Introduction
In today's rapidly changing world, wouldn't it be amazing to have a crystal ball that could show us what the future holds? While we don't have such magical devices, Jane McGonigal's book "Imaginable" offers something even better: practical tools and techniques to help us anticipate, prepare for, and even shape the future.
Jane McGonigal is a professional futurist, and in "Imaginable," she shares her expertise on how we can train our minds to imagine and prepare for various future scenarios. This book is not about predicting the future with certainty, but rather about developing the mental flexibility and resilience to face whatever comes our way.
Through a series of engaging exercises and thought experiments, McGonigal teaches readers how to stretch their imagination, challenge their assumptions, and develop a more optimistic and proactive approach to the future. Whether you're worried about global challenges or personal goals, "Imaginable" provides a framework for thinking about and planning for the long-term in a way that feels empowering rather than overwhelming.
Let's dive into the key ideas and practical techniques that McGonigal presents in "Imaginable" to help us become better prepared for the future.
Learning to Imagine the Unimaginable
One of the core concepts in "Imaginable" is the idea of making the unimaginable imaginable. McGonigal introduces a simple yet powerful exercise to help readers start flexing their imagination muscles: mental time travel.
The Mental Time Travel Exercise
Here's how it works:
Imagine waking up tomorrow morning. Picture the scene in as much detail as possible. What room are you in? What wakes you up? How do you feel?
Now, imagine waking up one year from today. Try to visualize the details. Are you in a different place? Has your routine changed?
Finally, imagine waking up ten years from today. This is more challenging, but try to envision where you are, who you've become, and what your life looks like.
This exercise demonstrates how our ability to imagine the future becomes more difficult the further ahead we try to look. However, by practicing this kind of "episodic future thinking" (EFT), we can improve our capacity to envision and prepare for longer-term futures.
The Power of Pre-Feelings
When we engage in these mental time trips, we don't just think about the future – we simulate it. This simulation includes what McGonigal calls "pre-feelings," emotional responses to our imagined futures. These pre-feelings can be valuable indicators of whether we're on the right track or if we need to make changes in our present to create a more desirable future.
Four Key Questions for Future Thinking
To make the most of our mental time trips, McGonigal suggests asking four specific questions:
- Where exactly am I in my future?
- What's true in this version of reality that isn't true today?
- What do I really want in this future moment, and how will I get it?
- How do I feel now that I'm here?
By answering these questions, we can gain deeper insights into our desired futures and what we need to do to make them a reality.
The Magic of Ten Years
Throughout "Imaginable," McGonigal emphasizes the importance of the ten-year timeframe for future thinking. There are several reasons why ten years is a particularly useful horizon for imagining the future:
The Psychological Power of a Decade
Ten years is a psychologically significant period. It's how we often categorize our lives (e.g., "in my 30s") and historical periods (e.g., "the roaring twenties"). We intuitively understand that a lot can change in ten years, yet it feels like enough time to prepare for significant shifts.
Time Spaciousness
The concept of "time spaciousness" is crucial for effective future thinking. When we feel like we have ample time to tackle challenges, we're more likely to approach them with hope and creativity. By giving ourselves a ten-year horizon, we create a sense of time abundance that can lead to more productive and optimistic planning.
The Ten-Year Deadline Experiment
McGonigal suggests an interesting experiment: try giving yourself a ten-year deadline for small tasks. For example, put "finish reading this book summary" in your calendar for ten years from now. While it might seem counterintuitive, research shows that feeling time-rich can actually make us more productive and less likely to procrastinate.
Embracing the Absurd: Future Scenarios and Dator's Law
To truly stretch our imagination and prepare for a range of possible futures, McGonigal encourages us to embrace seemingly absurd ideas. This approach is based on Dator's Law, which states that "Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous."
The Flip-It Exercise
Here's a practical exercise to help you think more creatively about the future:
Make a list of five things that are true today. (e.g., "Shoes aren't free," "Most people own more than one pair of shoes")
Imagine that in ten years, the opposite is true. (e.g., "In ten years, shoes are free," "In ten years, most people own only one pair of shoes")
Try to make sense of these reversed scenarios. How might they have come about? What would be the implications?
This exercise helps us break free from our current assumptions and consider a wider range of possibilities for the future.
Personal Flip-It
You can also apply this technique to your personal life:
Write down five facts about your current life. (e.g., "I'm a European citizen," "I travel a lot," "I'm a journalist")
Imagine the opposite being true in ten years. (e.g., "I'm a Canadian citizen," "I don't travel," "I manage a taco shop")
Choose one of these flipped facts and imagine how this change might have occurred and what it would mean for your life.
The goal isn't to create a concrete plan for drastically altering your life, but to make your imagination more flexible and open to unexpected possibilities.
Finding Clues About the Future
While imagination is crucial for future thinking, it's also important to ground our speculations in real-world trends and data. McGonigal introduces the concept of "future forces" and "signals of change" to help us identify potential future developments.
Future Forces and Signals of Change
A future force is a phenomenon likely to disrupt society in significant ways. These forces often start as small clues or signals of change. For example, the emergence of "pizzly bears" (a hybrid of polar bears and grizzly bears) is a signal of change indicating the effects of climate change on biodiversity and animal migration patterns.
