i work with the united states army looking at the future of weaponized
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artificial intelligence or i work with the defense threat reduction agency looking at the future of
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digital weapons of mass destruction right sort of these big things or like with the intel corporation
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or like with companies like mastercard looking at the future of threats to kind of fraud and security
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so yeah it's really kind of sort of serious stuff and it's something i really enjoy and i i love my job
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i absolutely love my job but what's been really fascinating is people will pull me aside right
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because i you know i'm the future guy so i'm talking about the future and i think a great example is one
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of my clients is a manufacturing company in the in the midwest of america so big traditional
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manufacturing company really awesome i've been working with them for many years and i'm also a
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big baseball fan so they always know when i come to town it's like oh let's go take bdj to the ballpark
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and one of the things that they did is they said well let's give our ceo just some some time with
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bdj right you get some some off the record time with the futurist right and so we ended up getting
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this kind of really fancy suite which was nice and basically was all off the record so this ceo could
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ask me whatever he wanted basically for like an hour or two before the rest of the team showed up and
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we sat there and we were having a beer and we were watching the game and every single question he asked
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me was about his kids every single question was how do i make sure that my kids are prepared for
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the future how do i you know what do i do and so to me i take those types of questions really serious
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because i realized if somebody's asking me about their life or even more about the lives of their
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kids you know that's something that's more important to them than their own life right and so
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i really really very early on took that really seriously and so i would start talking to people and
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what i would tell them is that you know look i can't tell you your future i don't make predictions
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again if i always tell people beware of predictions and people who make them because why are they making
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this prediction about especially about your life like they don't know anything about your life and so
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again going to that empowerment say look i can't tell you your future but i can tell you how i think
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about it how to think like a futurist and how to get prepared for it and i would do that so i would do
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it you know in keynotes at conferences i would go to schools k through 12 schools and and kids would
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pull me aside and it just became this thing that really wasn't my day job it was just this i just
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cared and i was like well because the future matters to me and so i started having these conversations
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and then i realized a couple of my friends said you know you really should write a book about this
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stuff you know you do it for governments and militaries and big corporations and you care more about
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average people than you do about technology than you do about big business why don't you write a
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book that enables them all right so yeah the future you you walk people through and how to apply the
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process that you use when you're consulting the military or the intel corporation how to it's not
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predicting but get an idea of what a possible future could look like and how you can get to that
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point or how to avoid a potential future so let's walk through some of the stuff so there's two types of
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casting that you do there's future casting and there's threat casting let's talk about future
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casting first like what's the overall process and then maybe we get some details here in a bit
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sure so future casting is as you rightly called out that's generative it says basically
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ask a very simple question what's the future you want what do you want it's the hardest question
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that we'll all have to answer and that's what we do in the book is there's lots of examples and
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lots of ways of being able to answer that question for you and so really it says okay so what is that
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future you want and it gets you to get really specific and those details are really important
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and kind of walks you through okay here's how you can kind of get an understanding of that and you
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know my uh my my professor shows i people like to say no i am a professor so even in the book
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there's a thing called quick questions in almost every chapter that just kind of interrogates it and
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allows you to interrogate your future to really ask all of those different questions because
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it's in those details right it's telling that story of the future you which is so important
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because that's going to give you that raw material to really understand what's going to propel you
