Foresight is a handy skill to cultivate if you want to be successful. It refers to one’s ability to see patterns that will influence the future. High achieving businesses employ professionals with foresight to predict impending trends that will affect their organization. Along the same lines, everyday people with a knack for foresight can take a current situation, map out, and accurately predict future outcomes. Not to be confused as psychic powers, foreseeing is the ability to use your past experiences, memories, and knowledge to formulate a trajectory for scenarios to come.
Why does foresight matter?
Building your talents to foresee or “forecast” can give you a more precise picture of how current events will unfold over time. In turn, you can use such awareness to devise ways to influence outcomes and advert obstacles that might otherwise impede your success.
How can you cultivate foresight?
Foresight is a future-directed behavior that can become more accurate and effective with time and preparation.
Here are 6 easy ways to develop foresight in your professional and everyday life.
(1) Keep informed. Let past and present learnings be your guide into the future. Educate yourself on as many diverse subjects as possible by taking courses, reading books and articles, and researching online. Look for common patterns and themes as you immerse yourself in the pursuit of information.
(2) Watch and learn. Firsthand experience is one of the best ways to expand your knowledge base. Engage in a broad range of opportunities that will open you up to seeing new places, meeting all types of people, and creating everlasting memories.
(3) Restructure how you think. Being a forward thinker is a skill that may require you to readjust your mindset. If you are inclined to dwell on the past or live for the moment, shift your thoughts to include the hypothetical, the “what ifs” that bind your past and present to the future.
(4) Connect the dots. Despite life’s uncertainties, history has a way of repeating itself. Keep informed and use your knowledge base to determine how past patterns might apply to the evolution of current situations.
(5) Test yourself. To finetune your foresight, evaluate your abilities by starting out small with the low risk, quick response predictions. What trends do you foresee in such areas as the price of gasoline, cost of homes, stock market, value of gold, and more? As you become more proficient, increase the complexity of your choices and link them to outcomes that offer potential gains to you.
(6) Be strategic. Nothing is foolproof, so take precautions to influence outcomes with careful thought and planning. The patterns you foresee can be invaluable guidelines but not absolutes to a perfect ending. Use your foresight but do so with a critical eye.
What are the key pitfalls that can limit the accuracy of foresight?
- Having too little data, experience, or memories.
- Using data that is faulty, outdated, or misleading.
- Running into snags that arise from unanticipated disruptions such as natural disasters, pandemics, wars, and the like.
- Basing your patterns on what you want rather than what the evidence suggests.
- Being overly confident that you know more than you do.
Written by: Patricia K. Flanigan, Smart Strategies for Successful Living
Patricia K. Flanigan has worked in higher education for over 28 years. She holds a doctoral degree in Organizational Leadership from the University of La Verne as well as a M.A. in Latin American Studies and B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before retiring and moving to Idaho in 2015, she served as the dean of online education and learning resources at Saddleback College, a large community college in Southern California. She currently consults in higher education, volunteers for AARP, writes for a local magazine, and serves as an Affiliate Faculty member at Boise State University and on the Board for LEARN Idaho. Since February 2017, she has been the founding director for Smart Strategies for Successful Living, a community-based website designed to promote quality aging. As an educator, her focus is to inspire others to live and age well.