#ThinkfullyHabit: Think ahead
Do you find yourself in more and more situations where it is nearly impossible to accurately predict or forecast the future? If so, and you find yourself either freezing and unable to respond due to the uncertainty, or leaping forward blindly, then it might serve you well to switch your focus towards speculating what possible outcomes may happen next.
How you think ahead turns out to be quite crucial. A helpful way is to actively anticipate for future outcomes and prepare for potential problems and opportunities. This is different from predicting or forecasting the future, and certainly distinct from guessing what might come next. So, what makes it different? It's when we proactively tune in to emerging patterns, recognise threats or promising signs, extrapolate trends and run through potential consequences - essentially, it’s about being able to imagine a range of possible futures and go on a mental time travel through them all.
“Anticipatory thinking is not trying to guess the future, it is trying to adapt to possible futures. It’s about readying ourselves. ”
WHY?
If we can imagine a range of possible future scenarios then we can speculate what might happen next. We can then anticipate, watch for signs and notice if they do or don’t happen - eliminating or building on our speculations as we go. Anticipatory thinking comes far more into focus when people are looking to navigate through more uncertain futures.
So, how can you improve an ability for anticipation? Here’s a few tips:
- Try and get better at appreciating inconsistencies as these may be signals (albeit weak ones) of what could come next. Catch yourself if you start to explain inconsistencies away. Ask yourself and others what inconsistencies are there?
- Take on an active mindset; a passive mindset is a well-established barrier to anticipatory thinking. Go with an expectation that you will formulate early hypotheses to test; this can help set you up for a more active mindset and approach.
- Go for alternative ideas and take alternative perspectives. Get an outside view or bring in someone with fresh eyes who has yet to become attached to the interpretation of a situation. This can help prevent us fixating over a particular idea for an outcome, which can also prevent anticipatory thinking.
After that, what happens next? Well, that’s very much over to you to start speculating…
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