Contradicting [Jane McGonigal](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5585), Martin Seligman says that [we already spend plenty of time thinking about the future](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/sunday/why-the-future-is-always-on-your-mind.html?_r=0):
> We learn not by storing static records but by continually retouching memories and imagining future possibilities. Our brain sees the world not by processing every pixel in a scene but by focusing on the unexpected…
> Even when you’re relaxing, your brain is continually recombining information to imagine the future, a process that researchers were surprised to discover when they scanned the brains of people doing specific tasks like mental arithmetic. Whenever there was a break in the task, there were sudden shifts to activity in the brain’s “default” circuit, which is used to imagine the future or retouch the past.
Though there are limits:
> Less than 1 percent of their thoughts involved death, and even those were typically about other people’s deaths.
I’m surprised this was found to be mostly a positive phenomenon given the stress it causes, but the absence of prospection would cause much bigger problems. Makes sense that this is baked into our natures.
> “What is it now what you’ve got to give? What is it
that you’ve learned, what you’re able to do?”
> “I can think. I can wait. I can fast.”
> “That’s everything?”
> “I believe, that’s everything!” – Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Ahmet Ertegun – arguably for a long time the greatest record executive of them all – told me that unless you’re 100% sure the artist is wrong, go with their vision. – Jason Flom
True for designers as well, in my experience.
[Some fascinating techniques](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/may/06/eliud-kipchoge-misses-out-on-sub-two-hour-marathon-by-2-seconds):
> At the start the three athletes were immediately joined by six pacers, who adopted an arrowhead formation behind a Tesla electric car with a giant clock timer on it. Wind tunnel studies show that this formation would help them as it saves energy…
> Kipchoge was also using a new carbohydrate-rich sports drink, delivered by helpers on mopeds so he did not have to slow down…
> Then there was the use of Nike’s Zoom Vaporfly Elite shoes, which some have suggested should be illegal because they contain a special curved plate that allows runners to roll through instead of bending toes and losing energy.
Because any other way of evolving humans isn’t fast enough:
> Genetics is just too slow, that’s the problem. For a human to become an adult takes twenty years. We just don’t have that amount of time. –
[Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future – Wait But Why](http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html)
Great set of resources for running a sprint: Design Sprint Kit.
This is the highly, highly distilled and refined version of what designers at Google (especially [Knapp, Kowitz, and Zeratsky](http://www.thesprintbook.com)) have been developing for years.
By thinking differently than humans do:
> Our machines now are letting us see that even if the rules the universe plays by are not all that much more complicated than Go’s, the interplay of everything all at once makes the place more contingent than Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, or even some Chaos theorists thought. It only looked orderly because our instruments were gross, because our conception of knowledge imposes order by simplifying matters until we find it, and because our needs were satisfied with approximations…
> The nature of the world is closer to the way our network of computers and sensors represent it than how the human mind perceives it. Now that machines are acting independently, we are losing the illusion that the world just happens to be simple enough for us wee creatures to comprehend.
Jane McGonigal on why and how to think about the future:
Some people regularly connect with their future selves, but a majority does not. And this matters, beyond the links between future thinking and greater self-control and pro-social behavior. Thinking about the five-, 10-, and 30-year future is essential to being an engaged citizen and creative problem-solver…
Make a list of things that you’re interested in—things like food, travel, cars, the city you live in, shoes, dogs, music, real estate. Then, at least once a week, do a google search for “the future of” one of the things on your list.
[Or, how to unlearn your first-world problems](https://www.fastcompany.com/40403574/i-spent-a-month-living-with-an-amazonian-tribe-at-23-and-it-changed-my-career-forever):
* You learn to ignore the mosquitoes. And hunger. And all the other stuff too.
* Everyone depends on everyone else
* Lack of distraction leads to deeper thinking
* Everything else seems easier afterward
Millions of people are unable to work because of a disability, but [that has as much to do with the changing nature of work as with the disabilities themselves](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/transcript):
> When I said things like, what about a job where you don’t have to lift people, or a job where you don’t have to use your shoulder or where you don’t have to stand all night long, or just simply, have you thought about other jobs that you could do, people gave me such bewildered looks. It was as if I was asking well, how come you didn’t consider becoming an astronaut…
> Being poorly educated in a rotten place, that in and of itself has become a disability. This is a new reality. This gap between workers who are fit for the US economy and millions of workers who are increasingly not. And it’s a change that’s spreading to towns and cities that have thrived in the American economy.
It’s sadly ironic that while tech workers are proud about [the health benefits of their new standing desks](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-b-trafecanty/the-benefits-and-consider_b_9996782.html), people with real health issues can’t get jobs that allow them to sit.