Design Your Life With Futures Thinking

Design your preferred future using futures thinking methods and build your 10 year personal strategic plan.

What you'll learn

The course will teach you to anticipate and prepare for different possible futures.

Individuals will learn to use futures methods at a personal or individual level.

Individuals can learn futures methods on a small scale, in their personal lives, and then apply that knowledge at any level. Scalability works.

Create a vision, strategies, and a plan for the long-term future.

Explore the future with scenarios.

Understand the present and the forces that are now at work.

Gain in self-confidence, a sense of power over your life.

Every individual and family should benefit from understanding how to explore the future and anticipate events that have a high probability of occurring.

You or any learner can create a valid, usable long-term strategic plan for yourself and your family.

Gain a long-term perspective.

The power of the long-term perspective is a critical attribute of visionary leaders—a critical component of leadership in all its forms.

Become a great parent who sees the future potential of their children.

Identify a vision, a destination in the future, then lead the way to that destination.

Develop worthwhile and achievable goals with strategies to achieve them.

Requirements

No particular requirements - the course is designed to be accessible.

Description

You would not get in your car and drive down the motorway at 100Km per hour without looking up and ahead to see what is coming.  Yet many of us do that with our lives and our businesses.  We need to look up to avoid a crash that we could have avoided if we exercised a bit of foresight!  Foresight is the ability  to see what is likely to happen in the future and to take appropriate action.Knowing how to think about the future is becoming increasingly urgent as the pace of change increases.  We all know that the pace of change today is fast, driven by such drivers of change as technology, climate change, globalisation, demographics and geo-politics.  In the past more people lived in the community they grew up in and followed the life of their parents.  Not so today.  In this present time we are overwhelmed with the options available to us.  We can choose to live almost anywhere in the world.  We can even build careers in fields that did not exist when we entered school!  Using the internet you can have instant access to whatever you want - things to buy, a new job, government agencies, experts in particular fields, courses and potential customers all over the world.  Yes the internet has connect us dear reader!  The possibilities are endless but how do we plan for and make sense of the "Future"?  That is what this course is all about, primarily from a personal perspective.    To make good decisions today about our careers, finances, families and general planning we need to understand how the world is changing, what we can expect in the future and very importantly how we want our lives to be in the future (our preferred future).   The techniques in this course are practiced by companies, government agencies, "think tanks" and professional futurists around the world to anticipate the future and we can use them too to better plan our lives.  There are three main components to the course:1.   Understand where you are in your life at present.2.  Step two is an exploration of the future using the scenario method. 3.  Step three is basic strategic planning, but with a strong emphasis on the long-term perspective and the vision of the future."What will I do with the rest of my one wild and precious life?"Mary Oliver, A Summer's DayIf we are thinking long term rather than short term, we can be much more productive, and the eventual results of our efforts can be extraordinary.   By the end of the course you will have decided what your preferred future is in 10 years time and will have developed strategies and a plan of action to bring your preferred future about.When you are clear on you preferred future you are well on your way to making that future a reality.Enjoy the course!Thomas Carroll, PhD

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction to the course

Lecture 2 Introduce yourself to other course participants

Lecture 3 What is futures thinking?

Lecture 4 Why do we need futures thinking more than ever today?

Lecture 5 What are the benefits of futures thinking?

Lecture 6 What are the challenges of futures thinking?

Lecture 7 Practice - Reflect on the possibility of a longer life

Lecture 8 Summary of section one

Section 2: Understanding your life from past to present

Lecture 9 Introduction to section two

Lecture 10 Learn from the past to anticipate the future

Lecture 11 Practice - Travel to 10 years in your past

Lecture 12 Stakeholders in your life

Lecture 13 The 10 Stages of Life

Lecture 14 Trends and forces of change in our personal lives

Lecture 15 Practical - Personal Trend Lines

Lecture 16 Events that will impact your personal life

Lecture 17 Trends and forces at the macro level and horizon scanning

Lecture 18 Understand your personal beliefs, values and assumptions

Lecture 19 SWOT analysis

Lecture 20 The Futures Wheel

Lecture 21 Summary of section two

Section 3: Exploring Multiple Plausible Futures

Lecture 22 Introduction to section three

Lecture 23 Exploring alternate futures with the futures cone

Lecture 24 Using scenarios to explore the future

Lecture 25 Build Scenario one - more of the same, probable future

Lecture 26 Exploring the forces driving the other scenarios

Lecture 27 Practical - What's the story?

Lecture 28 Summary of section three

Section 4: Create the future that you want for yourself

Lecture 29 Introduction to section four

Lecture 30 Creating a personal strategic plan

Lecture 31 Step 1 - Create a vision of your preferred future

Lecture 32 Step 2 - Strategies to achieve your vision

Lecture 33 Step 3 - Create an action plan from your strategies

Lecture 34 Backcasting for new insights

Lecture 35 Vulnerability analysis

Lecture 36 Gap Analysis

Lecture 37 Step 4 - Contingency planning

Lecture 38 Summary of section four

Section 5: Course conclusion

Lecture 39 Introduction to section five

Lecture 40 Living your plan

Lecture 41 Practical - a letter from the future

Lecture 42 Resources and sources of further information

Lecture 43 Congratulations

Lecture 44 Bonus lecture

For individuals and families: Every individual and family should benefit from understanding how to explore the future.,Entrepreneurs and small businesses: Small businesses can benefit greatly from developing a long-term perspective and applying futures methods to develop scenarios, vision, strategies, and plans.,Every individual and every entity can benefit from exploring and understanding the methods that professional futurists practice.