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

I. Introduction to Personal Foresight 

This chapter is about personal foresight, the ways we can use foresight to improve ourselves, our relationships, and our families. Personal foresight is the first of the four main foresight practice domains, and the bedrock of all the foresight work we do. It is about becoming a self-aware, pragmatic, proactive, moral, empathetic, intelligently optimistic, and happy self-leader. Self-leadership starts with self-understanding, but it also involves finding places worth going, making smart decisions along the way, and using all of the Eight Skills as well as you can. We’ll just scratch the surface of this vast topic in this version of the Guide, but hopefully you’ll find it a good start.

Personal foresight is in many ways the greatest journey each of us takes in our lives, as it makes us so much better at self-understanding, self-control, and self-actualization. When we do it well we, our partners, our families, and our colleagues can find and achieve inspiring visions and outcomes for our own lives, and leave a legacy for all to admire.

Without good personal foresight, you’ll make far less progress in life, and in your professional work, may not “get anywhere special” in your goals and aspirations, will be less able to produce great strategic foresight via the Eight Skills on your teams and with your clients. If instead you use those skills to learn and focus on the best use of your own traits, strengths, and abilities, “the sky is no longer a limit” to your future, as we might update the saying today.

After a discussion of self-knowledge, we’ll talk about the Seven Mindsets of Personal Foresight, mental orientations that fulfilled and successful people must actively balance throughout their lives. Then we’ll explore the HRVWE model, five life priorities that will each help you be successful, if you pay attention to them on a daily basis. Then we’ll talk about mantras, balancing our emotion, cognition, and action, various forms of personal intelligence, seeing and reducing our biases, passion vs. mastery, traits and strengths, a three category evo devo model of psychology, universal values, and a basic sample of good habits and tools.

As an organizing theme, we’ll also apply the Eight Skills to our own lives as we proceed through this chapter, a discipline that is incredibly powerful once you understand it. We’ll start with the learning step, describing how self-understanding is often the deepest and most inward-facing journey each of us ever takes. In the anticipation step, we’ll explore the great value of understanding your predictable psychological traits, and their relevance to your foresight work, and the rest of the eight steps. We’ll also get a basic understanding of emotion and cognition, and how they work together to produce action in what we might call a Primal Do Loop. We’ll then discuss the topic of intelligence, and five useful ways to measure and improve it. We’ll next consider some basic issues of personal performance (prioritizing, bias, cognitive diversity, mastery, passion, and expertise), then turn back to anticipation, exploring some useful personality, trait and strength assessments. We’ll also look at how the management consultancy Gallup mixes traits with leadership skills, and see how the Gallup model ties into the Eight Skills.

We’ll end with a brief discussion of healthy habits, and an introduction to one personal foresight skill, a task management and journaling habit (execution, prioritizing, and reviewing skill) called the Actualizer. Some version of this daily habit can be a great help to get things done, plan, prioritize, and see farther, and track and apply your trait and skill self-assessment work to your life and career.

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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