Our futures thinking is grounded in our minds

The future might already be with us in the present but that doesn't mean it's fixed yet. It means we can shape it, we can explore the new in the present, we can create futures that don't repeat the mistakes of the past and the present.

I'm writing a second post on futures thinking because I wonder sometimes if I understand what it actually is. I read an email recently which advised that futures thinking is grounded in the present-day. Of course it is because we live in the present. For me, though futures thinking has always meant thinking about futures which we do in the present, but our futures don't yet exist.

For me, futures thinking is not grounded in the present. It's grounded in our minds, our worldviews, our values and our beliefs. These are intangible. The facts, the trends, the signals we find - and the ones we don't - are defined and interpreted by our thinking.

Some of us think short-term, some of us think long-term, some of us take their action today based on the past. This is normal because we all have temporal preferences. A short-term thinker asked to imagine a future might give it a go - this was my experience in workshops - but most will also ultimately end up saying something like: I can't think long…