Becoming Future Ready with Frederik Pferdt

Hello everybody. Welcome to this episode of What's Next. I am your host, Tiffany Bova, and this is a first for me. I have a guest, uh, joining us today who was the former Chief Innovation Evangelist at Google. Sounds like a really familiar title, just different brand. Dr. Fredrik Vurtt, he helped shape one of the most fabled creative cultures in the world. He founded Google's Innovation Lab where he trained tens of thousands of Googlers to develop and experiment with cutting-edge ideas and taught groundbreaking classes on innovation and creativity at Stanford for more than a decade. But the other coink-a-dink coincidence that we have is he has a new book out called, wait for it, What's Next Is New: How to Live Future Ready. So we've got title and book title with my podcast. I feel like, Fredrik, it was meant for you to be here with us today. So welcome.

Yes, so exciting to spend time with you, Tiffany, and thanks for having me on the show.

Absolutely. All right, so we are gonna start off with bullish and bearish. Bullish, you're for it. Bearish, you're against it. Are you ready?

I am ready. I'm always ready. One thing I want to mention is that I really don't like to do predictions. A lot of people in the world ask me for things like, hey, Fredrik, what's going to be next in AI? What's going to be next on the technology front? What's next in sustainability? And all of those questions, right? Because I was at literally the organization that was driving a lot of these changes and innovations. And I always refuse to do predictions because I just feel like predictions is not the way we should think about the future. I think we should think about the future in a way that we create it. But I'm happy to dive in into your little experiment here.

Well, thank goodness it's not about predictions. It is not about predictions.

Wonderful.

All right. Bullish or for it, bearish or against it. First one, flying taxis. Bullish or bearish? You're for it or against it? Like it, don't like it?

Yes. I think there's exciting developments that we see in flying cars space, right? I think, you know, Kitty Hawk had its time to try out some of these. There's other startups in the field as well in Europe that I'm super excited about. And personally, I just came back from Dubai where I actually was not on a flying taxi, but I was on a Flyboard. Which is basically something attached to like a jet ski which lifts you up in the air. And I have to say, it was fascinating just to be up in the air and kind of like flying around. So I'm super excited that the experiments continue in that field and that we soon see people taking off and landing safely as well, wherever they want to go.

Awesome. So I'll take that as a bullish.

All right.

All right, next one. Polar plunge, bullish or bearish?

That's an interesting one. Tell me, tell me a little bit more what you mean.

So polar plunge is like where you, you know, go up to Alaska or the Antarctica and you cut a little hole in the ice and you get in the water just because you want to do a polar plunge.

Yes, uh, I rather have my own little polar plunge at home, right?

Okay, there you go.

I have my little ice bath here. That I'm diving in every morning at 6 AM. And I'm just fascinated by the research around it, what it not just does to your body but also to your mind, right? Overcoming the first challenge in the morning to go into that 3 degrees water and just coming out with something that you've accomplished, right? You've overcome that fear, that resistance that your mind is usually giving you, and you just feel better, right? Your mind is concentrating on warming up again and so forth. So I would not rather travel somewhere to go into deep ice cold water just out of sustainability reasons. I would rather stay home, walk up to my ice cold plunge in the morning and just do that dive here.

So we've got 2 bullish, and I did not know you had your own ice plunge, so I would've just said ice plunge instead of polar plunge, cuz not many people have one in their own backyard. All right, the next one, which I'm gonna guess you're also going to be bullish on. I almost have answered this. Living off the grid, bullish or bearish?

Absolutely bullish, yes. And actually, we just, 3 days ago, we went fully off-grid. So we had our own water for a while. We live off our own food mostly with kind of like our greenhouse being filled with our greens and our vegetables and so forth. And now we can also use the power of the sun to really charge our vehicles and fully live off-grid. I think it's something that is truly, truly remarkable that we all can actually do that now. And I highly recommend it.

I feel like more and more you have to be more able to live off the grid in some ways. Like last week, I'm in Los Angeles and last week, you know, the power went out for like an hour. And while I have solar, I don't have batteries. So I was off, right? And I'm standing in the street going like, oh, this is such a pain in the butt, right? And then I'm like, okay, hold on a second. We've got a whole swath of the country that has like no power and hasn't had it for 2 weeks. Like, 1 hour is just— it's ridiculous. Walk back in the house, get some work done, you know, figure it out, right? Sit outside, do work, which is what I did. But it's very hard when you're not used to sort of living off the grid, how you could actually make that happen when you're in urban, you know, locations, uh, that when our service is down, you're like, It's down. Yeah. All right. So let's jump right in. You know, in preparing for this, I was really fascinated by this one statement you made, and I'd love to get your unpack of that, if you will. It says, instead of fretting over what could happen in the future, you should think hard about what should happen in your future. Like, I love that for so many reasons, right? I think it's, Moving from could to should, but not just about future, about your future, not just sort of future generally. So I know that there's a number of people who endorsed your book. Many are friends of mine, especially Seth Godin, who is just one of my favorite humans. And when he said like, this is a book to share, now I know why, right? As soon as I read that sentence, I'm like, I know exactly why Seth liked this book. So tell me how you got from the could to should, but the more of just general future to your future.

