Future perfect thinking, a method of planning, popularized by Dr. Karl Weick at the University of Texas, help you reach personal goals a lot faster. It also works amazingly well if you’re running a business.
Weick argues that using future perfect thinking makes it “easier to write a history that will generate the desired future outcome or goal. The future event is more sensible because one can visualize at least one specific set of the prior means required to produce the end result.”
Essentially, Dr. Weick believes future perfect thinking shows you at least one clear path to success. What’s even more interesting is that a lot of times after you go through Dr. Weick’s future perfect thinking exercise, you end up thinking of multiple paths to achieving your goal hours later. Future perfect thinking heightens your creativity.
Future perfect thinking starts with: “By the end of 2018 I will have become or will have accomplished…”
The magic in future perfect thinking is the scenario you put yourself in. What Dr. Weick typically does is he paints a future perfect scenario for his students relating to their goals.
For example, imagine it’s the first week of 2019. Your boss comes in and congratulates you on your group’s great performance last year (2018). They want to “hear your story” and make certain they have a list of all the accomplishments you had in the past year.
What would you include in your story? Use past tense when discussing 2018 accomplishments. Write down or dictate on your phone what you would say.
Dr. Weick’s students typically would start by saying, “At the end of Q1 2018, we had improved sales growth by 15% and were No. 2 in sales in the company.”
This is exactly what Dr. Weick wants to hear. Using the future perfect tense implies that the action has been completed or “perfected” at some point in the future. What this does is it creates a roadmap to success.
For example, “By the end of 2018, we will have… which means that by the end of Q3 2018, we will have…” These quarterly milestones can be further broken down into roles, responsibilities, policies and procedures to get to the future perfect state.
Using Future Perfect Thinking to Plan 2019
Now, as an example, let’s go through the steps to plan your New Year’s resolutions.
Step 1: Category
Choose a category for your resolution. Most people’s resolutions typically fall within health or wealth categories. For our sake, we’ll choose health, specifically weight loss.
Step 2: Future Perfect Thinking
Moving forward, apply future perfect thinking. Imagine the end of the year and think about things you know will be true, like, how old you will be or how old your children, spouse, grandchildren, etc. will be. If you live somewhere with predictable weather, imagine what the temperature will be.
After thinking about those predictable facts, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths to relax, and imagine this scenario:
You’re at a New Year’s party to ring in 2020, a friend you haven’t seen all year approaches you and says, “Wow, you look fantastic! You’ve lost weight, haven’t you? How’d you do it?” Write down or dictate on your phone in the past tense, as if it’s behind you, your journey.
Step 3: Success Story
Grab a pen and paper and write your success story. Don’t just write down the results. Think back over the entire year. Did you fall off the wagon? How did you recover? What tools turned out to be most helpful? Who supported you? How did you build the support you needed?
Step 4: SMART
Make your future SMART. Your goals that you set in Step 2, should follow the SMART criteria (specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused, and timebound). This will ensure you’re not setting yourself up for failure from the start.
Step 5: Reflect
Make time in your schedule to reflect. Even if it’s five minutes, you should reflect on your progress and any bumps along the way. Ask yourself these four questions:
What happened?
What did I think and/or how did I feel when it happened?
What did I learn?
What should I start, stop and keep doing to reach my future perfect?
Step 6: Progress
Be sure to measure your progress. This last step is easy to forget but make sure you chart your progress against your milestones. This way you’ll know if you’re on track to hitting your future perfect state or if you need to adjust course.
Follow these six steps and I promise you’ll transform your New Year’s resolutions. No more reusing last year’s goals with a new date. Granted, a plan B might not get you in the air faster, but having more options could help cut the time you’re delayed.