Approach the Future with Less Anxiety | Frederik Pferdt

Frederik G. Pferdt. Did I pronounce that correctly?

Absolutely.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Dan.

And I do pronounce the P, right?

You do. Yes.

Okay. All right.

I appreciate you trying. So thank you.

It means horse in German, you told me. So I don't want to get trampled. I want to do right by you. Really happy to have you on the show. You, in your book, in your new book, talk about the cultivation of a future-ready mind state. Can you say a little bit about what you mean by that?

Yeah, I like that we dive right in. But maybe I can step a little back.

Sure.

You know, I felt that the future is something that shouldn't happen to us, right? It should be something you make happen. And so I started with that belief that everybody is actually capable of creating their own future. And I really felt that there is something to the future debate and discussion that is missing. And I wanted to fill that gap and provide people with a little bit of guidance around how to make the future happen that they want to see happening. As I saw a lot, a lot of people really worrying about the future or having anxiety about the future or feeling that the future is out of their control. And I learned that by asking literally thousands of people the question, or kind of like the Mad Lib that they should complete. And that is, if you want to complete that sentence, the future is, right? What's the first word that comes to your mind? And I want to give that Mad Lib, or kind of like that incomplete sentence to you as well, Dan. So what's the first word that comes to mind? The future is—

I hate to admit it, but the first word that came to mind was chaotic.

Chaotic. Yes, I hear that a lot. Absolutely. And the words change, obviously, right? If I ask you tomorrow, maybe you have a different word. Or if I ask you in the evening, even then a different word might appear. But then I ask people a second question or a second sentence to complete, and that is, the future I create is— and what's the first word that now comes to mind?

Exciting.

Exciting, yes. It's a different word, right? It's not chaotic. It's exciting. And that's the whole premise of, you know, my book, whereas I feel as soon as we put ourselves in the picture of the future and see ourselves in the future that we create, right, the the perception of the future changes. And even in a small word that describes the future for us, right? That is something very powerful to acknowledge, because then you're moving away from that question around what will the future bring, right? Which is a passive question towards the future, towards the question around What is the future I want to create? I want to share with people that a future-ready mind state, which, you know, we can go deeper into, is really a way to create the future that they want to see happening.

There are 6 component parts to the future-ready mind state, and we'll do a deep dive on each of them. But since you very gently requested to step back for a second to not— and this is me being a little cute here— put the cart before the horse. What you're really trying to say is there is— and these are your words— that we can be a driver of our future rather than a passenger in the future.

Exactly. And the 6 dimensions that, you know, I outline are basically human qualities, right, that I want to see happening more in the world, if I may put that. And that's optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, and empathy. And I have a 6th one, which is dimension X. And so all of these qualities, these deeply human qualities, should sound familiar to you, right? Because those are things that we are either born with or that show up from time to time. For example, curiosity is something we are all born with, right? Optimism, not so much, and it doesn't show up that often nowadays, right? But openness is something we can also practice more. And so these qualities of a future-ready mind state for me are not a framework and not a theory, but those are things that we live by or can live by more that really allow us to see more possibilities in the future. You mentioned that, you know, we can move away from being a passenger of the future towards more being the driver of our future, right? And for me, that really comes through by trying to understand that there is like an outer world and that there's an inner world. And over the outer world, that's outside of us, right? Which is society and technology and the events that are happening in our world and the people around us. And that's constantly changing and we can't control it, or we can't control most of it, but we can influence it, right? We have the power to actually influence the outer world through our actions and the choices we make and the way we interact with others, for example. And then there's the inner world, right? Which we also not have full control over, right? But we can train our inner world. And the inner world is really our thoughts, it's our emotions, it's our beliefs. Again, just like the outer world, we can't control everything that happens inside us, right? A thought might appear or an emotion arises, but we can train ourselves to respond better. So we can train our inner world by cultivating practices like mindfulness and reflection and all those practices that are really helpful. I think this training of the inner world helps us to stay grounded and even trying to make better contact with the outer world. And now for me, the magic happens really when you connect the two worlds. Right? When you connect the outer world with the inner world. So when we train our inner world, we can approach the outer world with more purpose maybe, and more confidence. And so what I'm saying is it's not about controlling everything, but it's about harmonizing these two worlds to create a future maybe that aligns with truly what matters to us.

What you would expect to hear from a futurist is, ah, you want to future-proof yourself, you should get familiar with AI or crypto, but you're, you're really not talking about any technological fix here. It's a, it's a, it's a set of inner technologies.

