Futurists and strategic planners talk a lot about “Visions.” What is a vision and how can you create a vision of YOUR future?

The first thing to understand is that a "vision" is a destination in your future. A vision is what you see as your life in the future. If you haven’t thought about your life in the future, now is a good time!

In my workshops, I tell people that creating a vision of your future is like planning a vacation. You must decide where you want to go before you can realistically think about how you’re going to get there. If you decided that you want to go on vacation this July, where would you go? Paris, Rome, Beijing, San Francisco? Before you make any other plans, you must decide where you’re going. Once you decide on the destination, you can start making plans.

The same is true when you start thinking about your vision of your future. What is your destination? What do you want your life to be in 10 years? I realize that’s a difficult question because the future is a big place to try to think about so I suggest that you break it down into six parts. In Personal Futures Workshops, we look at the six personal domains in your life: Activities, Finances, Health, Housing, Social, Transportation. Now, ask yourself, for each personal domain, what should my life be like 10 years from now?

Start with Activities, all the things you do; school, work, religion, sports, hobbies — the things you do. What do you want to be doing in your life 10 years from now? Think about this one carefully because our activities tend to fill our days, and if we don’t fill our days with something interesting life may start getting boring. If you are under 60, you will probably still be working, which will keep you busy. If you expect to retire within the next 10 years it’s important that you have enough activities in mind to keep you active most of the time. When I talk to people about their future in retirement, I often hear, “I want to play golf every day.” Or “I want to go fishing every day.” Keep in mind that when you retire, you may be retired for several decades, so you want to plan a life that has enough activities in it to keep your life interesting.

Next, consider Finances. What do you want your financial condition to be in 10 years?

Health. What do you want or expect your health to be like in 10 years?

Housing. Where do you want to be living 10 years from now, and what kind of the home do you expect, a castle or a condominium?

Social. Where will all your family members be living 10 years? Who will be your close friends? Do you see any significant changes in your social circles over the next 10 years?

Transportation. What will be your transportation requirements or needs in 10 years? Will you be commuting? Will your transportation needs change over the next 10 years?

You can probably see that creating a vision of your future is not terribly complicated, but it will require you to actually think about your future. That is probably the most important part of futuring — taking the time to think about what you want your future to be. Once you make the decisions about what you want your life to be like 10 years from now, you will have a destination in the future. Then you can start thinking about how you are going to achieve your vision.

We’ll do that in the next post!

There are two types of forces in your life. You need to understand both kinds

The two types of forces that will affect your life are the internal forces and the external forces. The internal forces are the forces that are part of your life, every day, throughout your life. The external forces are found in the world around you and may occur locally, nationally, or internationally. These are the forces of change in your life, and each will have an impact over time.

Internal forces. When I was conducting research related to personal futures some years ago, I found that each of us is managing our lives on multiple levels. We are all multi-taskers and have been since long before that term came into existence. As part of my research, I identified six different categories of forces in everyone’s life, in effect dividing life into six parts. The six categories are:

Activities- Everything we do. This includes schooling, employment or career, hobbies, religion, travel, sports, and other activities in life.

Finances-  Everything to do with your money, including income, expenses, taxes, credit cards and insurance, among others.

Health- Everything related to your physical and mental health. Hygiene, diet, exercise, medicines, and medical care are some examples.

  Housing- The Housing domain begins with your home, but includes your neighborhood, community, country and climate.

 

Social- The Social domain begins with close family and friends and expands outward to include all the people (and stakeholders) you interact with in your work or your community.

 Transportation and mobility-  Includes all available means of mobility beginning with walking and including all forms of personal and public transportation.

 These descriptions of the categories of forces are not cast in stone! They are flexible, so you can arrange the definitions any way you want, but you should try to be consistent. For example, I’ve shown religion as an activity, but some people prefer to put religion in the social domain. That’s OK. Whatever works for you, because it’s your life that you are thinking about.

As for the external forces, the names of the categories can vary, but I prefer the STEEP categories, because they are easy to remember. The descriptions are broad and obvious

Social

Technology

Economic

Ecology

Political

These are categories of forces outside your life that can, and probably will, have impacts on you. These forces may be active locally, nationally or anywhere in the world. A government overthrown in the Mid-East, the landing of an exploratory rover on Mars, failure or corruption in foreign banks, the election of a new government in Europe; all have the potential to have an impact on your life. A decision in the national government to raise taxes or cut spending may affect your life. A decision by your city government  to put up stop lights, paint pedestrian lines at crossings, create bicycle lanes on roadways, or to repave the street in front of your home may also have impacts on your life.