Yes, thanks for sharing that quote from the book. And it's just based on that true belief that I have, which is that the future shouldn't be something that happens to you. It should be something you make happen, right? And so, a lot of people ask themselves like, yeah, that sounds great, Fredrik, but how do I actually do that, right? How do I create my future? That I want to see happening? How do I create a better future for myself? And I think that's a really, really important question that I'm going to give some answers in the book to, where I really help people to figure out not what's the latest trends, what is something that we predict. That's not what the book is about. It's really about showing people a way to really create a better future for themselves. And you have something that is really powerful, and that is your mind. And when you ask yourself, what if the future isn't something to predict but something to create? You don't need a DeLorean like Back in the Future, which helps you to travel through time. You have a much more powerful tool, as I mentioned. It's your mind. So each choice, each action we take, is a seed we plant for our future. So think about the small decisions you make every day, when you get up, what you eat, how you spend your time, the words you speak, and all of those. These are the building blocks of your future. And I think if we become more aware of that, if we think about those choices more intentionally, then the future is not predetermined. It's something we actively create through the choices we make in the present. And so, that's why I have that little addition to what's next. And I say it's now, right? Because in the now, in those choices is really the power that lays the foundation of your future.

Well, and what I really liked about it, so I guess we have a third thing in common because the title of my book was Experience Mindset. And then, I read your take on mindset versus mind state. And then, I'm like, dang, I should have called it Experience Mind State. But no one would have sort of got the shift. And so, before I dig into the sort of the 6 dimensions of this mind state, what triggered you to sort of move from mindset to mind state? And I thought it was fascinating.

Thank you. So, as we all know, mindset really refers to that fixed attitudes that, shaped by our experiences and our beliefs, that really influence how we interpret events, right? And I think Carol Dweck did such a fantastic job to promote this notion of mindset, right? It's such a helpful way of thinking about how you think, right? And that it's based on your belief system again, of your past experiences and so forth. And growth mindset is something very powerful that is now taught around the world. What I also found in my work is that a lot of people have a hard time to change their mindset, right? To move towards a growth mindset or to move towards an entrepreneurial mindset or to move towards a happy mindset, whatever it is, right? And so, I found that secondly, it's such an ingrained terminology that we use, right? Even when you type something into Google or you use Google Docs or you use Microsoft Word or whatever technology you use or ChatGPT, it always defaults back to mindset. So, I had a really hard time when writing the book that it autocorrected me all the time back to mindset. And so, I had to remind myself that this is something that is so deeply ingrained that is also really, really hard to change. So, I moved towards mindstate. And so, mindstate for me is that momentary perspective that really encompasses our current thoughts, feelings, and our focus. That dynamically shaping our present experience and decision-making. So that really helps us to shift our perspective in the moment. And so it's more dynamic. It's more short-term and something we have more control over. And I'm very excited that a lot of people really resonate with that so that they say, like, you know, mindset is a super helpful concept, but mind state is something that I actually can influence and control.

Yeah, and I think it's the little subtle things. It was like something in my book I did where the acronym B2B, right? Business to business, right? Or B2C, right? Business to consumer. And it's a number 2, right? It's B, number 2, B, right? I said, how about this? Why don't we do B and the number 4 and B? And B and the number 4 and C, right? Business for business and business for consumer and business for employees, right? For them. You could even do with, but it didn't work because I wanted to flip the number, right? And so, the number was the gift that I could do a 2 and a 4 and it worked, right? But something just that subtle, like, okay, I'm gonna do it for them, not to them. You know what I mean? Like, it's like from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset or a beginner's mind to an expert's mind, however you wanna state it. The mind state, I think, is a great, simple way for you to go, look, what is my state of mind? Say it backwards, right? Right now, am I positive? Am I optimistic? To use one of your favorite words, like, you know, what are the things that it needs to be? But you, you, um, identified 6 dimensions of a future-ready mind state as the secret to igniting that potential future for someone. Would you mind stepping through those 6?