Absolutely. Yes. Futurists do an excellent job in predicting the future and telling you, you know, what trends might emerge over the next year or 5 years, 10 years, or even some futurists go like 50 years out. Right. Futurists I know quite well. And it's interesting that they're painting these pictures of a utopian or dystopian world out there. But what I've learned working for more than a decade in one of these tech companies and seeing literally how the future is built, sometimes being in that driver's seat, is that it's not about AI. It's not about the technology. It's not about the outer world, it's about the inner world. And as soon as you again move away from predicting the future to creating the future or shaping the future, taking control of what you can actually control, that is your inner world. I think you have a very powerful thing that if that's unleashed, right, you can really create what I would say the future that you want to see happening. We also want to be clear that a lot of people see, when they think about the future, they think about the flying cars, the robots, AI. They think about climate change. They think about an outcome of an election. They see a political system put in place. They see all of those things. Or they see maybe a nicer car for themselves or a more beautiful house or a different partner. But what I see is that when I think about my future, I see that I want to show up with a specific quality that I want to develop and grow in my future. So the question for me remains, how do I want to be in the future? And that's related to the 6 dimensions that I mentioned, which is, you know, maybe I want to be a little bit more open. I want to be a little bit more curious. I want to be more empathetic or compassionate, whatever that is. And if you think in those terms about your future, you can actually make that future happening. And I think that's something very powerful.

All right. Well, so let's talk about these 6 dimensions. The first is radical optimism. I had Dua Lipa on the show recently, and she's a— for anybody who hasn't heard of her, she's a pop star. And I heard your record is called Radical Optimism. What do you mean by radical optimism?

Yes, the timing was actually perfect. I think as soon as I published the book, Dua Lipa had an album come out called Radical Optimism, which made me think even deeper about what does it actually mean for different people, right? Radical optimism. And for me, I like to, you know, use that maybe metaphor that we use all the time, which is the glass half empty and the glass half full metaphor that, you know, I think everybody is aware of. And for me, you know, a pessimist being, you know, someone who sees the glass half empty or an optimist who sees the glass half full. Is something that doesn't really describe what I mean by a radical optimist. Because for me, a radical optimist believes in the potential not for good or for perfect, but for better. So my work in the area of innovation has really allowed me to spend a good deal of time in the realm of better because I've seen, you know, extraordinary breakthroughs come out of a person's absolute certainty that there's something better to be attained. Is it a better technology, a better product, a better service, a better process? You know, you name it, even a better human being. And these people I call radical optimists know that better is a result of constant and persistent iteration. So they tweak and test and even tweak some more to improve on what's in front of them. And they're not trying to hit that home run that we are looking for. They're looking for the smallest degrees of better that will move their work to the next level. And then to the next. And for me, the pursuit of better is about progress and not perfection. And so go back to that metaphor. For me, then it's not about seeing the glass half full. It's about seeing the potential to fill the glass even further. And that's, for me, something that we can all learn to do and to practice and to become those radical optimistic people. Maybe by listening to Dua Lipa or by training yourself to look into every situation as something that tells you, or feeling that something better comes from every experience. Right? That's probably it.

Are there no experiences that just suck in a thoroughgoing way and there's nothing better that can come of them?

There's many, Dan. Many, many. You've probably experienced many. I've probably experienced too many. It's again, like, you know, how do you respond to those situations, right? If a situation really sucks, and let's relate it to innovation maybe, right? Innovation is also a very emotional process, right? It's something where, you know, you come up with an idea and you're super excited, right? You see the future as you described as something exciting. If you put that idea into the world, you know, everything's going to be better. But then, you know, people come around and they destroy your idea and feel like, you know, they poke holes in it and say like, you know, that doesn't work, it doesn't improve the world and so forth. And then you're disappointed. And that situation might suck if you put like, you know, 1 or 2 or 3 years of your work, of your money, of, you know, everything in it so that the idea might eventually fail, right? How do you respond in that situation, right? You can respond in a way that you say like, okay, I'm fine, I'm done. You know, I don't want to innovate or make progress anymore, and I'm just going to complain about the outer world, something around the system that I was in or the manager that I had or whoever destroyed my idea. Or you say, great, you know, this idea didn't turn into something, but I've learned a couple of things, right? I learned probably like many things that help me now to create the next idea that might be even better. And that's the radical optimism that again, like, comes through when you say, I'm taking these learnings, I'm gonna take these learnings, and I'm gonna apply it to the next project or next idea. And I think a radical optimist is not someone who denies that moments and situations suck. I think it's the opposite. It's moving beyond that first reaction and responding in a way that is truly like in control of your inner world. That for me is something that you can train and that inner lens allows you to see the potential for better.

So it's interesting. What I was trying to ask is, are there situations that suck in such a deep way that there's no redeeming value to them? But at least what I heard in your answer is a radical optimist does not rule out that things can suck, like uncontrollably suck. However, it can all contribute to progress toward better. A health scare that derails your whole life and your whole family for 2 months. A miscarriage, you know, getting fired unjustly. It can all be terrible. I'm just picking those out of a hat, but those can be terrible. And nobody's denying that they suck. And if you're a radical optimist, you see the seeds of progress within.