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towards that future and then also figure out what are the steps you need to take you know today
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tomorrow you know as you move into the future to get there so that's that's future casting all right
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so okay let's talk about that first question which is figuring out what you want like you said
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this is the hardest i think it's probably the heart yeah i mean i when i think about like what do i want
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for the future someone would ask me i'm like i'm like i don't well i just want to be healthy i want
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to be i it's i typically give like vague answers so what are some questions or how do you get drill
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that down so it's more detailed so you know what exactly it is you want for the future yeah and and
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that's i think brett you call out a great i think your way of answering the question is how most
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people do it so if you want to we can do some straight up future casting for you right now on the
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fly yeah let's do it let's yeah let's figure but here i'll give you an example and then we'll do
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then we can do you so this is an example in the book but it's one that i use all the time because
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it's i like to have a little bit of fun with it as well you can't you know i mean the future is a
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very serious subject but you don't have to take yourself too seriously so i was talking to a woman
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she was kind of mid-career kind of you know not not really happy where she was in a good relationship
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but just professionally didn't really like what she wanted so we were we were having a chat and i was
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like well what do you want just like you said and she said she didn't know she goes you know and
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she goes that's why i'm here talking to you and you know i kept asking some little questions here
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and there and she was getting kind of annoyed with me and i said okay fine let's have a little
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fun with this i said do you want to be rich and she kind of paused and looked at me and she's like
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what do you mean i'm like do you want to be rich and you know she looked like looked at me like i was
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an idiot and i'm like well answer the question she goes well yeah i want to be rich i was like okay
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awesome great now we have a start you want to be rich cool what kind of rich do you want to be
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i said you have to give me details rich is not enough right it's sort of like saying i want to
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be alive in the future it's like okay fine i get that great so what kind of rich and she didn't she
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was like i don't understand what what you want me to how you want me to answer that i said okay let's
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try this do you want to be yacht rich she still kind of didn't get it yet and i was like do you want
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to have a yacht do you want to have enough money and i'm not meaning like a boat or a fishing boat or
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anything i mean like a full-on yacht a captain a crew right big big yacht and she's like oh gosh no i don't
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i don't want a yacht i said okay great now we know that let's go to the next one do you want a
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mansion do you want to be mansion rich she kind of thought about it and then she was starting to get
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it and she was like not really i said yeah do you want like a staff and maids and grounds and
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groundskeeper she goes no no that's that's too much that's too much okay great and we just kind of
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walked it through to kind of figure out when you describe these things you just kind of keep
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interrogating keep asking more detail more detail and part of that is then i always try to get people
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to say okay so you know in your future what does a thursday look like when you wake up what's it like
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you know what do you do in the morning you know where do you get your coffee or your tea or your
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water what's it look like when you walk around and to really kind of get people to kind of tell that
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story because there's power in that story not only in the details because it gives you things that you
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can do but it gives you kind of power again to be in those details and so you can see yourself in
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that future and really interrogate it to say okay i this is the kind of future i want and those stories
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will become a really important tool when you go on this journey and start working with other people
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and talking to other people and thinking about these future forces and all the backcasting and
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all the things brett that you know now is a part of the process but that that story part is really good
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but i i will tell you the flip side of that story as i was talking to somebody else and i was doing
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that rich thing because it's kind of funny and i was talking to this one guy and i said do you want
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to be mansion rich and he looked at me and he went yeah yes i do i was like great that's awesome man
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cool and we talked about it and we really talked about and he was down in silicon valley and stuff
