Several Futures

The people who look most certain right now might be the least prepared. Nate Hagens isn't one of them.

Nate has spent years thinking deeply about energy, climate, and how futures actually unfold. His podcast 'The Great Simplification' is well worth checking out.

His question: how do we think about the future when many plausible futures are possible?

Nate's current focus is scenario thinking - it's how he keeps moving when information is overwhelming. Not as a nice-to-have, but as essential practice.

He describes this as needing to move from trying to be right - making a prediction or forecast - to being prepared for several futures. And then contributing to whichever one occurs.

A scenario isn't a prediction. It's a coherent mini-world - a set of conditions that hangs together well enough to ask questions of it. More outcomes, more variables, squishy stuff in the middle.

What makes this hard is that humans tend toward overconfidence.

Our nervous systems want resolution.
Our careers and identities attach to particular outcomes.
And culture rewards confident stories over honest uncertainty.

Scenario thinking has to be deliberate - it doesn't come naturally.

I wonder how many people are holding a forecast they're afraid to let go of.

PS: Scenarios are at the heart of what we build at Wavetable. If you want to explore - give us a holler.