Chapter 2. Personal Foresight - Becoming an Effective Self-Leader

Career Planning: Where Will You Go Next?

Let’s conclude by asking two interesting questions: “What are you capable of?” and “Where will you go next?” The answers to both of these are partly trait-related. You won’t arrive at a good answer to the first question until you really understand your traits, and until you push yourself to the point of failure on some things that you care greatly about. If you plan your challenges well, it will be a small failure, perhaps a “sit-down fall”, as my mother used to advise us to aim for when we were learning to ski progressively better every day as children. You don’t want a neck-fracturing face-plant, but you better not have a day of perfect form on the mountain, or you’ve been lazy. Without small regular failures, you won’t take good account of your current capabilities, or build your skills as well as you otherwise might.

Wheelwright (2010)

Wheelwright (2010)

Answering “where will you go next?”, the traditional question of career planning, you must assess and understand not only your traits, strengths, and weaknesses, but your values, goals, needs, and aspirations, your fears, opportunities, resources, and those of your supporters. You also need a reasonable picture of what is going on in your organization and the larger world. All of that is tough foresight work, and here again, your early answers will always be provisional. Once you have a provisional answer to “where will you go next”, you’ll want to reconsider “what are you capable of?” in the framework of your new plans. In turn, the further you challenge yourself in the next action cycle, the better you’ll see what kind of plans will take best advantage of your unique abilities. So try to continually balance these two questions in your mind.

Altucher (2013)

Altucher (2013)

For personal foresight and career planning, foresight professional Verne Wheelwright has developed a great book, It’s Your Future (2010) that explores many of these higher-level personal foresight issues. He’s also written a Personal Futures Workbook (2011, free PDF), to help work through those topics. Another older but still great guide that supplements Wheelwright’s works is George Morrisey’s Creating Your Future: Personal Strategic Planning for Professionals (1987). For a book that will motivate you to put your energy into careful self- and career-improvement, as we move toward a world of increasing technological unemployment, try James Altucher’s Choose Yourself (2013).

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In answering “Where will you go next?”, Aristotle Bancale and Dorothy Shapland offered a helpful Venn diagram in 2011. They propose that your ideal career, how you spend your time, is at the intersection (multisolves for) four key things: your talents (current masteries), your passions, your service to others (the social/universal value you provide), and your compensation (how much others recognize the value you provide). There are several such models in circulation, but I find this four-factor model particularly elegant.

Understanding your abilities, your achievements and shortcomings, what gets you most excited, what you are capable of under both the best and the worst conditions, who you help the best, and how to get paid for providing value to others are daily journeys that never reach an end, only waypoints. With increasing self-understanding, and self-control, your ability to learn, grow, and enjoy your amazing journey will get better and stronger your entire life.

We hope this tour of tools and approaches to personal foresight, including self-diagnostics, self-motivation, leadership, and self-management has been helpful. Please let us know what else we need to include in this chapter, or remove, in future versions of this guide.

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Table of Contents

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Chapter 2. Personal Foresight – Becoming an Effective Self-Leader

Chapter 2: Personal Foresight

Becoming an Effective Self-Leader

Chapter 4. Models – Foundations for Organizational Foresight

Chapter 4: Models

Foundations for Organizational Foresight

Chapter 7. Acceleration – Guiding Our Extraordinary Future

Chapter 7: Acceleration

Guiding Our Extraordinary Future (In Process)

II. Global Progress: 5 Goals, 10 Values, Many Trends

Innovation: Our Abundant Future
Intelligence: Our Augmented Future
Interdependence: Our Civil Future
Immunity: Our Protected Future
Sustainability: Our Rebalanced Future

III. Universal Accelerating Change

Great Race to Inner Space: Our Surprising Future
Entropy&Information: We’re Running Down & Up
The Puzzle of Meaning: We Have No Einstein Yet
Trees, Funnels & Landscapes: Intro to Evo Devo
Big Picture Change: Five Scales of Accelerating ED
Transcension Hypothesis: Where Acceleratn Ends?
IDABDAK: Social Response to Accel & Developmnt
We’re On a Runaway Train: Being Accelaware

IV. Evo Devo and Exponential Foresight

Seeing It All: Accel., Diverg, Adapt, Convrg, Decel.
Natural (I4S) Innovation: The Evolutionary Drive
Natural (I4S) Intelligence: The Human-AI Partnership
Natural (I4S) Morality: Why Empathy and Ethics Rule
Natural (I4S) Security: Strength from Disruption
Natural (I4S) Sustainability: The Developmental Drive
S-Curves: Managing the Four Constituencies
Pain to Gain: Traversing the Three Kuznets Phases
Hype to Reality: Beyond Hype Cycles to Reality Checks
Exponentials Database: Measuring Accelerations
TINA Trends: Societal Evolutionary Development
Managing Change: STEEPCOP Events, Probs, Ideas
A Great Shift: A Survival to a Sentient Economy