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like that so i was like hey you know i'm not going to judge that fine great and i'll tell you i ended up
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getting a text from him a little while after that and i just got a quick text like yep and i'm mansion
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rich now you should stop by for a drink and i was like wow and he did it yeah he ended up he made you
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know did some investments again he was in silicon valleys and he got mansion rich which
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i was like good on you good job as you were talking something i thought because i was oh he's
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about to ask me like what i want i have i think i'm really good at saying describing what i don't
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want but i have a hard time coming with like a positive like what like a like what would it
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would look like what i actually want does that make sense like i like i don't i don't want to
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die i don't want to go bankrupt i don't want to run out like what i don't want my kids to
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you know have problems in the future but i can't it's hard to be like well what do what do i what
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is a positive outcome look like well i think there's two things in that brett so one so that's
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the cornerstone of threat casting as you mentioned you said there's two types of casting there's future
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casting which is generative what do i want where do i want to go and then there's threat casting
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which is as it sounds sort of it's it's preventative so what do i not want and
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and it really and that's threat casting grew out of these types of conversations
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in my professional life but also in when i was talking with personal folks around because as
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you said it's oftentimes easier to say what do you what do you not want what's the future you don't
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want because then you flip it over and you look at the converse of it and say okay well that's okay
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so if you don't want that that means this is what you want so it's a it's a way to kind of get
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into having that conversation so there's nothing wrong with saying okay this is the future i don't want
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gotcha also then and that's a so but the difference then because you had asked about
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sort of future casting threat casting the real main difference there is with future casting we
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say okay what do you what do you not want so that you can then have a conversation about what you what
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you want let's be clear i mean most people again don't give themselves the time to think about this
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stuff i mean they just don't oftentimes and you've probably had it and many people have it and a lot of
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guys have it i call it the people call it the 3 a.m terror right when you wake up
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you're thinking about your life you're thinking about your health you're thinking about your family
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or your community you know you know recently you know what we've all been through in the past year
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year and a half you know we've kind of seen some of these really bad things and that's also where
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threat casting comes in because threat casting says okay well let's talk about the threats and it it
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goes real dark real fast and we get straight into it and i do write about this in the book some big
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threats i mean i in the book i talk about war and pandemic and things like that and really saying okay
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what does that mean how do you prepare for it but again the whole goal is again to get into the
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details of it right is to say you know i don't want to be bankrupt and okay okay great you know
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let's talk about that i write a couple of parts in the book where i talk to people who were really low
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i mean we're on the edge of bankruptcy and we're really really without a lot of means and so but we
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can talk it through we can say okay well okay well and what do you not want and what does bankruptcy
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look like or what is making sure having enough money looks like or i you know during the the
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pandemic i talked to a lot of small business owners and a lot of small business owners really
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like this book as well because it's not just your personal life but as many small business owners or
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many entrepreneurs probably in your audience know is it's kind of intertwined with who you are as an
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individual a lot of small business owners you know we've had that conversation to say well what do
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you want or what do you want to avoid and they say well i don't want to go out of business i'm like
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great i totally understand that what does that look like does that mean you want to keep
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the store that you have right now exactly as it is maybe does that mean you'd be okay with staying
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in business but going to a smaller store or would it mean going maybe just fully online for a while
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or is it all about growth is about going to a store that's 2x or opening another store that i use that as
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a way to start engaging in those conversations with people again and also it's not that they don't