Yeah, and Just kudos to you for that B2B and B2C changing that to B4B and B4C. It's such a powerful shift that really unlocks something new, right? Where you now think that I'm not trying to sell something to someone, right? I'm now in service for someone, right? And that is something that is remarkable because that changes everything for you. And I like those small shifts to offer to people as well, right? And I do that with those 6 dimensions that you just mentioned. And I can briefly kind of like go through them. And the powerful thing is that you should recognize all of them, right? It should not be something new as something you should learn or even recite afterwards. It's something that is deeply ingrained in us humans. What I want to offer is that whenever you unleash those dimensions, whenever you train those, whenever you live by those dimensions, what I say is that you see more opportunities. And everybody wants to see more opportunities, I guess, in their lives. And when you see more opportunities, you can make better choices that leads to a better future. So that's a simple equation that everybody hopefully can take with them. On their path to the future. So the first dimension, I think, which for me is probably one of the most radical ones as well, I call it radical optimism, right? Transforming challenges into opportunity is key to what I call future readiness. And this really involves reframing situations to see the potential for better and using something that is inspired by improv, which is yes, and. Thinking to build upon ideas constructively, right? The importance of saying yes and saying yes and instead of yes, but really unlocks creativity and generates new possibilities and also fosters collaboration, right? How many times do we tap ourselves and say like, hey, I just found myself to find many reasons why I should not do something, right? Or why I don't like this idea or why I should not make any changes, right? And that's really that blocker that we can overcome by saying yes or saying yes and. And that's really about radical optimism. So for me, radical optimism also goes beyond seeing that glass as half full. We know that metaphor of seeing the glass half empty or seeing the glass half full, right? And we put people in those categories. For me, it's more than that. It really transforms every situation into opportunities and challenges as a chance for something exceptional. What I mean by that is that we see the glass not only to be half full, we see the potential to fill the glass even further. And that's something that we all can live by and we all can practice and train as well. So that's the first one. It's radical optimism. Then, I have unreserved openness, right, which really is embracing about new experiences and perspectives, which I think is crucial, right? It really requires you to step outside of your comfort zone and actively seeking diversity in interactions and information. So that openness is something that really opens doors to new insights and new ideas. Then, I speak about compulsive curiosity, perpetual experimentation, expansive empathy. And the last dimension is your Dimension X, which is really reflecting your human superpower that you have. And I'm trying to help people to discover their unique strengths so that they can use that to really navigate life's challenges and shape their future. So these are the 6 dimensions that I really deeply believe that are all part of our human experience. But if we are acting more optimistic, more open, more curious, we experiment more and show more empathy, I think we have a really great chance to really shape the future we want to see happening.

Well, I love the first 5. I mean, we could spend hours on just those alone. I'm going to double-click on the last one, Dimension X. And the reason why is, you know, I made multiple career shifts through the 30 years I've been in and around tech. And I remember it was maybe 12 or 13 years ago now where I was— I don't know if I was listening to a presentation. I was having a conversation. Actually, I was having a conversation with someone. And we started talking about, well, what is your superpower? Right? And. And I was like, oh, well, I think my superpower is right? And then I was like, well, is that really my superpower? So I said, let me, Let me do a little exercise. So I was curious, right? And I, I, I was, I was open, and I went and I. And I had a tremendous level of psychological safety, I guess. I went and asked people why they chose me to be part of a project, or why they chose me to be a keynote speaker, or why they chose me to be the analyst that was gonna advise them on their future growth state, or whatever it was. Why me? Quote unquote, right? Why me? And not in a woe is me, why me? More in a positive, like, you chose me, why did you choose me? What was it about? Right? And so, then I started to hear and I captured these words on a piece of paper, like the words that they were using. And then, and then I was like, okay, somewhere in there is my superpower, right? Like that people found me credible or they found me, they liked the way I told stories or that, you know, whatever it was. So I kind of created an external view of my superpowers. Then I said, that's really what matters, right? Is not what you kind of think of yourself, but what others think of you. And how could I be better at what I do Maybe even make more money, change jobs, find a career where I can maximize my superpowers. And then that was absolutely my shift from Gartner to Salesforce. And then it was sales, writing two books, and then it was launching a podcast. And I was like, right, how do you continue to double-click into that superpower of what other people think of you? Is there something in this exercise that you don't sort of come up with that dimension X for yourself that you kind of go external or maybe marry the two?

Yes, I love that because marrying the two is such a powerful way to first discover your unique superpower, but then also somehow get an approval for it, right? In a way that others say like, yeah, I totally see that in you too. And so in my book, I have what I call like a life mapping exercise, right? Where you map your milestones in your life, the ups and downs. But then, at the second stage, you also do exactly what you shared is you go out and you talk to different people about these milestones and what really helped you to overcome these challenges, right? That helped you to make progress, move forward, and so forth. That really points to that Dimension X that is your unique superpower. And then, people talk back to you, right? What they see is your unique superpower. And that combination, again, with discovering first what is unique about me and secondly, get that social approval from others is a wonderful combination. What I'm also including is something beyond, which is make use of your unique superpower. Put it to practice. Put it out there. Really not just be aware that you're a great dot connector or whatever it is, or you show a lot of empathy, try to make use of it, right? Because your unique superpower really can unlock your next opportunity. And as soon as you do that, you see that this is such a helpful way of thinking about that. And that a lot of people walk around in their lives not knowing what their unique superpower is, right? Which is such a waste, right? Which is such an untapped, powerful way of looking at What unique contributions can you also make in the world that really are purposeful, that motivate you, and so forth?