Absolutely. I couldn't have put it better. And If you think about it, all those situations that you described are somehow happening to us, right? Like if you got laid off, if you, as you described, have a miscarriage, or if you, if your partner leaves you, or if you get sick, right? All of those things might at some stage happen to you. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Right? And what I see a lot of people do, and that might be helpful to them, is start complaining. Right? You're looking for the reasons why that is happening to you. You're looking to blame something or someone, and you're trying to change the situation, which we all know you can't, right? You can't make it unhappen. By complaining, you're trying to somehow get a relief to say like, okay, you know, I'm complaining about the doctor, right? That didn't prescribe me the right medication or didn't prevent that the sickness actually happened. Or I'm blaming the political system, or I'm blaming my partner or whoever it is. And you can do that, right? You can complain your whole life, but I wonder, like, what does it change, right? It makes you probably miserable. It makes you unhappy. It makes you, you know, probably lose a lot of friends. So it makes you lonely as well. And if you choose to have those three things in your life, fine, absolutely go for it. There's no, you know, no one holding you back. But if you choose to have a different life, if you choose to say, I'm stop complaining, I accept that this happened, and I look for the better here. What is something that I have learned from this situation? What is something that I now can do differently to create a more healthier lifestyle, right? Because I only maybe have a couple of years left. Or, you know, I'm going to deeply engage with the friend that I might lose in a couple of years because of his sickness or her sickness, right? That gives you a signal towards, hey, I now might use my time with that friend more effectively and more deeply. And I want to be totally honest and transparent with you here, Dan. I went on a book tour recently throughout Europe and I was underestimate one thing, and that is something probably you underestimated too. I don't know, but it's the book signings afterwards. I thought of these moments to be tremendously, you know, happy moments, you know, easy moments as well. You're just signing a book, right? Eventually, like, how hard can that be? But I was proven differently because I signed books for many people and everybody shared their short story with me. So people came to me and said, okay, Frederik, I know you from the past, great work, blah, blah, blah. Or somebody sent me to this book talk. I actually, you know, I wasn't here with intention, but somebody sent me and like, you know, and they shared their story. And then the third person came up and she shared with me and said like, you know, Frederik, I have to say like, you know, my Sister is going to die in approximately a month, right? She has cancer. And there we looked at all the research and everything that is out there to cure it, but there is no hope. So how can I be a radical optimist in that situation? And, you know, in every moment, in these three moments, I paused for a second and felt I'm not just signing a book, but I give also not hope, because I think hope is something passive, right? That waits in the corner, fingers crossed, and like, you know, something better might happen. But I give a little bit of sometimes a question, sometimes guidance, but also sometimes holding up a mirror to tell people that whatever you're going to do, think about how do you want to be in the future, right? And if you choose to be more kind, more open, more curious, whatever it is, I think you're going to have a better future for yourself, and you immediately create a better future for someone else as well. And I felt tremendously drained after these situations of signing those books and, like, you know, trying to be, like, for hundreds of people, a guide or, like, you know, just a mirror for a couple of seconds. At the same time, I felt truly energized because what I try to give to people is not something they don't have in control, but something they truly can choose in every situation and truly can make happen for themselves because everybody is capable of doing that.

You said earlier that we can train up our ability to be radically optimistic. What are the What are the practices?

Yes, how much time do we have? You know, a meditation practice is something that, you know, is probably like one of the most powerful ones that I discovered a couple of years back with an experiment I tried on myself. You know, easier practices are, you know, just the gratitude practices, right? Everybody can can practice. And my daughter is doing that every evening, and she's holding me accountable to also practice it almost every evening, which is just write a couple of things down that you're grateful for that actually worked out today, that makes you feel you made progress, or you did something that, you know, made you happy, made you smile, whatever it is. And I think those practices, if we do them over time, the research is pretty pretty clear that they're going to turn you into a different person waking up in the morning, right? Where you wake up in the morning and you're not going to your phone and trying to escape and letting, you know, a thousand voices into your mind immediately, but you're getting up and maybe you step outside and you feel grateful for that. There is another morning that, you know, might provide an opportunity to you. And I think that's a simple practice, right, that we all can do. There is a trend going on at the moment that I jumped on as well, and because I just like to experiment with all things, cold water exposure, right, which is fascinating to me. When, you know, you wake up with some worries or you wake up with feeling out of control or you wake up you know, feeling anxious or things are too chaotic, whatever it is, or you wake up to an email and you feel like, oh, I have to respond, you know, negatively or like, you know, harsh or any way in any of those ways, like a cold water exposure of 90 seconds totally puts you into a different mind state because it helps you to not focus on that thought or the stories you tell yourself. It helps you to basically just warm your body, right? And if you focus your mind to just warm your body for a couple of minutes, you know, that's an immediate fix towards the worrying that's going on in your mind or kind of like the anxiety that is produced all the time. And I feel that all of those practices, and we can go into, you know, more advanced ones than just like jumping into a cold pool. Are really helpful if we try them out first, if we give them a chance, and then just see like, what do they do to us, right? How can they be helpful? How can they change our minds? How can they change our emotions and our feelings? And that is something I feel that we should all engage in more. More often those experiments that allow us to truly change our minds.

Yeah, we're going to get to experimentation soon. I'll also come back to meditation, which you referenced there briefly. Just a very quick question for people interested in cold water exposure. My understanding is you don't need to have a cold plunge, although great if you do, but you can just take a cold shower for 90 seconds and that has, that can like kind of, that's like a hard reboot for the for the system.

