by Last night’s Seminar class was on Personal Futures – essentially how to use futures studies to plan your life. Our guest was UH Futures Graduate Verne Wheelright who’s been doing the heavy lifting in this space for the last decade from Personal Futures Network. He came out with a terrific book on the subject last year: It’s Your Future…Make it a Good One! He also has an accompanying workbook that provides exercises and activities to help you think through your future.
He has adapted strategic planning to the personal level. You do some personal assessment of strengths and weaknesses and then look at trends and potential changes in your external environment. He added in a personal scenario planning activity to bring more of a futures perspective than one gets with traditional strategic planning. So, you create your baseline scenario, where you appear to be heading if present trends continue. And then you look at potential alternatives to that. This leads you to the stage of creating a personal vision– where you want to be in the future. Finally, you craft a plan for achieving that vision.
I worked through an earlier version of this process when I was in the Futures Program in the late 1980s, run by the late Bill Wegman called “Work-Life Planning.” It was probably the single most useful course I ever took. I roughed out a plan that pretty much guided the general direction of my life right up to the present! Amazing. And you don’t have to be a futurist to go through this – visit Verne’s site, read his book, download his workbook and take charge of your future! Andy Hines
Thanks Andy! Very useful.