Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future

As digital devices pervade our lives, it becomes easier to solve the so-called problem of human complexity by force-fitting a predetermined model onto human life.

absolute certainty about all aspects of life would be tyranny. So, at a time in our history where we have huge decisions to make—about the climate, about technology, capitalism, democracy—we need our freedom, of thought and action, more than ever. In an age of uncertainty, we have to ask ourselves what we need to be, and what we need to do—and to c

Accepting that the future is unknowable is where action begins. Experiments are ideal for complex environments because they yield clues about where you are; they are the best thing to do when you can’t see where to start.

Many of the most inspiring people and stories start with uncertainty, are saturated with doubt, yet arrive triumphant at places in life they could not see when they set out. Their successes are deeply human, derived from curiosity, imagination, and not a little bravery. They were prepared to navigate the unknown in pursuit of the ill-defined becaus

Overwhelmed by complexity, we seek simplification and too quickly reach for binary perspectives, just at the moment when we need broader ones.

This is known as the automation paradox: the skills you automate, you lose. So the more we depend on machines to think for us, the less good we become at thinking for ourselves. The fewer decisions we make, the less good we become at making them. We risk falling into a trap: more need for certainty, more dependency on technology, less skill, more n

We can imagine what we’ve never seen before—if we practice.

Both kinds of optimism alert individuals to fresh opportunities and to the resources needed to pursue goals. Where pessimists may avoid problems, optimists cope and solve. They are specially productive because optimists are more likely to reach out for help, to collaborate and trust others. That gives them more capacity and resilience than they cou

We have come to expect the future to be minutely and perfectly predictable. And then it rains after all, the train’s late, traffic is held up by a crash, the neighborhood is noisy, the job hateful, and the election doesn’t go our way. Trump. Brexit. The end of history. The fall of idols. A new virus. Booms and busts and out of the blue, #MeToo. The