V. Evo Devo and Exponential Activism

Building Protopias: Five Goals of Social Progress
Normative Foresight: Ten Values of Society
Top & STEEPCOP Acceleratns: Positive & Negative
Dystopias, Risks, and Failure States
Three Levels of Activism: People, Tech & Universe
A Great Opportunity: Exponential Empowerment

 

Chapter 8. Your Digital Self – The Human Face of the Coming Singularity

Chapter 8: Your Digital Self

The Human Face of the Coming Singularity (In Process)

I. Your Personal AI (PAI): Your Digital Self

Digital Society: Data, Mediation, and Agents
Personal AIs: Advancing the Five Goals
PAI Innovation: Abundance and Diversity
PAI Intelligence: Bio-Inspired AI
PAI Morality: Selection and Groupnets
PAI Security: Safe Learning Agents
PAI Sustainability: Science and Balance
The Human Face of the Coming Singularity

II. PAI Protopias & Dystopias in 8 Domains

1. Personal Agents: News, Ent., Education
2. Social Agents: Relat. and Social Justice
3. Political Agents :  Activism & Represent.
4. Economic Agents:  Retail, Finance, Entrep
5. Builder Agents :  Work, Innov. & Science
6. Environ. Agents : Pop. and Sustainability
7. Health Agents :  Health, Wellness, Death
8. Security Agents :  Def., Crime, Corrections

III. PAI Activism & Exponential Empowerment

Next Government: PAIs, Groupnets, Democ.
Next Economy: Creat. Destr. & Basic Income
Next Society: PAI Ent., Mortality & Uploading
What Will Your PAI Contribution Be?

Chapter 10. Startup Ideas – Great Product & Service Challenges for Entrepreneurs

Chapter 10: Startup Ideas

Great Product and Service Challenges for Entrepreneurs (In Process)

I. 4U’s Idea Hub: Building Better Futures

Air Deliveries and Air Taxis: Finally Solving Urban Gridlock
Ballistic Shields and Gun Control: Protecting Us All from Lone Shooters
Bioinspiration Wiki: Biomimetics and Bio-Inspired Design
Brain Preservation Services: Memory and Mortality Redefined
Carcams: Document Thieves, Bad Driving, and Bad Behavior
Competition in Govt Services: Less Corruption, More Innovation
Computer Adaptive Education (CAE): Better Learning and Training
Conversational Deep Learning Devsuites: Millions of AI Coders
Digital Tables: Telepresence, Games, Entertainment & Education
Dynaships: Sustainable Low-Speed Cargo Shipping
Electromagnetic Suspension: Nausea-Free Working & Reading in Cars
Epigenetic Health Tests: Cellular Aging, Bad Diet, Body Abuse Feedback
Fireline Explosives and Ember Drones: Next-Gen Fire Control
Global English: Empowering the Next Generation of Global Youth
Greenbots: Drone Seeders and Robotic Waterers for Mass Regreening
High-Density Housing and Zoning: Making Our Cities Affordable Again
Highway Enclosures and Trail Networks: Green and Quiet Urban Space
Inflatable Packaging: Faster and Greener Shipping and Returns
Internet of Families: Connecting People Over Things
Kidcams: Next-Gen Security for Child Safety and Empowerment
Kidpods: Indoor & Outdoor Parent-Assistive Toyboxes
Microdesalination: Democratizing Sustainable Fresh Water Production
Noise Monitors: Documenting and Reducing Noise Pollution
Oceanside Baths: Sustainable Year Round Beach Enjoyment
Open Blood Scanners: DIY Citizen Health Care Sensor Tech
Open Streaming Radio: User-Centered Audio Creation and Rating
Open Streaming Video: User-Centered Video Creation and Rating
Open Values Filters: Social Rankers, Arg. Mappers, and Consensus Finders
Personal AIs: Your Private Advisor, Activist, and Interface to the World
Pet Empowerment: Next-Gen Rights and Abilities for Our Domestic Animals
Safe Closets: Fire-, Earthquake-, and Intruder-Proof Retreat Spaces
Safe Cars: Reducing Our Insane 1.3M Annual Auto Deaths Today
Safe Motorcycles: Lane Splitting in Gridlock Without Risk of Death
Shared Value Insurance: User-Centered Risk Reduction Services
Sleeperbuses and Microhotels: Demonetized Intercity Travel
Space-Based Solar Power: Stratellite Powering and Weather Management
Stratellites: Next-Gen Urban Broadband, Transparency, and Security
Touch DNA: Next-Gen Home Security and Crime Deterrence
View Towers: Improving Urban Walkability, Inspiration, and Community

Chapter 11. Evo Devo Foresight – Unpredictable and Predictable Futures

Chapter 11: Evo Devo Foresight

Unpredictable and Predictable Futures

Appendix 1. Peer Advice – Building a Successful Foresight Practice