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know brett i know you probably know it's just generally you're not given the space to do this you're
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not given the space to have these conversations with yourself or with other people and again
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that was that was part of the goal of writing the book well here's a question what if someone like
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says they want something and then they get it and they find out i hate this so how do you avoid how
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do you avoid that well that's the that's part of it and there's actually a funny story in the book
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about that as well so i think one thing is you got to let yourself off the hook again remember this
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future is serious but don't take yourself too seriously so know that the future will change
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right it will always change as we said before the future is in motion right it's not set that doesn't
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mean it's you know it's not a single set place it means it's always in motion you know it's things
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are always going to change and so with that you've got to give yourself a little slack to say hey the
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future might change which means the future you might change what you want out of that future might
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change so as you follow the process and say okay this is the future i want and these are the steps
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i'm going to take and these are all the future forces and that's cool but know that as you're
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going through this journey it might pivot a little bit and that that's that's not a problem that's a
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win that's the thing i always tell my students she or he who kind of breaks their vision first wins
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because now you've made it better so i think it's embracing that idea that it's going to change and
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the more you learn it's going to change and the more people you talk to it's going to change and
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actually the closer you get to it it's going to change so there's a story in a book which i really
00:20:42.700
really enjoy was a guy by the name of maddox and maddox super smart biologist he's in boston and we
00:20:49.500
were we were at a conference and we were hanging out and talking and we were walking around and he
00:20:52.720
was thinking about his family his partner he's got some kids and they wanted and it's boston right so
00:20:57.480
it's he wanted to get a house and he was trying to think okay how do i get ready for this and you know
00:21:01.220
i'm not a financial advisor but i was like well here's how i think about it we were kind of talking
00:21:04.500
through and he was really thinking about he wanted a house for his kids and he wanted the yard and he
00:21:09.300
wanted that you know and so we were talking about okay well think about that future you and tell me
00:21:13.120
about it i said you know go inhabit that future i said not only go talk about it with your partner
00:21:17.860
and your family but like go live in that future like if you go and look at the listings and you may
00:21:23.160
not even have enough money right now that's cool but look at the listings now number one so find out
00:21:28.040
what you know what it might cost and what you might need to do to help you get your finances
00:21:31.320
straight but then like go to that neighborhood go have coffee in the neighborhood where you want
00:21:35.600
to live or where you might want to live or if you can afford it get an airbnb or vrbo and actually like
00:21:41.320
spend the weekend there like take a vacation in your future like that that type of stuff is always fun
00:21:46.040
right and and they actually really got into it i kind of joke the family who future cast together
00:21:49.880
stays together like they had a great time they actually went and did that and so i and so they went
00:21:54.520
off and did it and they they really did the work which is i was really impressed and i was swung back
00:21:58.020
through boston and we were having a barbecue in maddox and he actually had a apartment at the
00:22:02.760
time so we're out on his balcony we're having a beer and we were barbecuing and he says i gotta
00:22:06.320
tell you something bdj and we were talking about this future casting i was like yeah what is it he
00:22:10.200
goes i really learned something about myself i said what'd you learn he goes i hate grass i was like
00:22:16.380
what and he goes i hate grass i don't want a yard like i went to this and i realized i hate yard work
00:22:23.480
and so he kind of went off and he had thought like many of us you know he wanted that very
00:22:27.620
traditional house and it turns out as they were kind of doing this and going down this journey
00:22:31.060
they turned out he hated grass and i was like awesome now you know imagine how awful it would
00:22:35.460
be if you went out through all this and you actually bought a house that had a huge yard and
00:22:39.160
you realized that you know you were gonna you were gonna have to spend your life working on all
00:22:43.200
this grass and all this stuff so no i think it's it's a good thing when it changes and i think you
00:22:47.280
can kind of have fun with it we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
00:22:50.940
and now back to the show all right so figure out what you want i mean you got to get specific
00:22:57.820
so to start do you just keep asking yourself i mean there are questions you can ask just like do i
00:23:02.980
want to be rich like are there starter questions you go through with people yeah and so first up it's
00:23:08.160
getting into so who is that future you and is it about you know again getting specific so is it
00:23:13.100
about are we talking about relationships are we talking about uh career are we talking about like
00:23:18.120
with maddox houses you know what is it first you know what are you because like i said i mentioned
00:23:21.820
there was that the woman who i was asking if she was yacht rich she had a great relationship so her
00:23:25.740
you know on the kind of romantic kind of sex love side of things she was great it was more
00:23:30.520
kind of career so i think first to kind of figure out you know it's often helpful to say okay well
00:23:35.560
what aspect do i want to do that kind of helps and then you start thinking about all right and you
00:23:40.180