Absolutely, yeah. And you don't have to start with 90 seconds, like, go 10 seconds, use that as a first experiment to say, like, hey, that changed something in me, right? I think now differently, or I feel differently, um, even if it's just I feel refreshed, or I feel, um, um, now that I want to jump out of the shower, right? Which, which is, is powerful because now you change something that you have control over. And there's many more things that we can do in our lives that are well researched. For example, as we did a quick tech check for the show, you know, your two producers kindly invited me to take a couple of minutes before we start the show, which I find incredibly valuable. We should start every meeting that way. So huge kudos to you two producers. And I asked them like, what are you gonna do in those couple of minutes, right? You get a snack, you get something to drink. That's the usual one. You do a bio break. One talked about their plants and like, you know, maybe went watering their plants, which is something powerful. So you're actually helping some plants to grow and to flourish. I just stepped outside and did a very brief, like 3-minute walk around. And that 3-minute walk gave me a new perspective. It gave me some ideas. It calmed me down. It has all these benefits that we can use that are really powerful. And so we shouldn't feel, you know, cling to our devices or whatever it is. We should take those steps sometimes to the outside, just go for a quick walk because Again, the research is very powerful. It gives you a different perspective. It calms you down, gives you new ideas. And who doesn't like to have these three attributes?

And all of that goes to radical optimism. You're saying that either the cold shower, the taking a walk, it can help you get your brain into a— your mind into a state where you can see potential rather than being sucked in or seduced by your negativity bias?

I think it touches on all of the dimensions I mentioned, right? Because you have to have a certain kind of curiosity that you are engaging in those little experiments. Speaking of experiments, right? Experimentation, it also touches, right? But it also is geared towards openness, right? You need to be open to to be receptive to these new ideas and perspectives, really giving it a try, right? What I would like to say. And so often our mind tells us all these arguments why we should not do the cold shower, why we should not step outside. And we look at the barriers, we look at the obstacles too often, right? Instead of saying, hey, I'm open to this, I'll give it a try. You know, tomorrow morning, and I'll see what happens. And that curiosity is something that is very powerful because it's cultivating a relentless drive to learn and to explore, asking these questions, what if, or why not, that really allows you to see new possibilities. And when we think back to my name, my last name that you pronounced perfectly in the beginning. It's the old writing of horse in German. And, you know, when you look at the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, and you look at those maps back then and the sailors that, you know, somehow created those maps, those maps had all these monsters on the edges. Which I find fascinating because those monsters really signal to you, don't follow your curiosity, don't go to the edge, right? And most people followed that advice where they said like, oh, I'm gonna stay, you know, within the known world, within what's on the map. I don't go to the edges because I might be eaten by these sea creatures. But whoever followed their curiosity, right? The sailors who went beyond the maps, beyond the edges of the map, they discovered something new, right? Discovered a new world. They discovered something exciting, and they were really rewarded with that newness that they could have discovered because then they shared it with the world and all the maps changed into, you know, the maps that we have today. And who might know, like, if we follow our curiosity in the next couple of years and go beyond those signals where it says, like, don't do that or don't follow your curiosity, we might discover something really, really exciting. And that's what I want to encourage people to do, to follow their curiosity.

The first dimension of the future-ready mind state is radical optimism. The second is unreserved openness. And in this section of the book, you recommend a practice that you call Just Say Yes. Tell us about that.

Yes. And that's the chapter afterwards, which goes beyond just saying yes, which is yes and. So I learned very early in my life that a no doesn't get you anywhere, right? If you say no to something, right? It literally either stops the conversation, it stops your idea, it stops, you know, you from exploring something new or discovering something new. And our minds just love no. They just love it because our minds love to save energy, right? And a no literally saves you energy because, again, it stops the conversation, it stops where something you want to discover and so forth. And I know there is a lot of debate out in the world that, you know, we should say more no because it just, you know, saves us energy again. It saves us time. It saves us going down a path that we are unsure if we should explore that and so forth. But I wanted to advocate for the, for the yes, because the yes actually gets you a new partner. It gets you a new job. It gets you something new that you want to discover. It gets you to all of those things. And by saying yes, I think you're opening up to possibility. And Beyond that, if you say "yes, and," you're not just accepting something and you're moving towards that possibility, you're building on it. You're making it better, you know, faster, bigger, whatever it is, and you're adding something to it. And I'm not saying that we should say "yes" forever, right? But at least our first response to most situations should be Yes, because that allows you to, again, embrace that openness that allows you to see possibilities. And there's a beautiful story that I might share with you, which is about the Chinese farmer. The Chinese farmer who lived in a small village had one horse, and that horse was tremendously helpful to him because it helped him to, you know, do all the work with him throughout the day. But once upon a time, the horse ran away. And so the villagers came over and they said like, oh, poor, poor you. You know, your horse is now gone. What are you going to do? And the farmer responded, maybe. The next day, the horse came back with 6 more horses. So the farmer had now 7 horses. The villagers came over in the evening and said like, "Oh, lucky you. You now have 7 horses that you can work with." The farmer responded, "Maybe." The next day, his son wanted to break one of the horses and fell off, broke his leg. Villagers came over, said, You know, we're so sorry to hear that your son broke his leg. The farmer responded, maybe. The next day, the army passed by through the village and recruited all the young folks to go to war. They didn't pick the one with a broken leg. And the villagers came over in the evening, oh, you're so lucky because they didn't pick your son. All of our sons are now going to war. And the villager responded, the farmer responded, maybe. So this is a great story about how we usually judge immediately every situation, putting a good or a bad label towards it, right? But staying open and maybe sometimes, you know, waiting what, you know, might emerge out of that situation is something that is for me a great way of also looking at life, that we shouldn't immediately always judge something and say, oh, that's going to be bad, or that's going to be good. And that's one of maybe the purest forms of openness, to just respond with a maybe, right? In most situations and say like, yeah, maybe it's going to turn into something great, or maybe it's turning into something bad. You can go beyond that with that yes that you can always pull out of your pocket and say, like, I'm just gonna say yes to something I'm not sure about, but it might open up a couple of doors that I wanna explore, and I wanna look beyond or behind these doors to see what opportunities are waiting for me.

