Futures Thinking
A Modern Approach to the Future
Feb 19, 2025
đź‘‹ Hello friends,
Thank you for joining this week's edition of Brainwaves. I'm Drew Jackson, and today we're exploring:
Futures Thinking: A Modern Approach to the Future
Key Question: How should we think about and approach the future?
Thesis: The following series, comprising discussions on the 12 core tenets of Futures Thinking and much more, will craft a narrative to answer this question and many others, and might even change your life along the way.
Credit Country Living Magazine
Before we begin: Brainwaves arrives in your inbox every other Wednesday, exploring venture capital, economics, space, energy, intellectual property, philosophy, and beyond. I write as a curious explorer rather than an expert, and I value your insights and perspectives on each subject.
Time to Read: 10 minutes.
Let’s dive in!
For better or worse, the past, present, and future govern our lives.
Entire continents of libraries (whether digital or physical) are full of historical volumes—teaching us about a world that once was.
Most of the world’s major religions focus on getting you to believe their canon—full of documentation of “historical” events.
Since the advent of the internet, a larger portion of the literature produced today describes the present: current events, investigative journalism, TikTok trends, day-in-the-life vlogs, etc.
In addition, everyone, whether you like it or not, only ever lives in the present moment (what some would call the “ever-present moment”).
The past and especially the present are extensively studied, documented, analyzed, and majorly thought to be understood (arguments could be made for the validity of this understanding but that’s a separate article).
Yet, throughout the world, the future is often sidelined or neglected—especially in a literary sense (this isn’t to say it is this way everywhere for everyone, it’s simply an argument that, for most people, over the course of their lives, the future isn’t read (or thought) about as much as the past or the present).
This trend makes sense. It’s harder to write authoritatively about the future, academics have less legitimacy, it’s harder to prove future-oriented claims, and there exists a cultural bias toward documenting rather than speculating.
It’s my goal to turn this trend on its head.
The future is present in our lives in many forms, many of which are not actively marketed as having a focus on the future. Here’s a short list I could come up with: New Year’s resolutions, career trajectories, gambling, election outcomes, retirement & 401(k)s, family planning efforts, food storage, weather apps, bucket lists, the whole insurance industry, retail stores setting out Christmas decor Nov 1st, crop rotation techniques, vehicle maintenance plans, research projects, almost all investments, and much more.
The future becomes the present and the present becomes the past.
To rephrase, the future forms the present, and the present forms the past. Unfortunately, the flow of time doesn’t work any other way (yet).
So, if our future is actively shaping our lives (through the projection of the future onto the present and the past), shouldn’t we spend more time, resources, and energy trying to understand it?
Humans have spent countless time, resources, and energy trying to understand the future and will continue to do so. However, their efforts thus far have been… well, you’ll see.
Contrary to what you may have inferred from the prior statement, my goal is not to spend more time, resources, and energy trying to understand the future in a literal sense—a bad example here would be that I am not trying to develop a time machine or a better weather app.
My mission is instead to take a step back and reconsider the problem behind the problem: how humans approach the future. Instead of trying to understand the future itself, I’m trying to understand how we go about understanding the future—if you missed the minute difference there, go back and read that again.
To emphasize, I hope to rethink how humans think about the future.
How We Think About The Future
Everyone thinks about the future differently.
For instance, in some parts of Eastern thought, the future can be thought about quite differently from how the West views it. In their view, the present moment contains every possible scenario or outcome of what the future may hold. In other words, the future is found right here in the present moment.
Transitioning to Africa, we see many different philosophies and approaches to the future.
For example, in many traditional Akan philosophical frameworks (think Ghana and the Ivory Coast), time and the future are often conceptualized through the symbol of the Sankofa bird. This bird is symbolic, looking backward while it moves forward. For many, this represents the belief that the future is understood through deep reflection on the past and that wisdom for tomorrow is found by examining yesterday’s experiences.
Among various Bantu-speaking peoples across central and southern Africa, time is often understood as a spiral rather than a linear progression. The future emerges from cycles that echo but don’t exactly repeat past patterns. This creates a view where future possibilities are shaped by recurring rhythms while still allowing for unique developments.
Throughout all of these diverse perspectives on the future and many more, some underlying messages and methodologies can be sifted out, creating the backbone for the subject I call Futures Thinking.
The concept of Futures Thinking is similar to an onion; there are many layers present that combine to form how humans historically have thought about the future and showcase the current trends of changing and addressing how we should think about the future in the future.
To rephrase, Futures Thinking has many subtopics and subsegments, each of which are critical to understanding how we should be thinking about the future, slowly building, complementing, and sometimes even competing with each other.
This series will take months, if not years, to complete—it’s a monstrous task that will touch on and encapsulate many portions of our everyday lives.
To best prepare for, guide, and form the base layer for our discussions going forward, I posit the following 12 Core Tenets of Futures Thinking:
- The future is shaped by interdependent systems rather than isolated factors
- In complex systems, small changes can cascade into disproportionate and often unforeseeable outcomes
- The world progresses exponentially rather than linearly
- The future is majorly—if not entirely—uncertain
- Human prediction is often flawed due to biases, complexity, and blind spots
- Given the limits of prediction, cultivating optionality and adaptability often proves more valuable than pursuing precise forecasts
- Diverse perspectives expand our capacity to envision alternative futures, reducing blind spots and enhancing creativity
- The most dangerous risks are those we think we’ve fully understood and controlled
- Time exposes fragility; resilient ideas and systems that endure warrant close attention
- Systems should be built to thrive and evolve amid disorder, not just withstand it
- A deep awareness of the present is key to discerning past patterns and envisioning future possibilities. The stories we tell about the future significantly shape the decisions we make today.
