I don’t make predictions - that is insane. But in my line of work (planning) I have to look out into the future. The forecast scenarios I prepare are but tools, a pick-axe to help bring down “a wall of radical uncertainty in a chaotic and unpredictable system” … to help make decisions.
Anybody dealing with planning type issues related to large-investment bets - like utility capital assets - might want to go read Nasim Taleb’s Fooled By Randomness. But I also recommend this short piece on the web entitled “Crisis Fatigue and the Co-Creation of Positive Possibilities” by Tom Atlee that I just came across - I highly recommend it.
Tom Atlee
All the predictions — both good and bad — tell us absolutely nothing about what is possible. Trends and events only relate to what is probable. Probabilities are abstractions. Possibilities are the stuff of life, visions to act upon, doors to walk through. Pessimism and optimism as both distractions from living life fully.
I like two of Dave Pollard’s take-aways from this piece (buried in this post):
- Let go of outcome
- Look for positive possibilities and ways to partner them into greater probability
You don’t know what the outcomes are going to be - there is just no way. There should be no remorse regarding outcomes - unless, perhaps, the outcome is the result of a possibility you failed to consider as possible and therefore failed to dial it into your decision.
Therein lies the true nature of the problem of planning. It is very difficult to see all of the possibilities - both good and bad.