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First of all, thanks for sharing that. I love that movie, Up. And I think I'm the same, right? I just love to share ideas and think like every idea is, you know, worth considering and pursuing, right? So I live by this practice of saying yes to my own ideas, right, that are appearing in my mind. Out of the nowhere. And I like that you were using that chasing the squirrel metaphor or signal, and you probably have a sign, right, for your producers, hopefully, that they hold it up to signal to you like, okay, let's not chase it. I always encourage the teams that I worked with to, again, embrace that yes, right? And yes, and, and at the same time, giving them space and time to explore the idea, which is giving them permission to experiment. And I'm not saying that we should, again, chase every idea for a very long time, but I think it's worth exploring every idea for a short time. You know, whatever idea you have, What's the best, the cheapest, quickest way to experiment and learn if this idea might actually work? And that has really served me well in my life because then you start to, you know, exploring an idea for a couple of minutes even and say like, okay, you know, I've learned that there might be something in it, right? That is worth pursuing. Or after a couple of minutes you find out, no, screw it. Like, that's too expensive or takes too much resources or takes too much time to actually do that idea. And at Google X, they had this very interesting, maybe similar metaphor to your squirrel, which was called chasing the monkey. So they had this story where They said whenever a team wanted to explore an idea, what most people do is they try to make progress on the easiest thing of the idea. And so the story with a monkey is about, imagine you put a monkey on a pedestal to recite Shakespeare, and you need to train that monkey to recite Shakespeare, right? What most teams would actually do is what? They would build the pedestal, right? And tell everyone like, hey, we built the pedestal, right? Don't you think that's a great color of the pedestal? Don't you think it's a great height? I think it's going to be perfect for the monkey to recite Shakespeare. What most people would not do is focus on training the monkey. To recite actually, right? Which is the hardest thing, obviously. So whenever they, you know, looked at an idea, they, you know, had a little sticker that they put on the presentation where they said like, monkey problem here, you know, don't show us the pedestal, like the easiest thing you can build, show us like if you made progress on the hardest thing. And that's for me a good a metaphor around when you look at ideas, and we all have great ideas all the time, what is the hardest thing about your idea and how can you explore that very quickly to learn if the idea is worth pursuing or not? So what's the monkey in your idea, right? And as soon as we do that, I think we have a great way to, what I say, perpetual experiment our way forward because the path to the future is really paved with experiments, right? All of those things allow us to learn quickly, like, what should we pursue and what should we not pursue? But building all these pedestals, I don't think are— is worth our time. I think we should focus on the hardest thing in our problems first and try to experiment with those.

We're jumping around in your list of dimensions of the future-ready mind state. But since you've brought us to perpetual experimentation, which is number 4, we'll come back to number 3 in a minute. Let me just ask a few questions about perpetual experimentation. You seem to You seem to acknowledge in the book that, that some people are wary of this, and one of the reasons is fear of failure. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yes. And I like that we are jumping around. That's the whole purpose of the book, that it's not kind of like a linear process that you should follow. It's actually impossible, right? You should not, you know, get up in the morning and be optimistic and then, you know, show up a little bit more open, you know, in your meeting that you have first thing in your morning. And then, you know, at the end in the evening, you're showing up with a little bit more empathy. All of those dimensions should be at play all the time because that's your future-ready mind state. And I think that's something we can all, again, train and practice. Most people don't think of their careers or even their relationships or other important parts of their lives in terms of experimentation. So we tend not to experiment in our daily lives because it feels safer to go with the ideas and solutions that have worked in the past. And so we make choices every day to stay with what we know rather than seeking new and possibly better experiences. So we also avoid experiment— experimenting, as you said, out of fear of failure. We assume that the objective of experimentation is success. Which sets the bar prohibitively high right out of the gate, right? I think the objective of experimentation isn't success, it's just learning. So each time you try something new, you learn something new. And shifting this one perception about experimentation from being focused on success to being focused on learning will make you open to discovery on every level. And as I mentioned, the road to the future is paved with experiments, countless perpetual experiments that led us to break from where we are now so we can discover what's possible ahead. And so that's something that everybody probably can change their relationship with, is that notion of experimenting. You know, as an example, a few years ago I had an idea to write a book about how to be future-ready. And I didn't know how I could create a book, though, because testing allows you to go from not knowing something to knowing it for sure. And you just start testing. So every day for months, I tested different ways of expressing this concept. Dozens of little ideas I tested never saw the light of the day. Others ideas I tweaked and test it further until I had a clear vision of this book, right? And so for me, really, experimentation lays out that path forward, uh, on that we can go on. And, um, even maybe your podcast started with a little experiment in the beginning, right? Where you learned what worked, what didn't work, how can we improve and make that better. And, uh, that's something very powerful if we, again, like, not look for success in experimentation, but look for learning. And to close this out, you know, one of the spaces I created at Google was called the Garage, which was that whole notion of an experimentation space, right, where we had lots of projects were conducted in that space. And everybody asked me, like, what's the success coming out of the Garage? Like, what's the technology or the, the service or whatever it is that really was born in the garage. And I said, like, none of them, because that's not the space for a successful technology launch, right? It's a space to learn. Many things were learned around many different projects and many technologies, but none of them was a clear success that made its way out of this space. And I think that's something I'm actually quite proud of, that none of the successes was ever launched out of this space, but a lot of learning happened.