All of these examples show the forces of change in action, sometimes with large impacts and sometimes with no impact on you at all, but always with the potential to bring about change that will affect you and your life.

None of this should make you nervous in any way, as all these forces have always been there, and will remain. On the other hand, your awareness of these eleven categories of change may have been heightened, and that is the intent of this piece. To help you be fully aware of the potential for change in your life and in the world that can affect you. Because you are now aware, you should be able to deal with all these changes more effectively, possibly turning some in your favor.

Understanding these forces of change should help you anticipate how change will impact you and where it will take you into the future.

 

If you want to learn something about where your future is headed over the next ten years, take a close look at the stakeholders in your life and your career.

Stakeholders are the people (and sometimes the institutions) who can have an impact on your life and your future. Stakeholders are also those who will be impacted by your life and your actions, now and in the future.

Start with your family and close friends. If you have children who are under ten years old, during the next ten years they will become teenagers. That will have an impact on your life! If you have children who are already teenagers, over the next ten years they will be going through big changes in their own lives, and those changes will have an impact on you. Over the next ten years, today’s teenagers will probably complete their education, start work or begin a career, move out of the family home, begin a marriage or other relationship and may start a family—your grandchildren.

Over the next ten years, your parents, grandparents and other relatives will be getting older. Will they retire? Will they move from their home to another city or country? Will they be healthy? What will your relationship be with them and with your spouse’s parents? What will you feel will be your responsibilities to them, and how will you manage those responsibilities?

What about your best friends? They may move to a different area and drift out of your life, or you may still be connected electronically, while others may remain close throughout your life. I have friends from high school (sixty years ago) that I haven’t seen for twenty years, but who still exchange emails with me on a regular basis. Which close friends will still be in your social network ten years from now.

Consider the obvious, the people in your work and career life. How will ten years affect those relationships? If you have a mentor or a tormentor, is that person likely to still be around in ten years? If your best friends are the people you work with, what will happen when you retire?  Most of those relationships may end, leaving a large hole in your social network.

Businesses, institutions, and organizations can be stakeholders in your life. Your employer, your banker, the mortgage holder on your home, your credit card company all have a stake in your life, and can have positive or negative impacts over the next ten years.

As you consider each of the stakeholders in your life and your future, how might your relationship change in each case? Which can get better, which can deteriorate, and why. There may be actions can you take now to insure positive relationships and outcomes. By exploring these relationships now, you can learn something about your future, and find ways to make your future a good one!

 

Blogs About the Future

Recently, I’ve been reading blogs. Lots of blogs! Specifically, I’ve been reading blogs by futurists or about the future. I asked members of the Association of Professional futurists for their suggestions, and I asked the World Futures Studies listserv readers for suggestions. At this point, I have a list of about 200 blogs (it changes quickly!), and I think the list will grow.

The group of bloggers on the World Future Society (www.wfs.org) provided a starting core that aroused my interest about how many futurists might be writing blogs. Then I checked Google and the membership directory of APF, then asked futurists around the world for suggestions. They sent a lot!

I have posted the initial list at www.vernewheelwright.com, and am asking people, including you, to tell me about any blogs that are related to the future that are not already on the list. I think there are a lot. Although the list is about 200 blogs long now, there are futurists that I know that are not here yet, so I’ll start searching them out on-by-one. But you can help.

I believe some futures-bloggers hesitate to put their own name forward. They don’t want to be pushy or publicity seeking. If you are in that category, don’t be modest, send me the name of your blog, the web address, and your first and last names. If you know of a blog about the future or by a futurist, please let me know. My email is verne@personalfutures.net, and I will appreciate your help.

I believe that people, including futurists will find this list of futures blogs to be a great resource. There are some very good writers blogging about the future, and they seem to cover all facets of futuring. They are writing in many languages, representing many cultures.

There is one problem with researching blogs. It is very easy to be drawn in; reading one blog on a site, then checking one previous blog after another. Then starting on another site and repeating the process! I know this can happen because it happened to me while I was building this list. I repeat—there are some very good, thoughtful writers out there.

This blog list will not be confined to my web site. Anyone can link to the list for their own web site, and I will make the list available to Futures organizations who are interested.

