Becoming Better Predictors of the Future
Evaluating potential, taking risks, and making bets
We make bets every day. We bet on people, places, and opportunities. We bet on things we can tangibly perceive and nebulous ideas that haven’t yet taken form. Some bets are small, short-term, and nonconsequential. Others alter our course in irreversible ways. A bet is a chance we take on a potential outcome informed by a combination of information (data and facts) and intuition (feelings and instincts).
To understand how to make better bets, we need to know how to observe and evaluate potential.
Everything, from people to cities, holds inherent potential. Potential is the capacity for development and growth. For something to transform from one state to another. Potential bridges the gap between what is and what could be. What’s fascinating about potential is that it can’t be observed or evaluated purely based on information. Its nature is mystical in this way because its existence, expansion, and continuation depends on the evaluator’s belief and conviction about what’s possible (or probable).
We evaluate the potential for safety and make a bet every time we change lanes while driving. When we go on dates, we observe the potential of someone being a good match as a lover or partner. As customers, every time we consider purchasing a product, we evaluate its potential to solve our problem. When we travel, we shortlist and choose a destination based on its potential to align with what we hope to experience. Artists and storytellers believe in their concepts and characters and their potential to inspire and evoke audiences. As entrepreneurs, we evaluate the potential of solutions and make bets on how they might perform in the market.
This constant evaluation of potential happens daily in micro and macro ways, so much so that we don’t always recognize that we’re doing it.
Effectively evaluating potential requires four non-negotiable skills: astute observation, in-depth processing, integrative synthesizing, and strategic foresight. In addition to these skills, evaluation masters are often experienced and confident decision-makers who’ve learned to balance intuition and analysis. Effectively evaluating potential to make more accurate bets is a life skill worth cultivating for anyone in any domain. The culmination of this skill is what we call wisdom, which is essentially the imprint of lessons learned from making accurate and inaccurate bets. We grow wiser by learning to perceive, understand, and connect the dots to draw a line from here to there (or there to here).
We learn to trust ourselves to evaluate potential and make bets by repeatedly doing so and learning from the results. We also learn by observing others make similar bets. When we’re unsure of what to do or lack confidence in the bets we’re making, we’re likely missing key information or not fully aligned with our intuition. How many times have you heard someone say, “I knew that would happen,” frustrated by not listening to their intuition about a choice that went wrong? Conversely, we’re just as often surprised by bets that don’t pan out as we had expected or hoped.
Potential is complex and challenging because, while inherent in all things, it’s not limitless, and its probability is uncertain. Evaluation is also done mainly by humans, who can analyze data but whose perceptions are often clouded by feelings, attachments, and biases. These biases are passed onto machines, notably why the discussion around AI and self-driving cars has been polarizing. Making bets without properly evaluating potential—or doing so inaccurately—can have dire consequences. We don’t know what we don’t know. Yet, even when we do know, we sometimes choose to ignore it, seduced by hope, fear, or convenience.
We spend years building products that don’t resonate. We stay in relationships that are misaligned. We pursue careers that no longer inspire us. The cost of inaccurate bets is time, money, energy, well-being, and sometimes life itself. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that everything has the potential to exceed our expectations or fail spectacularly. We evaluate potential by determining where something falls on the spectrum—from remarkably aligned to less than ideal. Subconsciously, we each have a threshold below which we are unwilling to make a bet. We may use a different spectrum of potential for different categories of bets (e.g. relationships, jobs, etc.). Our thresholds determine how much risk we’re willing to take and how much time we’ll invest before we decide whether to make a bet.
If we’re starting to sound like algorithms, it’s because we are.
Every bet has a certain amount of risk attached to it. Making a bet is just as risky as not making one—action and inaction are inherently precarious. For many of us, our relationship with risk develops relatively non-consequentially during childhood and adolescence. We raise our hands in class to answer a question, kick the ball into the net with a few minutes left in the game, and talk back to an authoritative figure in an act of rebellion. Over time, we develop a risk threshold and understand the boundaries we can explore and experiment with. Without conscious examination and recalibration, how we learn to approach risk early on in life will inevitably carry over into adulthood, shaping how we navigate our work, relationships, and the things we build and create.
The level of risk we take when making bets is directly proportional to how much we trust ourselves to navigate its consequences. Our capacity to do so is shaped by our lived experience, identity, positionality, resources, and the level of support (emotional, physical, financial, etc.) we can access. Beyond confidence, trusting ourselves to make bets, big or small, is also informed by cultural and societal norms, systemic barriers, and our perception of what’s at stake.
