Getting Your Future Right

Getting Your Future Right fills a huge gap in personal development! For perhaps the first time for many of us, using this book provides a way for any person to think about, develop, plan for, and then execute a Personal Life plan for a better life!

This is a skill we are never taught at school. It’s a skill that is rarely developed in our careers. Instead for some, the lucky few, the ‘school of life’ is the best chance they have to develop the kind of insight into making their life a success. For the rest of us, life happens by accident.

Up until now, for most of us, we just have not had a way to think about what we want for our life. For most of us, knowing what questions to ask, knowing what issues are important; and knowing how to get started is just not something that is natural.

And that is why this book has been written. It is part guide book and part workbook. It is written to assist you in Getting Your Future Right

The Quick Overview for People in a Hurry: how the book works

You will set a Vision of preferred destination for your life. If you’re not too sure what your Vision is, this book will help you consider and then write a Vision that appeals greatly to you.

You will identify the main challenges in your life. They will be those challenges that, were you to resolve them, will move you closer to your desired Vision. I call these main challenges ‘Strategic Issues’.

You’ll need to work out what skills and resources you have available to you right now. You’ll be asked to also identify which skills you will need to have available, in order to address the challenges (Strategic Issues) you’ve identified. I call these skills ‘Capabilities’

Then, having identified the Capabilities you will need and have, you work out how you will use those resources. I call this step ‘Strategic Action’ and having followed the process what you will have is:

  • A set of Actions
  • Using your available Capabilities
  • That will handle your Strategic Issues
  • That then moves you closer to your desired future, your Vision!

Very straight forward, yet very few people actually do it! The rest of the book shows you how to monitor your progress and to keep evolving and improving. But be warned – you will have to take action, to think and to apply some effort. This is no wish list. You will think, plan, then act and I’ll show you how to put this together. Best of luck!

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The model used in this book has been adapted from the model I designed for The Australian Strategic Planning Institute (TASPI) after participants in our public workshops asked me whether the appproach would work for personal planning. I responded at the time that, in the absence of any other approach, it was likely the model would be quite useful.

The feedback has been incredibly positive. The model works and works very well. But be warned! This is no quick fix book. For many people, this will be the first time they have taken the chance to think seriously about what they would like their life to be like. There is no ‘secret’ to a successful life where a simple ‘thought’ will make it all happen. In this book you’ll discover that the thought is just one part – you then need to know where to act and why. That’s what this book will help you sort out. I wish you much success!

When was the last time you sat down and really thought about the type of life you would like to create? When have you thought about what your skills were and how you would use them? How often have you felt that your life was going no-where and you weren’t sure how to make a change for the better? Through this book I’ll guide you with stories of my own up and down journey and then get you to apply what you know to making a clearer choice about where you want to be in the future.

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You are probably much, much closer to having the future you’d prefer, than you realise. For most of us (and I was one of them) we have never been taught how to put some form and structure to our approach to life. Instead we’ve just kind of stumbled along, often on ‘auto-pilot’ without even knowing where we were headed or why we were doing what we were doing.

This book is the wake up call for your life. You deserve to make your life better than what it is now. This book will help you do that

The Future of…

Aug 1, 2012

Most everything. The various papers, presentations, radio interviews, magazine articles, books and newspaper references have been reformatted in alphabetical order for easier access. Click on the ‘Future Of…’ tab and find what you are looking for under the headings listed, with links to each relevant item.   You’ll find the future of Australia, food, technology,…

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The Continued Rise of ‘Enoughness’

Jul 14, 2012

I came up with the term Enoughness in late 2008, and early 2009 as a result of some research I was assessing looking at emerging consumer behaviour. The manufacturing companies I presented to at the South East Business Networks session on Managing a Diverse Workplace discovered, Enoughness was a very different approach to the idea…

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Need a Career Change? Here’s some roles to consider

Jul 9, 2012

Business Insider has a story today of 7 jobs you’ve never heard of and why they’re awesome which is delightfully amusing for two reasons: One – ‘Futurist’ makes the list at number 7; and Two – I’ve been employed in full time futures for over a decade (and part time for about ten years before…

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Our Disappearing World Languages

Jun 25, 2012

In this article on the LifeBoat Foundation’s website, Laurence Baines discusses the loss of languages around the world and the increasing shift toward the major five tongues. From a futures perspective we appreciate that a language often contains within it, a way of knowing that is missing in someone who may have learned to speak…

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Science Fiction writer Ray Bradbury has died aged 91

Jun 6, 2012

Few books (and a subsequent film) influenced my desire for knowledge in the way that Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 did. The black and white film adaptation still holds much in my memory almost 30 years later. As a youngster I’d sat up late and seen original The War of the Worlds on TV and a few…

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How Secure is your WiFi Usage?

May 29, 2012

Ah well, you’d be surprised at how easy it is for someone to steal a piece of you! This info-graphic from Veracode explains in more detail some of the actions you can take and things to be aware of when using WiFi   You can go stright to the InfoGraphic and

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The Future of Money

May 7, 2012

Have just spent a few hours discussing the Future of Money, hosted by James Bibby at Microsoft in Sydney and facilitated by Peter Vander Auwera from SWIFT/Innotribe. I’d like to flag that everyone understood that the session was way too short for such a big topic and everyone would agree that we just scratched the…

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Six Emerging Trends in Corporate Sustainability

May 1, 2012

Ernst & Young and GreenBiz have completed a survey of business executives looking at the development of Corporate Sustainability around the world. The report shows that there has been a clear rise in awareness; that employees are a core source driving sustainability actions; that reduction of costs is a core appeal and that return on…

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The Future of War

Apr 23, 2012

On the eve of ANZAC day here in Australia ABC Radio Darwin’s Vicki Kerrigan chats with futurist Marcus Barber on the future of war – what the future triggers of war might be and how war will be fought   Increasing technology or less technology?  Haves versus the have nots?  On a pretty serious topic…

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The Future of Workplace Design

Apr 17, 2012

In this chat with Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin, we chat about workplace design and the need to create functional workplaces – something the ‘open-plan’ model fails utterly at delivering. Click on the link below   Futurist Marcus Barber on ABC Radio Darwin discussing the future of workplace design and the challenges of dysfunctional workplaces…

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