kind of go through and questions are then you know what would a day in the life be like and it
00:23:44.460
changes depending upon what you're talking about right the the future you when it comes to a house
00:23:48.220
looks really different they say for a career so it's really getting into those details and saying
00:23:53.580
okay describe it and you really got to write it down and this is what i tell people now this could be
00:23:57.280
you could type it in your phone type it on your laptop i'm a big pen and paper guy like write it down
00:24:02.160
because even having it written in your own handwriting is really important but it's you've got to take the
00:24:07.360
time to live in your future even if it's just your brain and really write down those really
00:24:12.700
specific areas around whether it be like i said is it grass or is it what does a day of your work
00:24:17.500
life look like and again really specific like who's it like who are you working with what kind
00:24:21.320
of autonomy do you want to have what do you want to do all that type of stuff even from a finance
00:24:25.160
standpoint you can sort of you can kind of think about what all those details are but i think the
00:24:29.660
real important part isn't just that you don't have to get it right the first time but you do want to
00:24:34.120
you want to get good with it you want to be able to have a good story about the future you
00:24:37.940
and then the first step in the whole process is to identify your people like who's your team
00:24:43.180
right we've all got a team a squad like and it's usually your family your close friends it could be
00:24:49.020
if it's a small business might be the people in your business it could be the people you know people
00:24:52.820
in your community it could be people in your church it really depends upon who you are in your life but
00:24:56.680
we've all got people right first is to identify those people and go tell them your story
00:25:01.580
and it'll be really hard in the beginning because you'll feel a little silly but don't right you can
00:25:06.760
just tell them this crazy bald bearded futurist like myself was the one who's pushing you to do it
00:25:10.940
so go do it and then like tell them that story and you'd be surprised how people will be really
00:25:17.100
interested in it how they'll be really interested in that story and they may ask you questions about
00:25:22.080
it and you'll get more details and you'll get more information about it or they might tell you they
00:25:26.220
disagree with it that's fine and then kind of have a conversation about it go back and forth and
00:25:29.960
it becomes this really interesting way to make that future feel more real and more manifest and
00:25:35.640
and now also what it'll help you do is it'll help you identify the toxic people in your life and
00:25:41.340
we've all got them and and you know what i'm talking about these are the people who are there
00:25:45.180
to tear you down these are the people who will tell you that's dumb you can't do that so you need
00:25:50.360
to get rid of those people right that's not your that's not your people those aren't your that's
00:25:53.840
not your your team that's going to help propel you forward and it really this will help you
00:25:57.780
identify those people really well so now once you've done that and and actually the more you tell
00:26:02.740
the story the better you'll get at it and the more details you'll have and it's kind of fun and then
00:26:07.060
after a while and then also especially if it's your family or if it's a partner or something like that
00:26:11.420
it's a really nice conversation to have to kind of see what that that looks like is as you do it
00:26:15.740
together so that's number one let's figure out who your people are then once you've kind of got a
00:26:20.480
clearer vision of that you start identifying what are the tools that are going to help you get there
00:26:24.460
and these could be things like you know technologies or apps they could be trade associations or local
00:26:31.560
community thing local community organizations to be quite honest it's podcasts like this you know
00:26:37.560
if you look at all the info on the backlog of this podcast i mean it's pretty amazing so you can kind
00:26:42.900
of go through and say okay these are the kind of technologies and organizations that are going to
00:26:46.480
help me kind of get myself educated give me more information connect me with other people and then the
00:26:51.700
next part you now that you've got this story is to go find out find the experts who are the people
00:26:57.000
who've done this before who are the people who've kind of achieved your future or maybe not exactly
00:27:01.760
your future because you're an individual and everybody's future is different but who are the people
00:27:05.880
who maybe live next door to your future and so go ask them and get their advice and again by having
00:27:12.580
that story about the future you you'd be really surprised because anybody who's been able to achieve
00:27:17.820
anything in life knows it's all about people that everything we do is about people it begins with
00:27:22.460
people and ends with people it's all about that social network and connecting with people and
00:27:26.440
you'd be really really challenged you'd be really surprised actually how people will be kind of giving
00:27:32.000
of their advice and what they know this process of you know finding people finding your team finding
00:27:37.420
experts finding tools organizations this is analogous to finding future forces part of what you do for
00:27:43.420
corporations correct exactly yeah those are the three main forces that help to kind of propel you
00:27:49.120
towards that future you and so and along the way you're gonna be asking these s i mean so when you
00:27:53.380
talk to an organization and you're trying to figure stuff out for them you're looking at like oftentimes
00:27:58.140
big picture cultural political technological factors should the laymen look at that sort of stuff too or
00:28:04.820
would that would they get too overwhelmed with that i think that's up to the person you know i think
00:28:09.260
there's uh it's really the there's no right recipe for it you know you know certainly when i do this for
00:28:15.020
corporations in the military yeah it's a very rigorous method that looks at everything from
00:28:19.580
social science to technology to cultural history we look at economics we look at trends whether those
00:28:28.060
be regulatory trends or cultural trends and then i spend a lot of time interviewing people who are
00:28:31.680
actually building the future and there's a it's a very kind of rigorous method in process of going
00:28:36.500
through and doing it and i think when you do it for yourself part of it is whatever works and again
00:28:42.020
that's the engineer in me so whatever gives you enough detail to feel like you need to get started
00:28:47.320
you know it needs to be rooted in reality i think that's a really important thing right it's got to
00:28:51.380