How to Spot Signals of Change
McGonigal offers several strategies for identifying signals of change:
Use Google searches with phrases like "future of [topic]" to explore emerging trends.
Check out reports from organizations like the World Economic Forum, which regularly publish analyses of global risks and trends.
Pay attention to unusual news stories or scientific discoveries that might hint at larger shifts.
Creating Your Personal Future Forces List
To make this process more relevant to your life:
Create a list of future forces you think will affect you and your loved ones over the next ten years.
Focus on positive forces that make you feel hopeful.
Take a mental time trip to a future where one of these positive forces is at its peak. How does it make you feel? What opportunities does it create?
Developing Urgent Optimism
By balancing our consideration of potential challenges (using our "shadow imagination") with exploration of positive possibilities (using our "positive imagination"), we can develop what McGonigal calls "urgent optimism." This mindset acknowledges the difficulties ahead while maintaining a realistic hope that we can address them.
Urgent optimism is characterized by:
- A balanced view of the future
- Awareness of challenges without being overwhelmed by them
- Excitement to take action and shape the future
- Motivation to get out of bed and make a difference
This mindset is crucial for effective future thinking and planning, as it keeps us engaged and proactive rather than paralyzed by fear or complacency.
The Power of Hard Empathy
One of the most intriguing concepts in "Imaginable" is the idea of "hard empathy" and its potential to heal the world and improve our relationship with our future selves.
Your Future Self as a Stranger
McGonigal explains that, neurologically speaking, our brains treat our future selves as strangers. When we imagine ourselves in the future, our brain activity shifts from a first-person perspective to a third-person perspective, as if we're considering a different person entirely.
This neurological quirk can make it challenging to make decisions that benefit our future selves. We might procrastinate more, give up more easily when frustrated, or save less money for retirement because we're essentially giving resources to a "stranger."
Cultivating Empathy for Your Future Self
To counter this effect, McGonigal suggests cultivating more empathy for your future self. This involves treating your future self not as a stranger, but as a close friend or even as an extension of your current self.
Easy Empathy vs. Hard Empathy
McGonigal distinguishes between two types of empathy:
Easy Empathy: This occurs when we can immediately relate to someone's experience because we've been through something similar. For example, if you were bullied as a child, you might easily empathize with another child being bullied.
Hard Empathy: This requires more effort and creativity. It involves trying to understand and relate to experiences that are very different from our own.
Practicing Hard Empathy
To develop hard empathy, McGonigal suggests the following exercise:
Find a news story about someone whose life is radically different from yours.
Imagine, in detail, your own life circumstances changing to be more like theirs.
Try to understand their perspective, motivations, and feelings.
This practice can help us become more understanding and compassionate towards others, including our future selves.
Future Scenarios and Video Games: Tools for Learned Helpfulness
McGonigal, who has a background in game design, draws interesting parallels between video games and future scenario planning.
The Benefits of Gaming
Research has shown that gamers often exhibit positive traits that can be beneficial in real-world situations:
- Setting higher goals for themselves
- Showing more resilience in the face of setbacks
- Being more likely to ask for and offer help to others
These traits stem from the nature of video games, which typically present players with challenges, limited information, and the need to figure out strategies and resources to succeed.
From Learned Helplessness to Learned Helpfulness
McGonigal introduces the concept of "learned helpfulness" as an antidote to "learned helplessness" (the feeling that nothing we do matters). Learned helpfulness is the sense of confidence and control we develop when we successfully tackle problems.
Both video games and future scenario exercises can foster learned helpfulness by giving us opportunities to:
- Face challenges in a low-stakes environment
- Develop problem-solving skills
- Experience success and build confidence
- Practice collaboration and seeking help
Answering the Future's Call to Adventure
McGonigal argues that finding your unique way to help in future scenarios is a crucial skill. She suggests asking yourself three questions when approaching any future scenario:
- What will people need and want in this future?
- What kinds of people will be especially useful in this future?
- How will I use my unique strengths to help others in this future?
By answering these questions, you can start to envision your role in shaping a better future.
Immersive Future Scenario: The Ten-Day Challenge
To put all these concepts into practice, McGonigal presents a ten-day immersive future scenario exercise. This extended simulation allows you to deeply engage with a plausible future and prepare for real-world changes.
The Zero-Waste Future Scenario
Here's a summary of the scenario McGonigal presents:
It's June 1, 2032. Overnight, garbage collection and recycling services have been discontinued. Compost is still collected weekly. The government has implemented a 1,000% sales tax on items with non-compostable packaging. There's a potential $10,000 bonus for citizens if the country reduces its annual waste by 80% within a year. Government funds previously used for waste management are now directed towards healthcare, education, and universal basic income.
In this new reality:
- People are spending more on experiences rather than accumulating stuff
- Zero waste has become the new normal
- There's a general feeling of positivity about the changes, dubbed "Zerophoria" by psychologists
How to Engage with the Scenario
To fully benefit from this exercise:
Keep the scenario in mind as you go about your daily life for the next ten days.
