2012 International Year of Resilience – top 10 Tips
In thinking about the year ahead I’ve decided to call it the International Year of Resilience. With everything that appears to be going on in the world there’s unlikely to be any quick fixes and so I provide for you here below, my Top 10 Tips for building more resilience into your lives. If you want to follow and contribute to the Twitter conversation, please use the following tag #2102YearofResilience. Tip 1: Be Productive, not ‘busy’ – you can’t be both.
From what I can tell, busy people are RARELY productive. So stop doing all that stuff that makes no difference or even harms your productivity.
Tip 2: Understand that variations to your times-lines are likely. This tip reminds us that what we expect might need to change because things might take longer or happen quicker than what we anticipate
Tip 3: If you haven’t thought about a preferred and realistic future outcome, you have no right to complain when you don’t like what you end up with. Don’t think I need to explain that one further, though I know some people will complain all the same!
Tip 4: Planning is NOT execution. But without it you might bet better off NOT executing at all. So think and prepare is the key here because acting without thinking first might put you in a far deeper hole than you really want to be in!
Tip 5: Resilience means to have the ability to bounce back into shape. From what? From the ‘impact’ of unexpected outcomes and the occasional surprise. The more you’ve thought about potential outcomes, the better prepared you are likely to be and the less need for resilience.
Tip 6: Make sure your expectations are realistic – base them on a wide array of information. If your expectations are realistic you’ll rarely be disappointed but if not…
Tip 7: Your Future is a negotiation with yourself and with others. It will almost NEVER arrive in a smooth & straight line Remember that there are stops and starts and diversions is every part of your life – that’s what makes your life interesting!
Tip 8: It might be frustrating but it’s probably not really a disaster. This tip reminds us to take a breath remember tips two and seven, to then think about options and then act
Tip 9: Stuck? You can overcome your current challenges – It may need persistence and it might also require you to come up with a new plan. Your future is about options. People who lack resilience have often run out of options or (as is more likely) can’t think of alternatives. Tip 10 can help here too
Tip 10: Ask for help and then ALLOW people to help you in ways that they know how. One of the biggest hurdles we face is our belief that we have to do it alone. For others they ask for help but then insist their ‘helpers’ do things the way they want them done.
So there’s my quick tips for 2012 International year of Resilience. I’d love to find out your tips too so Twitter in at #rightfuture using the tag #2012YearofResilience
I’m heading to Singapore for a few days to facilitate a scenario planning workshop on behalf of the Asia Business Forum. There is something intimately exciting for a futurist to be going to arguably the most future focused of all countries and to spend just a brief time immersed there. There’s no doubt that great…
Read More >Greenwashing is a term used to define marketing actions by organisations, claiming to take an environmental approach to their products or services, when in fact, they are doing nothing or very little. Greenwashing is a form of marketing hype, and in turbulent times, many companies may be contemplating ‘sexing up’ their image by tapping into…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will be the key note speaker at the Australian Computer Society’s annual conference to be held in Adelaide on July 30 at the Adelaide Convention Centre With the theme ‘Survive and Thrive’ Marcus will discuss the likely issues of the near term future and why right now, organisations do not have…
Read More >The next Advanced Strategic Planning one-day workshop being run by The Australian Strategic Planning Institute will take place at Rydges in Adelaide on the 13th of July and bookings are now open The TASPI workshops are jam packed with ideas and processes to ensure that your operational, business and strategic planning efforts deliver the…
Read More >Hands up if you remember the dot com bubble? Or how about the Y2K bubble? Housing bubble? ‘Bubbles’ as they apply to all things economic are little more than an oversupply of positive confidence in a particular area of economic concern. In fact ‘Bubbles’ are caused by the SAME things as ‘Recessions’ just at opposite…
Read More >Just a handful of places are left for The Australian Strategic Planning Institute’s one day Advanced Strategic Planning workshop at Karsten’s in Melbourne on the 26th of May. Please note that there are no places available for the June workshops in both Brisbane or Sydney, and the Adelaide workshop in July is half filled though…
Read More >Richard Pratt has succumbed to a battle with prostate cancer and there’s no doubt that many words will be written on paper destined to end up as recycle materials at his VISY Industries plants. There’s a harmony in that thought – all those words of type and paper discussing Richard Pratt will be recycling through…
Read More >Thousands of Australians are just receiving or are about to receive a pretty handsome cheque from the Federal Government as part of the economic stimulous package. The question then is ‘what do I spend this on?’ Below I offer a futurist’s view on where certain generational types might consider spending the bonus. As a…
Read More >It is almost a year since the Australia 2020 Summit was held in Canberra and it is expected that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will provide feedback on the summit, the ideas it generated as well as the ideas of those not at the summit who provided input and thinking. Of course a lot has changed…
Read More >A few years ago whilst researching and generating ideas for the National Geographic Channel’s futures based TV shows ‘Future Matters’ I discussed the idea of what I then called ‘WEs’ or Wearable Electronics. I mentioned that this was a substantially different approach than portable electronics, which is what most mobile phones and laptop computers were…
Read More >