Practical Futurism for Daily Life

Find yourself in. Thank you for joining me. I'm Nola Simon. I'm the host of the Hope and Possibilities podcast, and today I actually wanna talk about how you actually incorporate futurism into your daily life.

There's a lot of different ways to practice futurism, but my interest has always been. How do you incorporate it into your daily life and make steps towards the ideal future that you want? Some companies called this Future back, so I did my original futurism training with Institute for the Future. So they use that future back concept, which is 10 years from now.

What is. It that I think ideally could be a future I want to live. And then you look at the decisions that you have to make to actually reach that point of view, and that's how you make it happen. So again it's not necessarily a straight shot to that ideal future, but it's if you are navigating a path.

And you've got that in idea in mind. How do you make choices along the way as things change and move? And technology gets dec decided people, other people make decisions around you. How do you navigate that path so that ideally you look and end up close to where it is you want to be?

That's my interest in futurism is. I am not necessarily looking at from a societal level, it's how do you incorporate it at an individual level that gets you closer? And then, if lots of people are doing that, then you have impact on larger issues. So how do you navigate that together to have an actual impact overall.

You start out by doing a variety of noticing. So a lot of futurism is really about paying attention and directing your attention and your focus into what's actually happening around the topics that actually interest you. So there's multiple possible futures on every topic you could possibly think about. But.

Not every person who's interested in futurism is going to be interested in the same thing, and there is no specific one answer for each individual topic because it's influenced by your perceptions, your knowledge, your information, your relationships, your location, all of that. Is very different. And that's where it becomes very interesting when you get into scenario planning and simulations. What can you actually learn by doing that on a mass level to understand where the commonalities are, right?

So this is where it can be become very interesting. The individual experience and expectation is then translated into something that's. Larger and more influential that we can learn from and then work towards, right? You start simple by scanning for signals, so articles art stories, experience media pieces.

A lot of it is personal experience. So you're walking the dog and somebody tells you a story about something that happened to them, right? Something that you notice trends in fashion and cars, and, all these different things are little signals that indicate to you something that's happening, right? You start paying attention and you start collecting it.

A lot of it is really just noticing. It doesn't have to be. Really super intellectual. Everybody processes this kind of stuff differently, right?

So a lot of times I trust my intuition with it. It's like you notice it and you go, oh, that's interesting. I wonder why. And then you start noticing it and it's about more about how you direct your function and your attention, your focus.

So that's scanning for signals. And then do those signals actually transfer? Fur into a trend. So what are you seeing in terms of trends longer term, right?

Are you noticing it? Have you been noticing development? How is this changing from year to year? When does it actually become a trend that's actually going to have influence longer term?

And then is it a trend or is it an actual change? So for example, cell phones. I had a cell phone when I first graduated university in 1994 because I went to work for a cell phone company. My cell phone at the time was in a bag like it was heavy.

I had to carry it around. It probably weighed 10 pounds. And now we use a cell phone that's so tiny you can put it in your pocket, and it really takes the place of a laptop the majority of the time. So that starts out as a signal then becomes.

A trend and then becomes a significant change to how we do business, how we conduct our lives, how we direct our focus. But it also has impact on relationships and, how people communicate and interact and it's got longer term consequences that when cell phones first started, I don't think people understood. How does that work from here? Because we know where we are right now, but what does that look like going forward?

Is it going to translate into something like Google Glass? Probably not because Google Glass, you have to wear on your face. It really becomes part of your identity. It's something that you actually have to physically put on.

Could I be wrong? Absolutely. Everything that I've seen indicates to me that is not a trend that's gonna take off. So what do you pay attention to?

And then it becomes, once you notice these things happening, how do you strategically plan for the fact that you've noticed this and how it's going to inform how you incorporate into your life and your work. So for example, I'm noticing right now that. Governments, banks public service in general, right? Anything that's really directed by organizations and individuals that own a lot of commercial real estate.

