How to Take Action and Shape Your Future Today: Frederik Pferdt

It's about doing small and frequent tests rather than waiting for the perfect plan. And experiments aren't about failing or succeeding, but about finding what's possible. Welcome to the IDOU Creative Confidence Podcast. A series focused on building your confidence at work to tackle your biggest creative challenges. Join us as we learn insights and lessons straight from IDO and today's most impact oriented design thinking leaders. Hello everyone and welcome to the Creative Confidence Podcast where we talk to subject matter experts about creativity, leadership, innovation and growth. I'm your host, Koleita Stafford and today we're speaking with a returning podcast guest, Google's first chief innovation evangelist and author of a new book, What's Next is Now, How to Live Future Ready, Frederick Fert. Welcome Frederick. Thank you so much for having me again. It's wonderful to have you back. For those of you tuning in to the Creative Confidence Podcast for the first time, we're IDOU, an online school from IDO. We help leaders take on any challenge by putting people first. We give you the skills and confidence to support creative and collaborative teams and design strategies, products and services rooted in unmet human needs. For today we have a very exciting topic. So Frederick is going to go through some just very, very quickly some key highlights from his book, including shaping your future through small actions today, cultivating empathy for your future self, navigating uncertainty with perpetual experimentation and identifying your dimension X. Now if you haven't read the book, you might not have any idea what we're talking about and that's okay because today is not just us talking, Frederick has designed this to be an active session. So all of us, he's going to take us through three of those topics and guide us in activity so that we can all try on some of these things and prepare ourselves for the future. I think it's going to be one, we're like, Frederick, I know you're excited for this one, I am too. So we'll see how it goes. The goal being, it's a wonderful, it's the end of 2024. We're all looking ahead to 2025. It's a good time to reflect and set yourself up for the future that you want in, well, I'll let Frederick get to it. Let's get into it. Let me give a little more context about Frederick. Frederick helped build Google's culture of innovation. He co-founded the Google Garage and pioneered Google's creative skills for innovation lab, where he trained tens of thousands of Googlers to experiment with cutting-edge ideas. He's also taught classes on innovation and creativity at Stanford University's D-School. For more than 10 years, you've worked with an amazing array of clients and organizations from NASA to the United Nations, South by Southwest, the FBI, which I love hearing about Mercedes-Benz, the International Monetary Fund, and many more. Groups like that have sought out his insights on creativity, innovation, and being ready for the future. He is the author of the award-winning book What's Next Is Now, How to Live Future Ready. So at the core of your book, it's the idea that we may not be able to predict our future, but we can shape our future. So can you tell us a little bit more about your book and that core message? Yes. So for me, really, the book is about that fact that the future is not something that happens to you. It's something you may happen, right? And I think it's very important. As we all look for those predictions of, you know, not just the weather, but like, what will the future bring, right? I think we shouldn't ask that question, what will the future bring? We should ask ourselves, what future do I want to create? And for a lot of people, the question remains, like, how do I create a better future for myself, right? And I wanted to give a couple of answers to that question, how we can actually create our own future and hopefully a better one for ourselves. So when we think about the future, we usually think about what do I want to have or accomplish, right? Yeah. We have plans, right? We look at goals, we look at things we want to accomplish. But these are things that are really hard to control, right? I guess a lot of people do this, especially again, like in this time of the year, asking, what goals do I have for the next year? But when we reframe the question and instead think about how do I want to be in the future, or focus then shift to something we can actually control? So it's not about that grand vision someone else creates. It's about you now. It's about your values, your behaviors, and the way of thinking. And so now the future immediately starts from within. And maybe your answer is simple, right? I want to be more curious, I want to be more open, more kind, or more loving. And we saw some of these themes already in the chat, right? So once you've identified that, ask yourself, what can I do today? Because the future also starts now in every choice we make in every moment. In each small action you take, whether it's listening more or asking more questions, or simply doing small acts of kindness or showing your love to someone else, that moves you towards the vision that you have for your future self. And so this isn't about a big abstract goal that feels out of reach, right? It's about actions for your personal future and making small intentional steps towards it, starting right now. And so when you truly understand that all the choices that you're making and that are possible for you, you realize how much power you have to influence your future. And so the future moves from this being out there in the far distance to the right here and the right now, and you have now the control to actually shape it. I love that so much. I like the point, too, it's not what I want to accomplish, how do I want to be? And you have control to shape it. And one of the ways you encourage people to shape it is this idea of mind states, mindsets. We're going to go into three of them, but can you just say a little bit more about what is this idea of a future ready mind state? Yes. And I love that you already used kind of like both words, right? And funny story when I was writing the book, right? You know, on my computer, it always auto corrected me when I used mind state back to mind set, right? It's such a powerful word that we have in our language nowadays, right? And I think it's very important that we start to believe that the future also starts in our mind. But there's a distinction between mindset and mind state because a mindset is usually this fixed mental framework or belief system that shapes how we interpret the world, often rooted in past experiences or assumptions we have. So for me in contrast, a mind state is a dynamic and adaptable way of being, reflecting our present awareness, our emotions, and also the readiness to act in alignment with our future that we want to create. So if that's still too abstract for you, here's an example, right? Imagine you were stuck in traffic, right? A mindset might say, this always happens to me. There's nothing I can do, so I'll just sit here and wait and complain. This is a fixed way of looking at the world and it's focused on frustration and it's rooted in the belief that the situation is out of your control. A mind state, however, might shift to what can I do with this time? Maybe I'll listen to an inspiring podcast, like the podcast you're putting out into the world. So thanks for doing that. And maybe I call someone I've been meaning to catch up with, right? So it's adaptable. It's focused on creating value in the moment and aligned with making the most