
What were you thinking just before you started reading this text?

Chances are you were thinking about the future. According to a psychological study from the 

, we are three times more likely to think about the future than about the past. When we allow our thoughts to wander, they tend to land on things that are to come – things we plan to do, things we dream or worry about. The study also shows that the more contact we have with our future selves, the better we are at making decisions that are beneficial in the long term, for us as individuals and for our society at large. Foresighted people simply make better decisions than those who don’t spend much thought on the future. And here comes the good news – the ability to foresight is something that can be trained!

Improving your foresight skills can help you make better decisions

We often think of time as linear - a past, a present and a future. In fact, it doesn't look like that. There are many possible futures – in plural. Which future you will find yourself in depends on a range of things – from larger societal trends to smaller everyday decisions that you make. Things you can, or can't, influence.

Ten years is a good timeframe for thinking about the future. It is far enough away for major changes to happen, and close enough to place yourself in that future.

3. Practice detecting weak signals in your surroundings. 

Weak signals are minor trends that in the long run can create major changes in society. For example, a weak signal in 2007 was if you met someone with an iPhone. It was hard to imagine back then what behavioural changes it would lead to!

Start imagining yourself in unimaginable future scenarios, where something that is obvious today looks completely different. What if...everyone at work is over 70? Or my city is overcrowded with climate refugees? Or I have replaced my partner with an AI? What would a typical day look like? What would you eat for breakfast? What would you do? Just thinking about this for a few minutes will stretch your brain and train your foresight.

Here's what you can do to train your foresight skills:

By practising imagining the future and what different scenarios might look like, you can train your foresight ability. The better you become at imagining future scenarios, the better you will be at making decisions. 

Strategic foresight and speculative design are tools that help us prepare for various possible future scenarios at an organisational and societal level. By using strategic foresight in strategy work, or in decision-making processes, your organisation will be better prepared to face different futures.

By building a future prototype, an artefact from an imagined future, you can facilitate a dialogue with customers, users and employees about what future you together wish for and how you will get there.

The future is not something that just happens – it’s something that we are all involved in creating!

Applying strategic foresight and speculative design in your organisation

*The images in this article are AI-generated by the EGGS team in the tool Midjourney as part of the 

 funded project Mobility of the Future, together with Lidingö Municipality and Pamp

How to improve your future foresight skills