But shouldn't learning lead to some success eventually? Or are you just extolling the virtues of learning for the sake of learning?

Of course, like if you make the, you know, a mistake twice, right? It's the saying that you probably haven't learned something from the first one. Obviously, it should fuel progress and should fuel, you know, that you grow with your learnings. And I think that's something that eventually leads to something better. Again, like, I usually don't like to use the word success because that's an outcome or a destiny, which for various people is looking very different. And I rather kind of like focus on how do you want to be in your future? That's the question that I want to bring people back to, to say like, if your future should be a success, right? Think about how you want to be in that future. Do you want to be more curious, more compassionate, more open, more courageous, whatever it is? Because that's something that also can be something that is a success.

We're marching through the 6 dimensions of having a future-ready mind state. Many, many of us get very anxious when we think about the future. But you're, you're, you're saying actually there's a way to develop a mind state to advance forward with some optimism. One of the dimensions that we haven't yet talked about is, is, and this is your terminology here, compulsive curiosity. What do you mean by that and how can we develop it?

Again, for me, a mind state, which is probably a term that is not very familiar to, to many people, it's the perspective you have in any given moment that really encompasses your current thoughts and feelings and determines how you experience the present. And we're all familiar with that term mindset, right? I think that made its way into our terminology. So much so that whenever, you know, I type that, it autocorrects immediately to mindset. So that's something very interesting because mindset is something truly set in our world. And Carol Dweck did an amazing job, my colleague at Stanford, in promoting a growth mindset, which I think is tremendously helpful for our children and for everyone in this world. And at the same time, I felt that there must be something else that, you know, we maybe have a little bit more control over. Because then if I would ask you to change your mindset, right? And probably you had that question in the past from many people towards, you know, an entrepreneurial mindset or a success mindset or a happiness mindset or whatever it is. You have to work really hard to do that, right? And how often have we successfully changed our mindset in our lives? I think probably rarely. So I felt that mindset is probably a better way to really focus on that perspective you have in any given moment that determines how you experience the present. And a future-ready mindset isn't just about what you do. It's about how you are. And it's about leaving your unique, what I say, you print on the world. And every choice you make today reflects how you want to be in your future. And curiosity, compulsive curiosity, is one of the dimensions of a future-ready mind state. And curiosity, again, is maybe about first, something that we don't have to learn or train ourselves in because we're all born with, right? We have that relentless curiosity when we are in our first couple of years where we crawl around on the floor taking everything into our mouth and suck on it for a little bit to try to understand how it tastes and if it's dangerous. Our parents usually freak out. And then, you know, we listen to everything and we take everything into our hands and we really explore the world with our senses and our curiosity. And over time, what I feel is that curiosity goes dormant. That's something you can observe in human beings, but you also can observe in organizations, right? The organizations that are in the market for a very long time just I think lost their curiosity. They don't ask that, you know, big question anymore around like, you know, what if, or why not? And those powerful questions that really unlock your curiosity. And I want to bring that back with a couple of practices that really allow you to tap again into your curiosity when you grow up. And there is again, like, Many different practices. One that I really like is asking 5 whys, right, in a row. That really deepens your understanding and uncovers new insights by asking those 5 whys 5 times about a specific topic or challenge. For example, try to struggle to maintain a healthier lifestyle, right, that we all probably do. Your first why could be, why am I struggling to maintain a healthy lifestyle? And your answer could be, because I don't have enough time to exercise. The second why could be, why don't you have enough time to exercise? And your answer is, because my work schedule is very demanding, like most, for most of us. And your third why could be, why is my work schedule very demanding? And your answer is, because I have too many tasks and responsibilities. Then your fourth why comes around, why do I have too many tasks and responsibilities? And your answer is, because I'm not delegating enough work to my team. And then your fifth why is, why am I not delegating enough work to my team? Your answer could be, because I feel that I need to be in control of everything, right? That is usually a leadership trait that we see a lot of times. So your insight is here, the root cause of struggling to maintain a healthier lifestyle is a lack of delegation at work, right? Addressing that lack of delegation and delegating more tasks could free up time to exercise and promote a healthier lifestyle is maybe an interesting way of looking then at this solution that you are trying to discover. And so that's a good example of compulsive curiosity, which is asking 5 times why in a row, which is a practice that we all can do.