They don't like that story of commercial Real estate is going to lose a lot of value because of work from home, work from anywhere. That workplace flexibility and their business model doesn't run very well that way if commercial real estate significantly becomes less of a factor in daily work life. So there's a push for return to office. Now, push for return to office is nothing new.

I experienced this. I started working remotely one day a week. Work from home essentially back in 2012. I started advocating for it in 2011.

And then I was forced back into the office in 2013. I actually end of 2012 beginning of 2013, and that lasted exactly a year because there's a significant benefit to. Having flexibility, especially for, people who do actually have to provide caregiving and elder care and all kinds of different things where they need to really blend their life and their work. It's like, how do you weave your life and your work?

What's that negotiation look like? And it's a lot easier when you have the autonomy and flexibility to choose where it is you're going to be on a daily basis. So that. You can be the person who's controlling what happens in your day.

That's essentially the definition of autonomy and agency. People like that. People really like that. And to take that away for the benefit of the commercial real estate investment that's perceived as a loss.

So human beings are really wired to avoid loss. And. It's going to be a significant battle because the people who own the commercial real estate are also wired to avoid loss. And so this becomes a significant change in how they've perceived the value of their investments, how their work is going to actually change, if it's going to change, and how that accommodates so they have a vested interest in not losing that value.

Whereas the time loss for the individuals who work for them who are forced by employment law really to either comply and show up for at those offices or find some alternative employment, that's really challenging. So this again, is nothing new. I experienced it like over 10 years ago, 12 years ago now. My kids don't even remember me working in an office because of the choices that I made along the way to allow me to be home for them.

They remember me being the mom that I always wanted to be, which was, I wanted to be the default parent. I wanted to be the person who would come to the school, go to school meetings. I would be the person who was home so that their friends could come over and they could go swimming and have sleepovers, and I wanted to be the person doing. The, the car runs if they wanted to go to the store and just, I would be that parent in the neighborhood who could be relied upon.

My daughter has a friend, she spent so much time here. Her mom calls me the second mom, and so I achieved that because of decisions that I made when she was two, because I aim towards. What I wanted that experience to be, and it's not that I had any certainty about the decisions I was going to make, but it was knowing ahead of time which choices would get me closer to what it was I wanted to be. For everybody who's actually working in a situation where you are constantly being mandated back to the office.

Now, COVID has been over, it started in what, 2020? We started really getting out of it in 22. Now it's 20, 25 every September. Since.

2022. Really? 21 maybe if you're really early. People have tried to force their employees to go back to the office because it's impacting downtown.

It's impacting the subways ridership is down. It's impacting the stores around it. So the people who live down there are actually having their experience affected because there's not enough foot traffic, because there's not enough commuters. To keep their dry cleaners and their restaurants and their cafes running.

So neighborhoods are changing, all because people are working from home. And so it becomes a situation where you either comply because that's what you're obligated to do. Based on the terms of your employment contract and employment law, or you make decisions that actually support your goals. Now I've been.

In financial services. I've worked in wealth management. I didn't actually work in the insurance division, but I did work for an insurance company and then I worked for a bank, also owned by that same insurance company. So I understand that, and the attraction of an industry that has been around for a long time, that is perceived to be stable, that has history to it.

The company I worked for was actually the first. President of the company was the first Prime Minister of Canada. That's a significant legacy. So there's a perception that company is safe and that then translates into stable employment.

But it's also the credibility brought by the brand name. And a lot of times when people ask me what I did I didn't actually tell them anything about what I did. I just told 'em I worked for the company and that was sufficient. So I understand the attraction of that type of work.

Because you've got benefits. Your pay is going to be fine. You understand that the company is going to exist in some fashion or rather long term, right? Because it's always been around, or at least that's the perception right now as markets changed and reinvention becomes a thing.