- The indirect, long-term consequences of actions, shaped by feedback loops, often outweigh immediate effects and are harder to foresee
I’ve spent weeks building and refining each of the above tenets, cultivating the ideal approach to Futures Thinking. I would encourage you to take some time and go back through and read each one again, simply to see if that tenet has applied to you or if you’ve seen an example of that in the real world. Odds are, many of these have probably impacted you directly—whether you know it or not.
Approaching the Future Differently
The goal of Futures Thinking is ambitious:
To get the full benefit of Futures Thinking, we need to go further and rethink our approach to everything. Mingyur Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhism teacher states, “When we take the time to look at the way we see things, the way we see things changes.”
Rethinking how we think is ambiguous.
In order to rethink how you think, we first need to understand how you think, or else how can we rethink (or think differently than we originally thought)?
To quote Nassim Taleb in The Black Swan, “You cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where it stops, and the costs of using it.”
To be incredibly transparent, I don’t fully know how the concept of Futures Thinking will change how you or I approach the future.
Throughout this series, I’m going to make some assumptions about how you and I think about the world (Core Tenets #5, #6, #7, #8, and #11). I’ll be generally making these assumptions in aggregate, or by averaging across everyone in the world—you may find yourself to be a rare, but valuable exception.
In addition, I’ll also make some assumptions about how our world is set up and how humans tend to react to it (Core Tenets #1, #2, #3, #4, #9, and #12). These assumptions have majorly been proven through research or through anecdotal evidence, and should therefore (hopefully) be less controversial and subject to person-to-person fluctuations.
It is my vision that once these core tenets have been properly established, we can venture into the “what now?” land (Core Tenet #10).
When we are in the position of asking ourselves “What Now?” concerning Futures Thinking, I believe we (both the reader and myself) will be experiencing the following:
- We understand that the way we’ve been thinking about the future as humans throughout history has been flawed.
- We are aware the solution is to rethink how we think about the future. This comes in the form of Futures Thinking core tenets, diverse perspectives brought by rethinking your future, and awareness that you are now more uncertain about the future, your proactive approach to it, and your reactions to it—to rephrase, certainly uncertain.
What Now?
This is truly where the magic happens.
If you get to the point where you subscribe to the tenets of Futures Thinking (similar to how you would subscribe to the basic tenets of a philosophy, business, religion, etc.), how do we take these baseline strategies, these frameworks, this mindset, and apply it to our lives?
How Can Futures Thinking Benefit Me?
At this moment, at the beginning of the Futures Thinking voyage, I posit that there are a plausibly infinite number of potential applications for Futures Thinking.
Today is the day of making ambitious, lofty statements.
To put some necessary clarifications on the above statement, this is the beginning of a long journey. There’s an “end” in sight, but that end—I hope—will be different for each one of us.
I may be putting the cart before the horse, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this journey follows a similar trajectory to that of Christopher Columbus—in search of India but finding a New World.
There is the proverbial “India” that I have planned to sail to during this journey, however, along the way I may choose to take a detour or abandon my plans, instead seeking out a “New World”.
As it currently stands, there are 30+ parts planned for this series, each one building upon or complementing the last. In my mind, this sequence makes sense and follows a semi-logical ordering of thought, however, this is incredibly subject to change.
So, to answer the question probably on your mind right now:
Why Should I Be Investing My Time Into This?
I would bring up 2 complementary thoughts.
Firstly, in doing some of the background research and discovery for many of the proposed tenets and topics, already I have seen myself thinking about and approaching the world—and more importantly the future—slightly differently. Over the long course of this journey, I imagine this will exponentially build upon itself to form the “new” way I will think about the future—and the new way YOU will think about the future.
Secondly, if properly done, there’s a non-zero (meaning greater than zero) chance that this significantly changes your life. Again, an ambitious statement. From my perspective, as someone who has just turned 22, on average, I’ll probably live for another 50+ years. The majority of my life is still yet to come. For many of you, the majority (or at least a significant portion) of your life is yet to come. Given this, if someone came to me with this pitch, even if I didn’t entirely believe them, I would still hear them out.
Why?
The ramifications could be incredible.
My entire life could be vastly different than what it would have been (potentially for the good, potentially for the bad). What we choose to study in school, what career paths we pursue, what people we surround ourselves with, what religious or spiritual topics we choose to believe, what we work on outside of work, what companies we start—most, if not all of the large decisions in our lives are all bets about the future.
So, if you, like me, believe that this framework could have a chance to significantly impact your future, give it a shot.
It might change your life.
To quote T. S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
That’s all for today. I’ll be back in your inbox on Saturday with The Saturday Morning Newsletter.
Thanks for reading,
Drew Jackson
Stay Connected
Website: brainwaves.me
Twitter: @brainwavesdotme
Email: brainwaves.me@gmail.com
Thank you for reading the Brainwaves newsletter. Please ask your friends, colleagues, and family members to sign up.
Brainwaves is a passion project educating everyone on critical topics that influence our future, key insights into the world today, and a glimpse into the past from a forward-looking lens.
To view previous editions of Brainwaves, go here.
Want to sponsor a post or advertise with us? Reach out to us via email.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my personal opinions and do not represent any current or former employers. This content is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Investments carry risks—please conduct thorough research and consult financial professionals before making investment decisions. Any sponsorships or endorsements are clearly disclosed and do not influence editorial content.
