Your Future Assumptions Are Wrong

Our brains’ features bias our ability to think of the future

What do you see in the cover picture? I bet you see a cat, though this creature has little in common with a furry pet. Nevertheless, you could recognize a cat in this clumsy drawing. Your brain saw familiar patterns — the cat’s whiskers and ears.

Our brains use patterns to recognize objects even when they see them for the first time. And this is very convenient because it saves precious energy.

But as it often happens in our world, patterns and heuristics both help us and prevent us from clear thinking. And when we need to think about the future, they bring negative effects only.

Future predictions

In 1950, Associated Press writer Dorothy Roe used what she called “scientific evidence” to?predict?that by the year 2000, all women would be six feet tall. “Her proportions will be perfect, though Amazonian because science will have perfected a balanced ration of vitamins, proteins, and minerals that will produce the maximum bodily efficiency, the minimum of fat,” she wrote.

Human history is full of such predictions. Some smart people even?believedthat electricity was a fad.

The future is unpredictable, and even people whose job is to build forecasts make mistakes. A big study conducted from 1992 to 2014?revealed?that professional analysts fail to predict most economic recessions. Igor Grossmann from Waterloo University and his colleagues undertook another?study.

They offered professional sociologists the opportunity to forecast changes in indicators such as life satisfaction, social media mood, political support, and gender or racial prejudices in the United States. Researchers provided them with historical data for 39 months.

Six months later, the sociologists were able to compare their predictions with actual data. The researchers also correlated the sociologists’ predictions with projections made by ordinary people. The study showed that the former couldn’t make much more accurate predictions than the latter.

Future thinking bias — patterns and heuristics

Humans are inferior future thinkers. First, evolution?didn’t take care of itbecause it wasn’t necessary for terms of survival. And second, the way we think about the future — using patterns and heuristics — almost eliminates all the chances to succeed.

When it comes to future thinking, patterns are some rules that we believe are rules or laws of nature.

A heuristic is, according to?Investopedia, “a mental shortcut commonly used to simplify problems and avoid cognitive overload. Heuristics are part of how the human brain evolved and is wired, allowing individuals to quickly reach reasonable conclusions or solutions to complex problems.”

How do we think about the future?

We use:

1. Facts
2. Patterns that we build on facts
3. Heuristics
4. Future assumptions

Let’s say you learn from several articles that AI has made some jobs redundant (facts).

As there are several such facts, and as the authors make gloomy projections about the future world overtaken by AI, you believe it is a?pattern.

As analyzing all the possible kinds of impacts AI will have on our lives would be too difficult, you use a?heuristic. You start to believe that AI will take on many of the jobs that people currently perform.

And you build?future assumptions?and base your strategic decisions on this ground.

It may look like an exaggeration when you’re reading these lines. But it is the way our brains work. Dorothy Roe, who predicted that women would be six feet tall, thought the same way. And so did the author of?The Times?publishedin 1894, who claimed that “in 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure”.

Another example

If the case above looks too unrealistic, let me show you a more real-life example.

Imagine you learn that some of your customers ask for a mobile application. That’s the?fact.

As there is more than one customer who mentioned it, and as you see that all the people around you use apps, you believe this is a?pattern.

You may make a?future assumption?that all your customers will prefer putting the orders through apps in the future. And there is a?heuristic?that helps you do it. You think that since many people do it now, that means everyone will be doing it in the future.

This is a genuine real-life example. One of my clients invested some time and money in an app after several of his customers asked him about it. But when the app was ready, he found out that only a few of them were happy about that.

Can this work well?

It can. You’ve heard about entrepreneurs who noticed insignificant changes and built empires on this knowledge. Jeff Bezos launched Amazon when not more than 5% of Americans had internet access. Elon Musk invested in Tesla when the idea of electric vehicles seemed quirky.

But you need to remember that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

These stories contain?facts, but?heuristics?make us believe they are?patterns. For every Bezos or Musk, there are hundreds of the ones who did the same way and failed.

How can we think about the future more efficiently?

There are several steps you may follow to improve your future thinking:

1. Collect more?facts. As saving energy is our brains’ one of the most important trait, we rarely do this job well. We react to facts that influence us emotionally (especially the ones that scare us) but lose sight of many others.

For instance, if you hear that AI eliminates many jobs find some facts about AI creating even more jobs.

2. Look for alternative?patterns.

Even if AI can replace many people at work, are there some alternative scenarios? For instance, can AI augment people instead of making them redundant? Could governments impose some limitations on using AI? Were there any similar examples in history?

3. Challenge your?assumptions.

We tend to think that today’s scenarios will develop linearly. But could they change their trajectory of unfolding in some way? For instance, is it possible that AI’s capabilities are overstated?

4. Devise a flexible?strategy.

Given that our ability to think about the future is so imperfect, what can we do if our strategy fails?

I develop?Stratelogic, the concept of strategy as a simple tool, intelligible to everyone without special training. Join our community of strategic thinkers by subscribing to my newsletter to get exclusive articles, video courses, free templates, discounts, and more via the?link.