What kids can teach us about Goal Directed futures
Our son has just celebrated his fifth birthday and although we don’t make a huge fuss about milestones (the kids get a party every second year), there’s no doubt that he is learning about desired future outcomes and goals. I doubt he is different from most kids in his ability to spot something and declare with wholesome intensity ‘Ohhh – I’m so gonna get that…’. What I enjoy is his reaction when he doesn’t in fact ‘get that’.
He just moves on. What he is learning to do is separate the desirable from the worthy and that is a clue many of us can take from kids. The REALLY desireable goals can lead to kiddie meltdown whereas the distracting short term ‘so so’ goals hold minimal emotional attachment. The lesson adults can remind themselves of, is the ability to ignore the distracting and focus on the big issue. Setting goals may require small steps to achieve a large one, but it rarely requires getting lots of small things in order to achieve a large thing.
Activity versus productivity. Kids by and large live and let live – they move easily onto the next thing at hand. As parents our key jobs might be ensuring we do NOT teach them to get hung up on the minor things that aren’t that important. Most responses kids have are learned behaviours – from the fear of the dark, phobia of spiders, and even the foods they eat, kids typically build most of their understanding based on how they see us react and act.
If they see us all frantic and impulsive that is a key attribute they learn to mimic. If they see us not plan or see us fail think about our own future, that too is a habit they learn to mimic. If they see us setting goals, working hard to overcome obstacles and importantly, showing that we are able to discern the important from the merely attractive, it is likely they’ll also mimic that approach to their own world.
Right now our son Flynn is learning about being Goal Directed. Thankfully to date, he can focus on goals that matter, not just goals that are interesting – I hope we don’t teach him ‘out of’ that approach to the world.
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
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Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
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