Maybe this is a good time to come back to meditation, which we teased earlier. You write in the book about going on a meditation retreat, an experience I've had, and I think not a few of our listeners have also had. And you had a realization that— and I'm going to read a quote from you that I liked. Weirdly enough, we are naturally resistant to change, even though we are 100% a product of change. We were built by change, but not built for change. So I'd be curious to hear how meditation brought this about and how you knit it into your life.

Yes. This whole notion of impermanence, right, that you experience deeply at a long meditation retreat is something very profound that I was lucky to discover a couple of years ago when going on a 10-day meditation retreat here in Joshua Tree in Southern California, physically and emotionally. Physically, you have this back pain starting after a couple of hours sitting on a small cushion, and you feel like just horrible, right? You feel like, oh, that pain is not going to go away for the next 9 and a half days. And you truly believe that, right? You feel like it's not going to go away. I have to stretch or I have to do something about it. When then like day 3 or day 4 come, that physical pain actually goes away, which is, which is fascinating. Again, like, you know, that change happens in your body. The emotional change that I experienced was also something fascinating because I had an experience like probably most people. One morning at 4:30 AM, I came out of my little room and I closed the door like every morning, and then someone stopped me, which is, you know, something you're not allowed to do, right? You're not allowed to touch anyone. You're not allowed to look at anyone. You're not allowed to talk to anyone. So that person stopped me and said like, hey, I need to tell you something. And I was, you know, just standing there like it was pitch dark still, 4:30 in the morning, just came out of my sleep. And then the person said, like, can you please stop shutting the door or making noise in the morning, right? And shutting the door more silently. And that one comment stuck with me for like 7 days because you immediately react like, you know, how can this person break the rules and like talk to me, right? It's actually something that he's not allowed to do. And then after a couple of hours, you think like, huh, maybe I was slamming the door too hard in the morning, right? And I woke the person up, which, you know, I feel sorry about. And then you switch between those emotions of like, you know, feeling annoyed, and then you feel compassion, and then you move back and forth. And you're not sure how to resolve that, right? Because, you know, you're just sitting with that for some time. The second moment is more profound because that happened over literally 4 days. So imagine you sit down on that cushion and there's a person behind you. So we had, I had 49 other people in that room, one person sitting behind me. And every time we sat down, that person took one of those cough drops that are available in the entrance and was sucking on that cough drop. And so you imagine that person sitting behind you and you're listening to that person sucking on that drop your whole hour of meditating. And it was exactly like 60 minutes of him sucking on that cough drop. And you go crazy. You're like, oh my God. You know, how can I prevent that happening, you know, in the next session? Which it didn't, because the guy just kept going to these cough drops and, like, sucked one every hour exactly for 60 minutes. And so your mind starts to strategize, like, how can I possibly make this stop? You're not allowed to talk. You're not allowed to make eye contact. You're not allowed to write something down and send a note to that person. So you're strategizing, you're strategizing, and sometimes a thought comes up that is very radical, which is, I might just go to that person and take the drop out of his mouth to make stop, right? Because it's very annoying, right? And so after the fourth day of that person behind you sucking on that cough drop, my emotions started to shift. It started to actually move from hatred and being annoyed to compassion. And that moment was magical because I realized, hey, that person is preventing 49 people to be annoyed when he starts coughing, right? Because he's, you know, sucking on that cough drop to not cough, to not make any noises. And it's on me to either feel annoyed or not feel annoyed, to take that as music to my ears or to take that as something to be annoyed by. I have that choice. And as soon as I realize that, and that change of how I feel about that person, how I feel about myself, was truly like, again, like such a small moment, such a, you know, a moment that probably happens throughout our lives and throughout our days many, many times. Someone, you know, doing something and we feel annoyed, that it's in my control to listen to that as, you know, music and feel good about it. Or not. And now whenever some noise appears, I'm reminded about that moment, and I choose to feel good about that noise, to not make it stop and try to make it stop, but to try to be aware that feeling annoyed is something I choose, but I also can change. And so I was thanking that person at the end of the retreat when we allowed to talk to other people. I was literally going to that person, say thank you. He probably didn't know what I was thanking him for, but I said thank you because that really taught me something about meditation. It taught me about something that we all have control over, and that is our responses to the external world.

That kind of leads to the fifth dimension of having a future-ready mind state, which is expansive empathy. Maybe say a little bit about that.

