The future is going to be fantastic, and I can’t wait! We will have clean energy that is almost free and available everywhere. There will be enough food for everyone, grown in ways that are ecological and sustainable. We will look out over our clean oceans in wonder, and down into them, free of microplastics and trash. We will do the things we love and leave the rest to machines. We will live in a healthy environment with growing biodiversity. And we will use technology as a tool to make our lives better, to grow as people and to shape our world.
Pie in the sky? Well, we don’t know what the future will bring. That is exactly why future optimism is not a forecast but a deliberate mindset: turning your attention to what can succeed. And we do know today how focus works. Whatever we focus on becomes more present. We start finding evidence for it and, mostly without noticing, we start developing solutions for it. As the saying goes: the prover proves. Buy a new car, and suddenly you see the same model everywhere.
Focus
Expecting parents suddenly notice family bliss and baby offers everywhere, things they never paid attention to before. Software testers see weaknesses everywhere that nobody else notices. We build our reality around our focus. A nod to the radical constructivists around Ernst von Glasersfeld and Heinz von Foerster.
Problem Trance
Sadly, for years now we have been cultivating our problem trance far too diligently: I have no money. No pension plan. No purpose. Too much work. And it’s getting on my nerves. I’ve been left behind. I can’t do it. My colleague doesn’t like me. Everybody else is an idiot. The world is going to hell. Blockchain will eat up our energy reserves. Real estate crisis. Financial crisis. Self-driving cars will turn into killing machines. Our habitat is collapsing. The next pandemic is surely just around the corner. Don’t look up: there might be an asteroid coming, too.
Keep staring at it and it keeps getting bigger. The problems grow, becoming more massive, more stressful, more crushing. The catch: that is not how solutions come about. This holds for us on a small scale, in our departments and companies, just as it does for society as a whole. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” The quote is attributed to Einstein, and it sums up the dilemma perfectly.
A New Narrative for Future Optimism
If we want solutions, we need a new narrative. A positive story we tell ourselves. For our lives, our companies, our society. A different focus.
I am a future optimist. I have chosen the positive story of human history, the one about visions, wishes and utopias. Because I believe this view helps us find better solutions to the challenges we face right now.
The pioneers of human history were always the ones who believed something could be done, even when “everyone” said it was impossible. They were the ones who kept going. That is the seed I want to plant: to wake up the little pioneer in each of us and to support, encourage, inspire and motivate it to keep going.
Future Mindset
This narrative carries an attitude with it. What could the cornerstones of that attitude look like? Maybe a future mindset shaped by:
- Humanity through connection, acceptance and letting go of taboos on thinking.
- Curiosity about technologies and innovations. Trying things out and getting creative with their enormous potential. Making them available as open source, open data, open everything.
- Personal growth to bring these worlds together.
- People and companies who take responsibility with courage.
And now: let’s make the story happen!