be rooted in reality of of what you can achieve and what you can do you know i'm a i'm a big baseball
00:28:56.920
fan and i can guarantee you brett i'm not going to play professional baseball it's just not going to
00:29:01.160
happen i was a pretty good first baseman a long time ago but it's just not going to happen so
00:29:05.340
part of it is kind of as much as you need to number one get it rooted in reality and number two
00:29:10.620
that gives you enough information to start the journey i think that's the thing is that you just
00:29:14.960
need to get started because that's really the hardest part and then as you start going through
00:29:18.660
those future forces it's really in those conversations where a lot of that information
00:29:23.100
will come out so it's really getting started to the point that you feel like you've got a good story
00:29:27.300
that you feel comfortable with and then it'll just get better and better and better as you work
00:29:30.520
through the future forces now there's one example of a young woman that you talked to in the book where
00:29:35.600
she wanted to be a cpa and her mom was like you got to talk to her because computers are going to
00:29:41.500
make cpas obsolete here in like 10 15 years and you went to go talk to her and she's like oh no like
00:29:46.960
i've looked into this like i want to like i love math i love numbers but i want to work for a company
00:29:51.320
that's basically making algorithms like artificial intelligence versus like she had like she saw that
00:29:56.520
future force when she did her investigation to her talking to experts i thought it was a good
00:30:00.140
example of someone who got based in reality was able to make a pretty good decision about the future
00:30:04.400
they wanted yeah it was great i mean she was she was she really didn't need me at all she was she
00:30:10.060
had done her homework and you know she was a cpa who was going to help get rid of all the automate
00:30:14.540
the cpas right just like back in the 1990s how a lot of travel agencies got automated and things like
00:30:19.860
that but she had done the work yeah she was very uh very smart young lady all right so first step
00:30:25.220
figure out the future you want uh get really specific the next step is find people that can help
00:30:30.480
you make that happen or give you more information to help you make that future you want happen or
00:30:34.880
help you refine what it is you want and then this third step of future casting is called backcasting
00:30:40.480
what is backcasting yeah right so before we dive in it so your teams you got it right but i would only
00:30:45.620
your team also is going to hold you accountable okay so this is also so this is a thing that people
00:30:50.440
ask me a lot which is how do i keep going right you can get started but you know we we're all busy
00:30:56.460
right we've all got lots going on so how do we keep going also your team is going to be you know
00:31:01.780
you're going to check in with your team and they're going to go hey how's that going you know you know
00:31:04.840
what's going on because again it's as we know if you if you involve other people and they're involved
00:31:09.960
in your future it's going to really help you kind of stick to it and keep it going right and it's just
00:31:14.880
that that level of accountability i think is really helpful and even for you you know like anything we do
00:31:20.180
in life like you know going to the gym or learning a new skill having somebody else there to kind of
00:31:24.880
hold you accountable and to ask them to hold you accountable is is i think a key part of it so
00:31:28.800
yeah those are those those forces and then the backcasting part so this is where the rubber meets
00:31:32.920
the road this is where it gets really serious so now you've identified the future you want
00:31:36.720
you've identified the people the tools the the experts that can kind of help you get there now
00:31:41.680
you're going to say okay if this is who you want this is the future you now you're going to turn
00:31:45.280
around and look backwards and say okay great that's where i want to be this is the future you this is
00:31:50.320
what i want so then you ask yourself okay great what will get you halfway so what is the thing that
00:31:56.240
you could achieve and this is super specific this is why i say i don't know your future nobody knows
00:32:01.100
your future but you so this is the thing that you have to answer for yourself in your gut and also in
00:32:06.520
the story that you've done in the work that you've done what will make you feel like you're halfway
00:32:10.300
if it's a job thing it could be getting out there and um you know getting a degree or getting an
00:32:16.000
additional degree a little bit of training if it's a home a house thing or a finance thing it
00:32:20.600
could be a certain level of savings or a certain level of connections right that's what i mean it's
00:32:23.780
so personal but it's okay you got to write down okay what gets you halfway so then you look at that
00:32:29.020
say okay this is where i want to be this is my halfway point and then i want you to split it again
00:32:33.440
to say okay well what will get you part way what's that thing that you know you're not all the way
00:32:38.140
there but it's going to show you yeah i've made some real progress like i am i'm doing it man i'm there
00:32:43.080
i'm on my way it's starting to happen and then you write that down as well and then the next thing
00:32:48.420
you ask yourself is well what's the thing i need to do on monday what's the one or two things that
00:32:53.440
i could do on monday that is going to be simple could be a google search it could be you know
00:32:58.320
calling somebody on the phone or making an appointment or going to a like a community group
00:33:02.700
around something doesn't matter but what is the little thing that you can do that won't take much
00:33:06.860
time or energy certainly won't cost you any money that will say wow yeah i really am taking that
00:33:12.200
first step and then you write that down and you get to it so i think in that way it makes it really
00:33:17.820
really methodical but that's one of the things that a lot of people have kind of come back and
00:33:21.480
their feedback on the book and on the process is like yeah it's work i mean it really is work i'm
00:33:25.820
gonna tell you this is not just imagine your future and it will happen to you i i will i will not tell
00:33:30.360
you that's going to happen but what i will tell you if you go through and you give yourself the time
00:33:33.920
to do it and you go through and do it it really becomes accomplishable you really feel like okay
00:33:38.340
yeah i'm i'm taking those steps i'm kind of getting there no yeah i think everyone's experienced that
00:33:42.720
with like a big goal if you just think about the big goal you get overwhelmed but breaking it down
00:33:47.080
like this it actually makes it approachable i like i especially like the thing like what can i do
00:33:51.400