For me, having empathy is about truly understanding other people and other people's needs. But expansive empathy is not just understanding others, it's also understanding yourself. And especially understanding your future self. So there's some powerful research going on at Stanford University where they have this research that tries to understand how you relate to your future self. So what they've done is they ask students to imagine themselves in a year from today. And they said, yeah, I can see myself totally clearly, you know, maybe having a better car, a little bit more money, and so forth. Then they asked the students to imagine themselves 10 years from today, and they responded, yeah, I can see myself being in a relationship, maybe, you know, having a house, and so forth. And then they asked the students to imagine themselves 30 or even 40 years out. And here it gets interesting because they couldn't see themselves in the future. The picture got very blurry, even hazy about who they are in the future and what they might have in the future and how the world looks in the future too. So what they've done is they put VR headsets on them to project their older self to them, to literally show them, this is how you're going to look in a couple of years from today. And what they find is that as soon as people empathize with their future selves, they change their behavior in the moment, which means students were actually putting twice the amount towards their retirement. They also changed their lifestyle choices to more healthier lifestyle choices, and they made other shifts too. So what it tells me is that if you can create empathy for your future self, really seeing your future self and trying to understand what your future needs might be, then it will actually change your behaviors in the moment, which I find fascinating. And you can practice that too, right? By doing visualization exercises, trying to imagine yourself in the future and who you're going to be surrounded by, what work you're going to be doing, where you're going to be, and so forth. And at the same time, going beyond that future visualization and say, how do I want to be in the future? And trying to create a clearer picture every day to really trying to empathize around, hey, how do I want to show up tomorrow, in the next 10 days, in the next 10 years? What are these qualities that I want to grow towards and develop towards? And we don't need VR headsets to do that, right? We can just literally close our eyes to empathize with our future selves. And the more we do that and the better our pictures of our future selves, the more it will impact our choices that we make today.

Okay, Dimension X, the 6th dimension, the most mysterious sounding one, the one that sounds like it was branded by Elon Musk.

Dimension X, what is it? It's actually something very practical, which is, I'm suggesting these 5 dimensions, which are these deeply human qualities, again, like around optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, empathy. And I felt that whenever I worked with an individual or I coached an individual or I just observed an individual, there's always something unique about them, right? There's always something that stands out when they deal with challenges or when they are, you know, at their best or at their worst. And I call that Dimension X, which is your unique superpower. Trying to identify and find what is unique about you and what is your unique superpower is a reflection exercise that we all can engage in. When we map our lives and see like where the highs and lows in our lives and how did, how did we respond in those situations? What helped us to overcome those situations. That is where you're really trying to get a clear pulse of your unique superpower. And I feature about 14 people I was able to train and coach and work with over the years. And what we've done is we show their unique superpowers. What is their Dimension X? To provide some inspiration for people and say like, hey, that could be me. You know, if it's the, you know, Adam or Sarah or Tom or whoever is the person I share the story from, I want that people relate to those people and say like, hey, that could be me. And I probably have a similar dimension X, a unique superpower, because what I want to do is not just help people to identify it, but use it in their lives. Because as soon as you use it more often, You have a unique way to overcome challenges, setbacks, worries, anxiety, and create really the future that you want to see happening.

And say a little bit more about how we can figure out what our own unique superpower might be.

One of the ways I suggest in the book is that we do a life mapping exercise, that we literally take a piece of paper, draw a line, a horizontal line, which is our timeline of our life. And then we map out what are some of the highs and lows in our lives. What have been those unique moments that really, where we can put on a label and say like, that was really awful, right? That really put me into a bad place. Or what was something truly exciting or exhilarating or joyful, right? That really helped that really sparked joy. And as soon as you map that out, you're going on a reflection exercise to see, like, what has been helpful in all of those moments? What is the unique Dan superpower? What is the unique way of looking at those situations that really helped me to overcome these situations and make progress and move forward?. And for some, it's connecting the dots, right? That's something I hear a lot. For me, it's a bias towards action that really helped me in most situations just move forward and make progress and look ahead. For others, it's about empathy, right? That really showed up in many situations for them that helped them to to move forward and make progress. So it's something that everybody has. There is some power in identifying it and then make use of it in your life.

For sure. This has been a great romp through the 6 dimensions, the future-ready mind state. Is there something you were hoping to get to that we didn't get to?

Again, I started to write this book really because of that belief that the future is something that is not just happening to us, but it's something we can actively create and shape. And I wanted to show people how to do that. And throughout my life and my career, I've seen how powerful it is when individuals harness their potential to innovate and lead change. And I wanted to share these insights and provide a a roadmap for others to develop their future-ready mind state. The book is really just a culmination of my experiences and experiments and the incredible stories of those future-readies, those people who have inspired me along the way and that I've been able to work with. And my goal is really to empower others to take control of their futures and create the lives they truly want. And if I can make that small contribution to the world, right, I think we will see a better world happening for all of us. As Anis Nin said famously, we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are, right? And so how are you and how do you want to be in the future? I think thinking about that is something that you have 100% control over. And I hope that people will choose kindness, openness, curiosity, optimism, empathy as their deeply human qualities that they want to grow and show in the future.

Frederik G. Pferdt, author of What's Next Is Now: How to Live Future Ready. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

Great to talk to you. Thank you so much, Dan, and see you in the future. Hahaha.