What Does It Look Like to Live From the Future?

“We need to start imagining the future or it will get imagined for us and the ways that it has been imagined thus far don’t seem very attractive.”

— Mohsin Hamid —

I started listening to podcasts instead of music while at the gym a couple of weeks ago. It’s been a game changer.

No longer do I crank the volume, blasting music through my Airpods to drown out the awful music at the gym. I know that’s judgy, okay? But you need to trust me on this. No one needs that before 5 am or really any time of the day.

So, instead of being irritated with the obnoxious music (again I know it’s judgy but it makes me crazy and I have to tell someone about it and right now that’s you Dear Reader) and damaging my delicate ears a little more every day, I now get lost in insightful conversations. And it’s like there is no music at the gym.

So. Cool. Wish I’d discovered it a long time ago. But very grateful that I have discovered it now. Moving on . . .

The soundtrack of today’s workout was another episode of We Can Do Hard Things because it inspires me and helps me go home and do actual hard things throughout the day. I also feel like Glennon Doyle is my soul sister. But that’s another story.

The episode featured former professional basketball player Sue Bird and her partner professional football player (or soccer if you’re American but it’s really football — just sayin’) Megan Rapinoe.

The episode ended with a conversation about women in sports and inequality in general and just how frustrating it can be to live in a world that seems all kinds of messed up. Articulating this frustration, Rapinoe said:

sometimes I’m just like, ‘I hate everyone for everything that you do to all of us.’ It’s so frustrating. It’s so frustrating.

After articulating some of the challenges she faces as a female athlete, Rapinoe talked about living from the future:

We always talk about living in the future and just telling people, ‘It’s going to be okay, you guys aren’t going to die. Come with us. Everything is going to be okay.’ But we do know how to live in the future.

I interpreted this to mean living from a future in which all humans are not just considered equal but treated equally on all fronts and in all parts of the world got me thinking about what how much more quickly we could create a different world if we lived from the future now.

So when I got home I sat down with my coffee and did a little Googling. I found an article by Vijay Govindarajan on innovation and how we can cultivate more of it in the Harvard Business Review which I think could provide a useful framework for creating the future while living in the present.

One of the challenges to cultivating innovation is that as humans our brains tend to be in three planes of time simultaneously. Often that means we’re lamenting the past, navigating the present and worried about the future. Govindarajan argues that:

What’s missing from the managerial toolkit is a way for managers to allocate their — and their organization’s — time and attention and resources on a day-to-day basis across the competing demands of managing today’s requirements and tomorrow’s possibilities. But as anyone who has ever tried to lead innovation knows, the challenge goes beyond being ambidextrous enough to manage today’s business while creating tomorrow’s. There is a third, and even more intractable, problem: letting go of yesterday’s values and beliefs that keep the company stuck in the past.

To create the future we want to live in, we must build it each and every day. Getting there requires setting aside the beliefs, assumptions and practices that are preventing us from realizing opportunities for creating the future we want, according to Govindarajan.

To address this challenge he created what he calls the Three Box Solution. The three boxes are: Forgetting the past, Managing the present and creating the future. Govindarajan in balancing the activities and behaviours needed for each box, an organization will be creating the future incrementally. As he says:

Simply put, the future is shaped by what you do, and don’t do, today.

In order to create the future, we need to imagine what it’s going to be like first. If it’s a world in which all humans are equal and well, living abundant lives surrounded by flourishing ecosystems, then we need to start living from that future today. That means adopting the values, beliefs, assumptions and actions that would be needed not just to get there, but to stay there.

So assuming we live in a world in which inequality is the norm isn’t helpful. That doesn’t mean we don’t challenge inequality and injustices in the world we see around us today because part of this framework is managing the present. But we also need to spend a large part of our time thinking from the future so that we won’t keep re-creating the injustices of the present.

So it’s kind of like living in two places at once. We’re here and we’re going there.

So for me it might look like: Okay right now I’m working on supporting those on the frontlines of climate change in the global South. The current, highly dysfunctional system, built on colonialism and capitalism, has allowed climate change to happen.

To create a new world in which there is no one on the frontlines of climate change (and I know this sounds crazy but I’m taking a moonshot, okay?) we need a whole new system underpinned by values like well-being and our inherent connection to one another and to nature. Abundance in this new world is defined by how happy and well we are, how much we love and are loved, how healthy ecosystems around us are, and so on.

So our values become love, kindness, happiness and joy, connection, taking care of one another and so on. And in order to create that future, we need to assume those values today.

We need to embody the belief that we are all connected. We need to hold the belief that all humans are equal and assume that they are treated that way — and that needs to carry through to every aspect of our lives, and the processes, legal frameworks that guide our day to day.

We need to not just recognize our inherent connection to one another and to the natural world but to operationalize it. That means taking care of each other and the ecosystems around us. We need to live more joyful and happy lives today so that we can have a more abundant tomorrow.

These are just some things I’m pondering as I think about how to create the kind of world I want to live in. Now I must get on with my day and the doing of hard things!

For more on my work on global climate policy find me here. For more on my work with young climate leaders find me here.

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