Mental Time Machine
How to Navigate Uncertainty by Flying Through Time
Pre-Flight Checks
Before jumping into your mental time machine, you should first make sure you know where you're going and why. This means establishing the scope of your exploration and the timeframe.
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Scope
The future is BIIIIIIIG, so you need to choose which slice of it you want to look at. More specifically, you should be clear about what decisions you are considering.
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Timeframe
The future is LOOONG, so you need to be specific about how far in the future you are looking. There is no right answer, but choose a timeframe that allows for change to take place and is still easy for your to imagine.
With your pre-flight check complete, it's time to take off.
The Past
There is a saying among futurist that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
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The future does exist independently of what's happened, so history can provide us with a lot of useful guidance on what might happen in the future.
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A lot of future wisdom can be found in history books. For example, we can learn a lot about the future of artificial intelligence if we look at the history or AI and other technologies.
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Also, you will find a lot of wisdom in your own experiences. What similar situations have you encountered in the past? Don't squander your personal learning opportunities.
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ACT NOW: Do a Google or Perplexity search on your topic of interest.
The Future
You can't consider all the possibilities of the future, so choose just one major uncertainty outside your control.
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For example, it could be what parts of your job can be automated by AI in the next two years.
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Now you can create scenarios where different parts of your work have been automated, and what that would mean for your job.
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You're not trying to predict the future here, but rather thinking through the likely possibilities.
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ACT NOW: Jot down one major uncertainty and three ways it may play out.
The Present
You've analyzed the past and imagined the future. So now it's time to take action.
This means looking at the scenarios you've created, identifying any threats or opportunities you hadn't already considered, and deciding what you want to happen.
Sometimes the strongest signals of the future come from identifying the common themes from across the scenarios.
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For example, if across all scenarios a particular element of your job is being done by AI, they you have more confidence in that that will happen.
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ACT NOW: What one decision would best position you for success?
Where to now?
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