We make bets every day, each carrying a level of risk. Our ability to measure that risk depends heavily on our capacity to evaluate the potential outcomes. Whether we make a bet is ultimately determined by how much we trust ourselves to navigate the consequences inherently tied to the risks we’re considering and how confident we are that the potential outcome will be in our favour.
We each operate from an internal algorithm, often unconscious, that drives our behaviours, decisions, and reactions. When we lack trust in our ability to make bets, we usually defer, dilute, diffuse, delegate, or project our choices—whether that’s another person, external circumstances, or even a higher power. But when we trust ourselves, we approach betting with intention and clarity. We consciously assess potential, weigh risks, and make decisions with a clear awareness of the possible outcomes.
Although we may not think of it this way, we are predicting the future every time we make a bet.
Predicting the future happens at the convergence of synthesis and imagination. It’s part art, part science, part mysticism. One way to make more accurate bets—any bet in life, work, or business—is to learn how to predict possible futures better. Futurecasting is commonly used in speculative design and strategic planning but rarely in day-to-day life. While it’s a great skill, we don’t always have the time to speculate and scenario map every micro decision—so we not only have to learn to be better predictors of the future, we must learn to do it effortlessly and quickly—the same way we drive a car.
When you drive a car, you’re rarely thinking about it—you’re just driving the car, and you make hundreds of micro-decisions on every trip. Still, if I asked you about all the bets you took in your 40-min commute, you wouldn’t remember them because they were largely automatic or intuitive. The irony is that driving a car is one of our most dangerous activities. Yet, we trust ourselves and each other (for the most part) to make those decisions without conscious thought. The consequences of inaccurate bets are fatal, but that doesn’t deter us from driving.
This audacity doesn’t seem to transfer to other, less consequential aspects of our lives. We make far riskier bets on the road than in our relationships and careers. We’ll get in a car and drive 120 km/hour across town alongside thousands of other drivers, where a single inaccurate decision could cost us our lives without a second thought. Yet, we’ll deliberate leaving a toxic job or marriage for years. I have several theories about why this happens: driving isn’t inherently emotional or tied to our identity. We’ve got a lot of practice driving. The range of potential outcomes is small, making driving bets relatively structured and predictable. There are rules everyone is expected to follow, which makes it feel safer. When driving, we’re usually clear on where we’re headed and often don’t have time to deliberate. We can learn a lot about our relationship with risk-taking based on how we approach driving.
On the spectrum of easy bets to complex bets, the more potential outcomes, the harder it is to make a bet. The higher the stakes, the harder it is to make a bet. The less clear we are about our desired outcome, the harder it is to make a bet. The less confident we are in our capacity to deal with the consequences of the risks we’re taking, the harder it is to make a bet. Paradoxically, the more time we have, the harder it is to make a bet.
To become better at making bets, we must narrow potential outcomes and reduce complexity by clarifying what we want, identifying lower-stakes options, focusing on what’s most likely to happen, and setting clear boundaries and constraints. The lower the stakes, the easier it is to make a bet. The more precise we are about our desired outcome, the more natural it feels to commit. The more confident we are in our ability to navigate the consequences of the risks we’re taking, the less daunting action becomes. And interestingly, the less time we have, the more decisive we tend to be—urgency has a way of forcing clarity and action.
Learning to be better at predicting the future requires us to hold a certain level of clarity while navigating uncertainty. To draw from our experiences and to be aware of how those experiences have shaped us. To observe and perceive the world around us through the lens of open curiosity and discerning wisdom. To acknowledge the interconnectedness of all things while practicing our agency and sovereignty. Our relationships, careers, the solutions we create, the art we produce, the stories we tell, and the lives we lead are shaped by the risks we’re willing and able to take. Each risk we take moves us closer to discovering who we are and who we can become.
Risk-taking is integral to our evolution because it drives growth and innovation. It’s also how we learn and understand our potential. Imagine if our ancestors hadn’t taken risks—from migration to creating new tools to inventing language—where would civilization be right now? When we don’t take risks and are afraid to make bets, we risk stagnation. Momentum, creativity, and transformation require a certain level of risk, and those with the courage (or privilege) to take them tend to define boundaries and inspire change. The best way to predict the future is to create it. The only way to create it is to take risks.