That may not always be true. There are financial challengers coming to big banks in Canada now. Things are changing because a lot of people don't necessarily even need to walk into branches of banks anymore. They do everything online, and so that, that relationship with the local branch is being impacted.

The small town that I grew up in, in Setton, all of their banks are closing. The town council is actually challenging the last bank that's leaving because every bank is abandoned the town, right? And they have an older population. And that population is used to that level of service.

It becomes problematic, right? But this is the thing. What is that future going to look like? And if you are not noticing these trends and you're not paying attention and you're not thinking about what possibly could be happening five, 10 years from now, you are gonna be caught off guard.

You're not going to be changing, you're not gonna be upskilling, you're not going to be planning for what that could possibly look like now, right at the moment in my work. I, up until now, although I've called myself a futurist, I've also called myself a hybrid remote futurist. And so what that meant was, my goal was to actually help companies and organizations and individuals do workplace flexibility better. And a lot of companies are still doing that.

The companies that are startups, the companies that are smaller who don't actually have a significant real estate portfolio, they're not choosing to really invest in commercial real estate because they understand that's not necessarily the best future play. Okay, so who hires somebody who's invested in hybrid remote futurism? That's really the companies that are those smaller companies. The big companies, the governments aren't necessarily the types of companies, although they have the budget, they're not necessarily inclined to hire somebody that's going to actually deliver a message that commercial real estate is gonna die.

So how do I adjust my business knowing that right at the moment we're in this cycle? Because this does tend to be cyclical because there's a lot of resistance to that whole mindset. It's that fight against, loss. How do I pivot my business?

And that's the thing. Futurism is always an ongoing practice. You have to adjust to the reality of the present. It's navigating a river, right?

There's a, there's an obstacle ahead. How do you navigate around it? Think about it like a video game. You're simulating how you navigate like a course, right?

So there's gonna be obstacles, there's gonna be alligators that try to eat you. How do you move and pivot and make those choices that are gonna get you closer to what it is you wanna do, right? I'm considering how I use futurism in a way that's broader than just hybrid, remote. How do I expand my practice so that it can adapt to the cyclical nature of what's happening in business right now?

And how does that look in terms of transformation and reinvention? That's where I'm at. So anyways, I wanted to. Just put that forward as an example of how we can use futurism as a way to really inform our daily lives.

And then if as a whole, everybody is actually geared towards that. And realistically, I know that's not going to be a thing because the future you is often a stranger to yourself. You assume that things are going to stay the same that. That what's happening in your present is often going to stay the same.

It's neuroscience. The majority of people don't necessarily think about what their future self is going to like. That's why it's so hard to stick to an exercise program or, to eat in a different way or to save, because. That mindset of prioritizing future over present is a challenging one, right?

So if you can adapt it in such a way that it's helpful and you do it in small doses. Does that investment in mindset shift, even in a small level, then translate into something bigger? And that's where it's like, what small practices can we implement to start to pay attention to those mindset shifts that really help us invest in the future year? And that's really why I am running the 21 day challenge that I'm running to practice.

Futurism and how do you incorporate that in your daily life? So anyways, thanks for listening. I'm interested to hear how you practice futurism. If you were asking for my advice on how to start, I would say pay attention to what it is you notice, and then question what if, so if something that you are seeing happens, what does that mean?

What if this happens? What if. And do you react positively or negatively? How does that idea feel in your body?

Are you automatically resistant? Does it make you excited? Does it make you hopeful? What type of futurist do you tend to be?

Because there are people who really focus on the hopeful futures, and there are people who really focus on the dystopian futures. I tend to lean towards hopeful with the awareness that not everything is going to be perfect, and so that shadow side of futurism, it's good to be aware of, the priority is on the hopeful because if you don't have optimism, what do you have? Yeah. So that's where it's like this.

I call the podcast a love letter to the future of work. Chances are work will suck in lots of ways in the future as well too. But what are the good parts and can we actually change it so that there's more good parts than bad parts? Anyways, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks. Find yourself in.