Yeah, and I think that's the trick. You have to be confident enough to ask. You have to be willing to hear the good and the bad. Then you have to be able to assimilate it and have it positively reflect upon now what you either decide to do or not do. And I think that brings us to this the fact that the human brain is so wired to resist change. And so often, I got this from Whitney Johnson, who also endorsed your book, that you have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable in those transitional times in your career, in your life, in the business from a growth perspective. And so, how can people get better at embracing the unexpected? Because there's so much coming at them, right? And they can go, "Okay, I'm going to read this book." I understand the 6, I found my superpowers, and I have my day job and my family and it's overwhelming. If there's one thing you could say, of course, read the book, but if there's one thing that could make people feel like I can get started besides mind shift to mind state, besides those little things, what is an action they could do Monday morning to start on this journey?

Yes. Before I share a couple of those practices that probably everybody can try out, even on a Friday morning or a Saturday morning, doesn't matter what day it is, I think there is an important distinction to make. And that really resonates with so many people when I talk about it. There is the outer world and there's the inner world. And most of the time when we look into the future, we see that outer world. The outer world is everything outside of us. It's society, it's technology, it's events, it's the people around us and so forth. And that's constantly changing and we can't control it. However, we do have the power to influence it, right? Through our actions, choices, and the way we interact with others. And, you know, we can make that positive impact and help shape the direction of the future. The inner world, though, is something that is based on our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. And just like the outer world, we can't control most of the time everything that happens inside us, right? An emotion just appears. That we can control. But what we can control is our responses, right? We can train ourselves to respond better by really cultivating practices like mindfulness and reflection. We can build what I call resilience and adaptability and a positive outlook, right? This training really helps us to stay grounded and clear-headed even when the outer world feels chaotic and out of our control. And so, the magic happens really when you connect the two worlds. When we try it in our inner world, we can approach the outer world with more purpose and more confidence. And I think that's what we all can do a better job at, like looking into our inner world, become aware that emotions arise, thoughts are arising, right? And how do we respond in different situations? And so really harmonizing these two worlds to create a future that aligns with what truly matters to us. So a couple of practices that really everybody can try out is, for example, when you look at your own choices, right? What choices am I making today that will shape my future, right? You can maybe do for one week a journaling exercise where you keep a journal and note down 5 choices you make every day. And at the end of the week, reflect on these choices. Did they actually align with the future you envision?? Or were these choices actually something that is against the future that you were envisioning? So that's an interesting practice that we all can do for a week. There's another one that I really, really like, which is called future self-visualization, trying to really put an image out into the future or an image about yourself and trying to really envision how you're going to be like in the future. So you just need to carve out 5 minutes each day to imagine your ideal future self.? What does your life look like? What brings you joy? This practice really helps you start living that future today because when you start to imagine it, you can actually build it and move towards it. If you can't imagine it, it's really going to be hard to move that way. So imagine it first and do that exercise to really trying to visualize your future self. And then, you see that your choices will be different based on that future picture of yourself.

Amazing. Well, those are some great suggestions. I took tons of notes. And so I feel like at least I'm gonna get one of those done because I'm always looking for ways in which to improve what I do and, you know, kind of how I feel about my own future, right? So thank you so much for sharing that with us, Fredrik. And for those listeners, besides going up and picking up a copy of his book, "What's Next Is Now," How to Live Future Ready. How can they keep in touch with you, Fredrik?

Yes, so I hope you're going to enjoy the book and do some of these practices that really help you to live future ready and create the next that you want to see happening. I also write a Next Letter that really kind of like goes deep into some of these practices that have experiments for you that you can try out, that has inspirational stories that I share about my own life, about other people, how they become future ready and how they shape the future they want to see happening. So you're going to find that everywhere if you type in Next Letter and my name, Fredrik. You can sign up for that and so we can stay in touch and you get your dose of inspiration.

Excellent. Well, I will sign up immediately after we click end to this amazing conversation. But thank you everybody for joining us on this episode of What's Next. Not What's Next Is Now, but just What's Next. I'm your host, Tiffany Bova. I look forward to having you join us time. Please leave a review, download, share with your friends, and have a great rest of your day.

Thanks, Fredrik.