The Future You – Brian David Johnson

Can a futurist help you create the retirement plan you want? Our guest is Brian David Johnson, who was Intel's first futurist, and is the author of The Future You: Break Through the Fear and Build the Life You Want. Listen in - your Future You will thank you. We discuss: His new book The Future You What a futurist does - and doesn't do The common misconceptions people have about the future The most underutilized tool in retirement planning Futurecasting, backcasting, and threatcasting - and how they can sharpen your retirement plan Why storytelling is important to your future How planning for two futures is wise Why he thinks the future is local Brian David Johnson joins us from Oregon. _________________________ Bio Brian David Johnson is a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and a Futurist and Fellow at Frost & Sullivan, a visionary innovation company that’s focused on growth. He also works with governments, militaries, trade organizations, and startups to help them envision their future. He has over 30 patents and is the author of a number of books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Future You: Break Through the Fear and Build the Life You Want, Science Fiction Prototyping; Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing and the Devices We Love; Humanity and the Machine: What Comes After Greed?; and Vintage Tomorrows: A Historian and a Futurist Journey through Steampunk into the Future of Technology. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal and Slate to IEEE Computer and Successful Farming, and he appears regularly on Bloomberg TV, PBS, Fox News, and the Discovery Channel. He has directed two feature films, and is an illustrator and commissioned painter. _________________________ Wise Quotes On Financial Planning "...one of the most underutilized tools is financial planning is your imagination because you've got to imagine what you want your future to look like. And then once you can imagine it, then you can start to achieve it." On Futurecasting and Retirement "With retirement, it's one of those things that we're all thinking about, right? And if you're not, you really should be. So, we'll generally give ourselves permission to do it. And the thing about future casting is: Don't just think about tomorrow. Don't think about today. But think a little bit further out. And this is why I think it's really well-designed to think about your retirement. Whether that retirement will be 30 years from now, 20 or 10 years from now,  depending upon where you're doing your planning,  thinking like a futurist and using future casting allows you to really get out there and think about the reality of it - and then get into the details of it. And then as a part of futurecasting, a key component is backcasting: Where do I want to be in the future? Who is that future? Who's living in that retirement? What does that look like? And then what are the steps you need to take to get there, right? Who are the people that are going to help you? What are the tools and who are the experts? And so it really systematically breaks it down for people. So it allows their future and their retirement to feel more accomplishable. That's what a lot of the people I've talked to and the people I've helped[valued]. What they've told me is, 'Wow, okay. It felt like it was something really far out there, but now I really see what I need to do on Monday and I can also track my progress. So I think, in that way, it can, can really help most people to really think like a futurist to prepare for their retirement." On  Your Detailed Story "One of the things that I've learned over the last 25 years is that the way you ch...