For information about personal futuring, please visit my web site http://www.personalfutures.net . You can sign up for my (irregular) newsletter for updates about Personal Futures. For short updates, please follow me on Twitter : @urfuturist. To read the first Chapter of my book It’s Your Future… Make it a Good One! go to http://www.vernewheelwright.com

The Third Step Toward Your Personal Future

This third step could be titled Personal Strategic Planning, because it follows many of the same steps used in corporate strategic planning. But… personal strategic planning is a much simpler process, and it works!

First, you need a vision of your future. Why do you need a vision? Your vision of your future is a destination, a target to aim for; a place to go. As an analogy, if you decide to go on a vacation, one of your first decisions must be the destination. Until you have a destination, there is very little you can do about planning your vacation. The same thing is true about planning for the future. You need a target— a destination.

Some people have a little trouble with the concept of creating a vision of their future, their life ten years from now, because the image is too big and too complex. I suggest that you break your life into the six parts we discussed earlier, your personal domains:

·         Activities

·         Finances

·         Health

·         Housing

·         Social

·         Transportation

Now, ask yourself, for each of these personal domains, “What do I want my life to be like in this domain ten years from now?” Remember, you are not predicting a future in this domain, you are describing a future you want to experience.

That should give you six different views of your future. Next, combine those six views of your future into one— your vision of your future.  Now you have a destination!

In my opinion, developing the vision is the key to strategic planning at any level.

Once you have a vision of the future you want to be living ten years from now, you can start creating strategies to achieve that future. Once again, go back to your six personal domains and design strategies for each domain. Think back to the analogy I used earlier, planning a vacation. Once you have a destination for your vacation (your vision), you can make decisions about how (fly, drive, cruise, etc.) you will get to your destination, where you will stay, and what you will do (your strategies).

It’s worthwhile to spend some time developing your strategies.  Your strategies are how you choose to get from where you are to where you want to be, so there may be several choices. Try to find the best strategy for you in every case.

When you have decided on your strategies, you then ready to decide on when you will execute each part of each strategy over the next ten years. This will become your “action” plan; the series of actions you will take to execute each of your strategies over the next ten years. There are different ways to approach the action plan. One is to start from today and lay out a sequence of steps for each strategy. Another is to pretend you are in your future, than look backward to see what sequence of actions you followed to arrive in your future. In practice, you may find that you develop the sequences combining those two approaches.

Now, this is important. Read it twice. Your action plan is a guide to your future that can be changed at any time. You are not and should not feel locked in to a plan. This is your plan, and you are free to change it at any time. Just like your vacation plans, you should be able to make changes at any time.

Finally, create contingency plans for low-probability, high-impact events (wild cards) that may occur over the next ten years. Think through the strategies and actions for each event, then write down what you decide. If the event occurs, you have a plan and are ready to deal with the event.

And that is personal futuring in three steps; understanding your life, exploring alternate futures, and creating a vision, strategies and plans for your future.

 In my next blog, I’ll suggest how to analyze your plan and make adjustments where necessary.

If you haven’t already, consider downloading the free Personal Futures Workbook at www.personalfutures.net.  You can also sign in to receive occasional newsletters about Personal Futuring.

If you are waiting for a digital version of It’s YOUR Future…Make it a Good One! You will find one at Amazon.com, at BarnesandNoble.com, and in the Apple iBookstore. The eBook can also be downloaded from either of my web sites, http://www.personalfutures.net or http://www.vernewheelwright.com, where you can also read the first chapter online.  For short updates, follow me on Twitter @urfuturist.

The Second Step Toward Your Personal Future

The second step toward your personal future involves exploring multiple alternative futures. This is the scenario method, in my opinion the heart of futuring.

In the first step, you did the research on your life; your life stage, your stakeholders, the forces in your life, high probability/ high impact events, and values. If you haven’t already, I suggest you download the Personal Futures Workbook. It’s a free PDF download at www.personalfutures.net .What I show you here is a little different than the workbook, but is what you’ll find in the next version (soon!) of the workbook and in my book; It’s YOUR Future… Make it a Good One!

Your first scenario will contain information that will be used in all your personal scenarios. We’ll call this baseline scenario,”Continuation of the present into the future.” This scenario assumes very little unexpected change in your life over the next ten years. You and your stakeholders will all be ten years older and in new stages of your lives. The high probability/high impact events commonly associated with those life stages will be included. The forces in your life, your personal domains, will be calm with no major unexpected change, and the world around you will be generally stable. This is your future absent unanticipated change.