Consider how your activities, interactions, and surroundings would be different in this future scenario.
Keep a "future journal" to record your thoughts and reactions. Use prompts like:
- Describe your feelings in one word
- What habit could you change now to decrease your trash?
- What would be the hardest thing to change or give up?
- Will you embrace or resist this new post-trash society? Why?
Spend five minutes each day free-writing in your future journal about the strange and surprising things you imagine.
Share the experience with at least one other person to make it feel more real and collective.
This scenario is based on real future forces and signals of change related to the global waste crisis and the zero-waste movement. By engaging with it deeply over ten days, you're preparing yourself to handle similar real-world changes with greater confidence and optimism.
Practical Applications of Future Thinking
While "Imaginable" focuses largely on personal development and preparation for the future, the skills and techniques McGonigal teaches have broader applications:
Business Strategy
Companies can use future scenario planning to:
- Anticipate market changes
- Identify potential risks and opportunities
- Develop more resilient business models
- Foster innovation by considering "absurd" future possibilities
Policy Making
Governments and organizations can apply these techniques to:
- Create more forward-thinking policies
- Prepare for potential crises
- Develop long-term strategies for addressing complex issues like climate change or technological disruption
Education
Educators can incorporate future thinking exercises to:
- Help students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills
- Encourage creativity and innovation
- Prepare young people for a rapidly changing job market
Personal Development
Individuals can use these tools to:
- Set more meaningful long-term goals
- Make better decisions that align with their future aspirations
- Develop resilience and adaptability in the face of change
- Find purpose and direction in their lives
The Ethical Dimensions of Future Thinking
As we develop our capacity for future thinking, it's important to consider the ethical implications of this practice:
Responsibility
With greater foresight comes greater responsibility. As we become more adept at anticipating future challenges, we may feel a stronger obligation to act on that knowledge.
Inclusivity
When imagining future scenarios, it's crucial to consider diverse perspectives and the potential impacts on different communities. Whose voices are being heard in our visions of the future?
Unintended Consequences
As we attempt to shape the future, we must be mindful of potential unintended consequences. How can we balance proactive planning with humility about the limits of our foresight?
Hope vs. Complacency
While cultivating optimism is important, we must be careful not to let positive visions of the future lead to complacency. How can we maintain urgency in addressing current problems while imagining better futures?
Developing a Future-Oriented Mindset
Beyond the specific techniques and exercises, "Imaginable" encourages readers to cultivate a general mindset that is more open to and engaged with the future. This involves:
Curiosity
Staying curious about emerging trends, new ideas, and different perspectives can help us spot signals of change and imagine diverse futures.
Flexibility
Being willing to change our minds and adapt our plans as new information emerges is crucial for effective future thinking.
Long-Term Thinking
Regularly considering the long-term consequences of our actions and decisions can lead to better outcomes for ourselves and others.
Creativity
Embracing creativity and "out-of-the-box" thinking allows us to imagine truly innovative solutions to future challenges.
Collaboration
Recognizing that the future is shaped collectively, not individually, can inspire us to work together towards common goals.
Conclusion: Embracing the Future with Confidence
"Imaginable" by Jane McGonigal offers a refreshing and empowering approach to thinking about the future. Rather than leaving us overwhelmed by the pace of change or paralyzed by uncertainty, McGonigal provides practical tools and mindsets that allow us to engage with the future proactively and optimistically.
By learning to stretch our imagination, embrace seemingly absurd ideas, cultivate empathy for our future selves and others, and immerse ourselves in detailed future scenarios, we can develop the mental flexibility and resilience needed to face whatever the future might bring.
The book's core message is that the future is not something that simply happens to us – it's something we can actively shape. By developing our "future imagination" muscles, we can:
- Anticipate challenges before they arise
- Identify opportunities that others might miss
- Make better long-term decisions
- Develop innovative solutions to complex problems
- Build resilience in the face of rapid change
- Foster a sense of agency and optimism about the future
Ultimately, "Imaginable" invites us to view the future not as a source of anxiety, but as a realm of possibility. By engaging our imagination and applying the techniques McGonigal outlines, we can approach the future with confidence, creativity, and a sense of purpose.
As we face unprecedented global challenges and rapid technological change, the skills of future thinking have never been more important. Whether you're planning your personal career path, leading a business, shaping public policy, or simply trying to navigate an uncertain world, the ideas in "Imaginable" offer valuable tools for envisioning and creating better futures.
So, the next time you find yourself wondering "What does the future hold?", remember that the answer, in part, lies within your own imagination. By regularly exercising your future thinking skills, staying curious about emerging trends, and maintaining a balance of realism and optimism, you can be better prepared for whatever comes next – and perhaps even play a role in shaping that future for the better.
In a world that often seems unpredictable and overwhelming, "Imaginable" reminds us that we have the power to envision, prepare for, and actively create the futures we want to see. It's an invitation to step into the role of futurist in our own lives and communities, armed with the tools of imagination, empathy, and urgent optimism.
So, are you ready to make the unimaginable imaginable? The future is calling, and with the insights from this book, you're better equipped than ever to answer that call with confidence and creativity.