Personal log

Personal Reflection

I have a deep concern about people who make decisions that imply that they know what the future holds. We don't know what the future holds. People tend to think that the future will be similar to the immediate past. Frankly speaking, I don’t know or I can’t be 100% sure of what my future is up until this very second but I have a few scenarios on my head now. I can still recall vividly in last October; after two months I came here to pursue my study, someone asked me, “Can you see what is at the end of the tunnel? Can you see the light?” Suddenly, my heart stopped beating. I tried to gasp helplessly and reluctantly I answered “No”. He was actually asking me do I know what my future is going to be like.

The world is highly unpredictable and our expectations can frequently be proved wrong. Thus, even if we have made the prediction of the future of what is going to happen in this world, there is a high chance that things are not happening like what we have predicted. There is an old saying, “Those who think they know, don’t know; And those who think they don’t know, know” proves nowhere more true than in scenario thinking. I have come to understand that scenario thinking is what a futurist does but not only forecasting. It is more closely a planning tool. Scenario planning is constructing a few contrasting scenarios and to explore the uncertainty surrounding the future consequences of a decision.

When we were trying to construct scenarios for our group, I found that it is difficult to identify positives and it is hard to see what outcome of scenarios will be. I was too stuck in my own view and hard to imagine other worlds. I was always wondering, how realistic the scenarios are. We looked at our current situation and looked into past successes as well as failures and identify how the scenario changes and what’s driving the change. I have to identify the relationship between my own values and beliefs and how the world is changing. We have to adapt a more open attitude to external influences and be aware of important factors influencing the future.

After we have identified all the driving forces from five different perspectives which are economical, technological, societal, political and environmental, we tried to connect them together. There comes in system mapping. The system map is very messy because there are too many driving forces and relationships for the whole system. Basically, in the end we found out that almost all the driving forces are connected and related. And I always keep in mind that “messy is good”. Apart from that, we identified the uncertainties and certainties and categorized the uncertainties of the scenarios and view at each quadrant where would we like to be. At each quadrant, we tried to think rationally and put aside our emotion. Thus, we have come up with our new developed scenarios.

Besides just giving descriptions of possible futures and providing a picture of the future, confronting the future have a tendency of leaving me energized, and enthusiastic about facing the future. It requires creativity, imagination and sensitivity for and reflection on trends, development and needs in the near future.

I believe a good scenario planning is about challenging the mind maps that people use. In this way scenario writing is an instrument to facilitate learning and the resulting scenarios are not goals in themselves but they are a learning process. So, if I will be asked the same question again about my future now, I will be able to answer it with full confidence. I will tell him, I cannot know the future perfectly, but I can imagine the future and make plans for it by making some assumptions or judgments about what the future could be like. Some of the assumptions I make are pretty likely to come true; others are more vulnerable to uncontrollable and unforeseen events. It will be ridiculous if everything I predict comes true as even a fortune teller will not be able to do so.