‘Learning to predict the future has an even more predictable side effect: you will become more curious, observant, and understanding of the world around you.’*

‘Competence is the enemy of change.’**

The small group had come together to explore mindful doodling, the text for doodling to being: “We find ourselves in the familiar and the new.”

Humans are a future-orientated species.

Each day brings the familiar but we know this alone is not enough for us to grow and develop.  We also need the new or different.

The next U.Lab question to ponder is: ‘While participating in U.Lab, what seed of the future (intention) did you become aware of?’^

Four things come to mind about the future:

We’ll move from competence to incompetence insomuch as we’ll increasingly pursue our curiosities and passions out of the familiar and into the new and unknown.

We’ll become more engaged in what we do, not only with our minds but also with our hearts.

We’ll more accurately understand our flaws and weaknesses – not excusing ourselves but using our knowledge to grow – not an extension of human ability through technology but through honour and nobility and enlightenment:

‘Humankind has first to accept its own weakness and propensity to make a mess of things; if people really take to heart the fault lines in themselves, the perfect machine will seem less a commanding remedy; indeed, we will actively seek a remedy to it.’

We’ll move from the ego to the eco: despite the disconnections we’ve witnessed in 2016, we will embrace connection and see the forming of esemplastic communities embodying imagination, collaboration, and invention.

If we like the look of this such a future will only exist if we make it.

(*From Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)
(**From Seth Godin’s Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?)
(^From U.Lab Portobello. Check out this earlier post to find out a little more about U.Lab and Theory U.)