mondays like what can i do the next few days to make it happen and i love the examples you give in the
00:33:55.260
book oftentimes it's not as earth shattering as you think it needs to be it's can be as you said as
00:34:00.120
simple as a google search sometimes yeah and it shouldn't like i said it shouldn't cost any money or
00:34:04.360
take too much time you know i'll give you an example in the book kind of going back to
00:34:07.380
you know somebody who was really down and out i mean she didn't know where she was going to get
00:34:11.720
her rent from and she you know and she had hit bottom right and we've all hit bottom at one level
00:34:17.100
right it'd be financial or personal or professional whatever so i don't shy away from that and she had
00:34:21.960
hit bottom and she really didn't know again like i said where she was going to get rent from and she
00:34:25.800
was she was she was in crisis and i totally get that because again in my professional life i do a lot
00:34:30.940
of i've done work with refugees and i've done work with other folks with i mean bad right really really bad
00:34:35.760
but then to pause and go okay but let's do it let's let's figure out what we need to do and so
00:34:40.020
we were talking about what she wanted i said listen i know rent and the finance part that's really
00:34:43.760
important but put that aside for a moment let's take a breather from that and let's think about
00:34:48.220
the future you want one of the things she wanted real important to her was to go back to school
00:34:52.880
she really wanted to go back and because of some financial some sort of physical and mental health
00:34:57.660
stuff she couldn't do it and that's one of the things she really wanted to do she wanted to go
00:35:00.900
back and i said okay great so we were working on that and writing it down and so we kind of
00:35:04.240
talked through a lot of that stuff and her thing on monday i said look go on the website of the local
00:35:09.920
school that you might want to go to and find out who are the admissions people or who are the people
00:35:15.780
who's really their job to help you be a part of this and it was a large public sort of state
00:35:21.020
university type thing so they had those resources there i said it's their job to help you i said so
00:35:25.840
go on monday and go find that university and see yourself at that university but net but even better
00:35:32.300
email that person email that admissions person say hey could i get a 15 20 minute conversation with you
00:35:38.100
about you know what i need to do and how i need to start thinking about this stuff because that's
00:35:42.220
that person's job and again won't cost you any money only going to cost you about a half an hour
00:35:46.240
and she did it and it was so empowering for her because all of a sudden she was like she could see
00:35:51.480
that that future you she could see herself and it also made all of the other real hard problems that
00:35:58.700
she had to deal with she then had all this energy because she was like oh my gosh i could actually do
00:36:04.440
this like i could because talking to this person who was like okay here's what you need to do you
00:36:08.540
need to do this you need to do that and here's how we can help you and here are these things and
00:36:11.320
they weren't going to solve all her problems for her but all of a sudden the future got so much
00:36:15.720
bigger for her so that those smaller steps in the beginning just became you know so much easier
00:36:20.540
yeah this process helps people help helps increase people's sense of agency which allows them to do more
00:36:25.660
yeah that's exactly that's the heart of the book right there right you hit it nail on the head
00:36:30.460
that's the soul of this book is to sort of help dispel the fear but really give people agency and
00:36:36.200
say no you you have the power you have the power to do this and it really is up to you to take it
00:36:40.640
and what's amazing i mean this is people are like well this is such a simple process like i just got to
00:36:44.000
figure out what i want i just got it then i figure out you know tools and people that can help me and
00:36:47.880
then i do the backcasting but it's simple but like you said it's not easy like figuring out what you
00:36:52.000
want that's probably the hardest part and then this stuff takes work that second part
00:36:55.420
definitely takes a lot of work and that third step the backcasting that takes work too you can't
00:37:00.180
just sit and let it happen you have to be an active participant in it yeah i think it's it's
00:37:04.920
accomplishable i think that's it right it's is it is it hard it can be sometimes like i said having
00:37:09.420
some of the conversations i can guarantee you the first time you write down that story of the future
00:37:15.760
you all by yourself and the first conversation you have with somebody is going to be a little hard
00:37:20.640
it's just it's hard because you're making yourself a little bit vulnerable but i think it
00:37:24.280
goes back to that brett that it's it's accomplishable that you can do it you just have to do the work but
00:37:29.380
you know anything anything in life that's worth doing is going to be a little bit hard right that's
00:37:34.640
a that's also what i tell folks when they're doing this is when you feel uncomfortable and you feel like
00:37:39.360
it might be a little bit hard that means you're doing the right thing right that means you're actually
00:37:43.560
taking the steps to meaningfully change your life whatever you want to do it whatever you're the life
00:37:49.300
you're getting to if you if you're doing that if it is a little bit hard if you do feel a little
00:37:53.580
bit comfortable that is the way it should be that that should tell you that you're winning that you
00:37:57.520
are doing the right thing if it was super simple right you know i joke with my students say that's
00:38:02.980
why we call it work is that it's hard you know if it was easy we'd call it watching tv i mean so the
00:38:08.100
idea is that it should be a little hard because you really are working on your future and your future
00:38:12.020
is important so there's a phrase you use with a client you consult it's a it's the future is local
00:38:17.360
so the future is not a place like 2015 then back to the future but it is local what do you mean by
00:38:22.160
that there's a couple of things in that so the future is local you know number one tries to get
00:38:27.300
people to understand that the future happens where they are right so if you're going to build your
00:38:31.920
future the future happens where you are and you've got to understand that so there's the people
00:38:36.880
around you the businesses around you the schools the communities that that's your future i mean
00:38:43.160
that's really the most important part of your future is all of those things so the future is
00:38:46.620
really local and i write about this in the book in that for some people though their future might
00:38:53.240
not be where they are so there's a there was a young woman who i her dad kind of brought me in