The rest of your scenarios will have change superimposed upon this baseline scenario.

The next scenario is a positive scenario, the “Best Plausible” scenario. Note I’m saying “plausible” not “possible” because this is a scenario that is reasonable to anticipate. No miracles (i.e. winning the lottery), just a combination of good forces moving in your favor.

Now, look at each of your personal domains:

·         Activities

·         Finances

·         Health

·         Housing

·         Social

·         Transportation

In each domain, what are the best things that could reasonably happen in your life over the next ten years? (There are charts in the workbook to help with this.) Simply add those positive events and the forces that lead up to them into a copy of your baseline scenario. Now you have all of the elements of a positive scenario.

Now, reverse your direction to create your “Worst Plausible” scenario. For each domain, what are the worst plausible events that could happen in your life over the next ten years? Add those negative events into a baseline scenario to create your negative scenario.

Traditionally, the next scenario is a “Wild Card” scenario, driven by one or more low probability/high impact events. Winning the lottery and natural disasters all fall into this category. I live near the Gulf Coast of Texas, so hurricanes seem like a natural wild card.

But there is something new in Wild Card events, and that is the “Aspirational Scenario’ introduced by futurist Clem Bezold. In this scenario, the driving force at work is the will of the subject of the scenario to achieve something that others consider unachievable. In It’s YOUR Future… Make it a good One! the twenty- year-old example character aspires to write a best-selling novel before age thirty (It’s been done. Ken Kesey comes to mind—he wrote two!).

At this point, you have all the elements of four or five personal scenarios, but having the elements or concepts is not enough. It is important to write out a short (or long) story for each scenario that shows how your life might unfold over the next ten years if you lived in that scenario. Don’t be intimidated by the idea of writing out your scenarios. You need a beginning, a middle and an end that describes what happens in your life in this scenario, how it unfolds and why.

In workshops, people sometimes hesitate at writing scenarios, but once they have the finished story in front of them, they are proud of their achievement. Why is this step of writing the scenario so important? In the future, you will be able to recall or read your scenarios and relate them to how your life is actually unfolding, and you will understand which scenario you are actually living and why.

There is more information about personal scenarios and futuring on my web site, www.personalfutures.net and information on It’s YOUR Future… Make it a good One! and other writings at www.vernewheelwright.com . Follow me: @urfuturist.

So—What Are You Going To Do About It?

You’ve read about the future, heard people speak about the future, watched videos about the future, and more.

So what?

What have you done about the future? Particularly, what have you done about your own future?

This is a challenge. Take a little time and think about your future, then do something about it. Now. Whether you are a big-company CEO or looking for work, there is a lot you can know about your future. There is a lot you should know.  Most important, there is a lot you can do about your future.

How do you do that? Here’s a start— go to www.personalfutures.net, then go to the “Free Downloads” page. Download The Personal Futures Workbook, then download the spreadsheet near the bottom of the “Free Downloads” page. If you have a small business, you may be interested in the Small Business Foresight download as well. Now, look at some of the pages on this site that explain a little about planning your own future. If you want more detailed information, my book It’s Your Future… Make it a Good One! is available in paperback or eBook on this site, as well as at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple sites. But you don't have to buy the book( Sure, I hope you do, but you can do this with the free workbook and the materials on the web site). The book simply provides more information and examples that will help you think about your future.

Fill out the workbook. This will require you to actually think about your future— what it may be and what it can be. In the process, you will be using exactly the same methods used around the world by professional futurists and large organizations. The only difference is that the methods are scaled down to fit your life. If you’re skeptical, this approach has been published widely in journals and in the Futurist. The book and workbooks are used as textbooks at several colleges and universities. The book and the workbooks have gone all over the world.

But the book and the workbook simply provide a system; a system for thinking about and taking action toward your future. This is not a book to simply read and feel good about. This is a book and workbook system that requires thought and action.

Does it work? The emails I have received are pretty emphatic that it does. I have been told several times that a workbook or workshop “…changed my life!” I’ve seen the results in the lives of several people. So I would say yes.

Try this system. It may change your future. It will teach you about futures tools and methods. It may give you a long term perspective (very important!). If you have questions as you go through the personal futuring process, send me an email. verne@personalfutures.net. I’ll answer.

Email me: verne@personalfutures.net.

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