Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything?Even Things that Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Normalcy bias is a result of the brain’s preference for stable patterns.”
I have taken several courses by and read all the books of Jane McGonigal’s twin sister, Kelly. Even though I’d watched her TED talk, before this, I’d never read Jane McGonigal’s work and didn’t know anything about her work with Institute for the Future. When I saw this book, I thought it was remarkable and decided I wanted to learn more.
The premise of this book is about practicing ways to start imagining different potential futures. She introduces different ways to stretch your mind and many, many different scenarios of what possible futures could look like. They are far ahead enough to make most of these scenarios plausible (all are based on some type of fact or development from today) but not so far that you can’t connect to the timeframe.
“Nearly fifty years ago, psychology researchers discovered something remarkable: if you want someone to believe that a future event is likely, you just have to ask them to imagine it happening, in as much vivid detail as possible.”
She presents many different scenarios and then asks a lot of questions to help you imagine it. If this scenario were true, what would you do? There are many different areas where she encourages you to stretch your mind, your thinking and of course your imagination. Some scenarios resonated more with me than others, of course, but I found myself caught up in almost all of them. It didn’t take me long to visualize them and almost viscerally feel many of them.
“Collect and investigate “signals of change,” or real-life examples of how the world is becoming different. Let these signals spark your curiosity. Follow the trail of clues wherever it takes you.”
I loved this idea of collecting “signals of change” because it really enhances your ability and willingness to pay attention to the world. I love how she talks about the ways in which she challenges her students to come up with things that they think are absolute truths and then goes hunting for signs that those “facts” could in fact change.
This book will stretch your mind. Jane’s playful and really inspiring tone is hard not to get swept up in. It’s encouraging, motivating and a really mind-opening book to read.
with gratitude to edelweiss and Spiegel & GrauIngram for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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