00:38:58.240
to kind of help her and she wanted to be an animator she wanted to be a animator for like pixar and
00:39:03.180
things like that and she was really talented and i was talking to her and i said you know and she
00:39:08.140
didn't live in emeryville she didn't live in california i said well you may want to think about if you
00:39:11.780
kind of if that's the goal you might need to move there like you might need to go and try to find a
00:39:17.140
job and you might need to move and the kind of the joke i told and it was you know if you want to be
00:39:21.740
a lumberjack you have to move to the forest so there's a few times that you may have to move to
00:39:27.000
your future now not always but it's having that conversation with yourself i think is important
00:39:31.580
and then if you realize no no my future is local my future is right here awesome so then you start
00:39:35.960
thinking about all right so what is around me who am i working with what are the things around me what
00:39:41.500
are the who are the people and it really starts to focus you and kind of get you thinking about what
00:39:46.360
that might look like and then also to understand that it doesn't happen you know over in washington
00:39:52.380
dc or in silicon valley or in london or in beijing right or anything like that like the future is is is
00:39:58.660
that kind of local and it i what i'm trying to do is then it goes back to that empowering of people
00:40:02.960
to really get them thinking about okay what are the resources and people around me that are going
00:40:07.900
to help me transform that future and to focus locally the other thing that i've really learned
00:40:13.020
in the past year and this is what the the pandemic really taught us back in 2020 is the future is
00:40:18.380
really local when it comes to these sort of large events i think we've all seen that it really is about
00:40:24.300
the people around you i mean it really is about the community that you're in and really embracing
00:40:29.460
that and how important that can be and so i think that as well can be a really empowering way when
00:40:34.600
you think about the future so the end of the book you are talking to a general i think it was at west
00:40:40.060
point you're at west point and he was basically i like what you're saying but he said basically said
00:40:46.220
like plans are useless like things are always changing and rapidly complex environments you can't
00:40:51.740
figure it out so it's probably not very useful what was your response to him
00:40:56.980
and so yeah there's this there's this great eisenhower quote that you know he used it a
00:41:02.680
couple times throughout the the 20th century around that basically plans are useless but planning is
00:41:08.200
everything which he's right actually he's very right and it goes back to kind of what we talked
00:41:13.400
about a little earlier in the podcast is that you know it's the act of thinking this way it's the act
00:41:20.380
of planning and i told him that we basically are agreeing because again that future is not fixed
00:41:25.280
and it goes back to that idea that yeah you can have a plan but know that that plan's going to
00:41:30.480
change that's planning right and and to me it's that that muscle of thinking in this way thinking
00:41:36.480
like a futurist thinking about the future you talking to people about it going and making changes and
00:41:41.880
being okay when things change and again from a military standpoint right you know what do they say
00:41:46.700
you know with strategies the first casualty of a battle is is the is the uh is the plan or the is
00:41:52.620
the strategy going in because things change so much but i think by accepting that and not thinking
00:41:57.640
that as failure but actually using that as a way to continually change oh yeah well i knew something
00:42:02.180
would happen oh that's interesting how might i make a change what might i do it allows you as an
00:42:06.300
individual to be more resilient it allows as an organization or family or a business you to be
00:42:11.420
more resilient as well mike tyson said it best is everyone has a plan until they get punched in the
00:42:15.420
face yes exactly well and here's the thing going back to tyson and going back to this is that one of
00:42:25.120
the things also over the pandemic and things like that it's the training so the training of thinking
00:42:29.420
this way you'll find that and i do this with my clients in my in my private practice is organizations
00:42:36.540
who do this people who do this people who have trained themselves to think this way that you're right
00:42:42.120
even when you do get punched in the face you know what to do you're like okay now i know what to do
00:42:46.540
i've been punched in the face before i thought about this right or you've made a change you say oh
00:42:50.820
okay i've been thinking about this future and this technology comes in oh okay well that's new how
00:42:55.020
might that affect me and actually there's a there's some research that was done back in 2020 with some
00:43:00.640
trade associations i do a lot of work with supply chain trade associations and of course as you can
00:43:05.440
imagine during the pandemic they had a lot of problems and they found actually that
00:43:09.600
organizations that thought like this that thought like a futurist that used this futurist work
00:43:14.360
actually were able to adapt to this global destabilization for about three to four months
00:43:21.500
in advance of their competition which gave them a strategic advantage and that's all that training
00:43:26.600
that's all about you know going through that training so that when these things start to happen
00:43:30.740
you're like okay i've kind of thought about this before i've trained for this before and then you
00:43:34.660
know what to do well brian this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more
00:43:38.180
about the book in your work so i think probably the best place is uh go to my twitter feed that's
00:43:42.680
where i try to just post everything about kind of what i'm doing and what i'm writing and that's
00:43:46.960
just at bdj futurist that's really probably the best way to track me down fantastic well brian
00:43:51.740
david johnson thanks for your time it's been a pleasure brett was great chatting with you my
00:43:55.660
guest today was brian david johnson he's the author of the book the future you it's available on
00:43:59.120
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere if you'd like to learn more about this book and delve deeper
00:44:02.800
on this topic make sure to check out our show notes at awim.is slash future you
00:44:06.160
well that wraps up another edition of the awim podcast check out our website at artofmanliness.com
00:44:17.480
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00:44:20.400
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00:44:48.560
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awim podcast but put what you've heard into action