of your present circumstances, I would say, to shape a better experience. So for me, it's really important that we shift our focus on mind state because that's dynamic, it's adaptable, and it's in your control. I love that. The adaptable, that's an important distinction. So can you help us practice this right now, Frederick? Let's try out a few. So Frederick picked out three. There's actually six that you cover in your book and we're going to lightly touch on three of them so we can all start to practice and bring this into our into our practice, our lifestyles. The first one we're going to start with is called expansive empathy. And Frederick, I'll just pass it to you. What is this? Why is it important for a future ready mind state? Yes, so empathy is such a powerful, not just practice. It's for me, it's a way of living right. An expansive empathy for me is about extending empathy not only to others, which is very important, but also to your future self. So empathizing with your future self encourages us to really align with our future goals and the way we want to be in the world. the future. So there's some powerful research that Helherschfield from UCLA and some of my Stanford colleagues actually conducted, which is related to how you visualize or imagine your future self and how that can actually help to shift your present behaviors. So it actually has an impact on how you behave in the moment right now. So they've done some research where they basically asked Stanford students to imagine themselves in 10 years from today right and students reported back they can see themselves and they see themselves you know maybe have some more money or like having a better car or whatever it is right. Then they asked the students to imagine themselves in 20 years from today and then the answers were related to like oh they might have a relationship with someone they might live in a house or have a job they can visualize and so forth. But now it gets interesting when they asked the students to imagine themselves in 30 years or even 40 years out. None of the students had a very clear picture right. It was very hazy or blurry what they described and they continued with the research where they actually put VR headsets on the students heads to project an image about themselves in the next 30 or 40 years and how they're going to look like. So the people could literally empathize with their future selves by looking at themselves right for a couple of minutes and when they did that they reported back that the behaviors in the right here right now will actually change. So they reported that they will put double the amount into their retirement fund. They reported back that they will actually start eating more healthier food and you know living a more healthy lifestyle. So what's interesting is that as soon as you build that relationship with your future self as how Hershfield actually says like it's not that easy because you see your future self as somebody foreign right unless you're trying to build that relationship over time so by visualizing your future self and so forth that really helps you to make different choices and have different behaviors in the right here right now. So the good news is that you don't need VR headsets you can actually just do an imagination exercise right where you close your eyes and you're trying to really imagine who will I be in the future? How do I live? Who will I be surrounded by? And so forth and practicing that really changes the behaviors in the right here right now which I think is really magical. So so we're going to try that right now. This won't do justice we're only going to take about two minutes. I'm going to do a two minute meditation to help us imagine our future selves 20 years from now and so we're going to try this out. So if you're in your car don't close your eyes but if you're anywhere else I recommend close your eyes and just take a moment. This comes from our power of purpose course and it's just going to be a quick meditation to imagine yourself 20 years from now. Close your eyes lean back in your chair relax and take a few deep breaths. Now I want you to start picturing yourself from above looking down at yourself in your chair in whatever room you're in. Now begin to zoom out a little bit see yourself from the top of the room pull back further see the building see the street keep pulling back now you see your city or your town pull back even further and now you see your country your continent you see the entire planet imagine slowly spinning beneath you and then the planets are spin faster and faster and it speeds up as it's going the years spin by and it speeds up time and now it's going to start to slow down again and come to a rest and we're 20 years in the future now I want you to begin to zoom in toward the earth and find yourself somewhere in the world where are you 20 years from now imagine it's a Thursday morning what do you look like have the years worn on your face the joys and worries of a life well lived what are you wearing what are you working on what are the challenges you are joyfully pursuing now I want you to imagine yourself in a home in your living room look around what photos do you see what friendships stand out what are the relics of a life well lived spend a few moments looking around your home and take notice of what's around you now I want you to zoom back out of your home out of the future and back into this city and this room and the chair that you're sitting in right now and when you're ready open your eyes and then we're going to reflect on what you saw for yourself so Frederick I'm going to invite you back in and you did take time to do this and I know it's not nearly enough time but hold that vision of you future self so Frederick what came up for you and help guide us what is this how does this help guide our present yes thank you so much hope for guiding us through this powerful exercise right and even a couple of minutes it's such a great reminder that spending time in your future right and trying to imagine and strengthen that muscle of imagining is so powerful right and we should do that more often so thank you go if we're doing that so what came up for me was a couple of things I think definitely I saw myself you know aged right wrinkles and gray hair and like I think I'm wearing like one of those onesies suits right that hopefully can regulate your temperature and whatever it is that we always see in those futuristic movies right so that's probably what I'm wearing I'm wearing the color black that's what I saw too but I also saw myself surrounded by laughter and deep conversations with friends and family right there were photos of hikes I've taken maybe with my kids I saw a bookshelf filled with a couple of books that I actually have written which was great and a small garden I saw a garden as well that was just outside a window that you know where why I experimented with some some plants and growing some stuff as well so what struck me was really how clear the future felt when I gave when I gave it space right to come into focus and it reminded me that again the future isn't something distant it's built right here in our mind and it can start with our with our thoughts and ideas about that future love that hi there soos here hope you're enjoying the conversation curious to know a bit more about i.d.o. you we're an online school where anyone can learn to solve anything creatively if you'd like to learn more about the topics discussed today I invite you to join our online course cultivating creative collaboration in this course you'll learn a new way of working one that harnesses the power of diverse perspectives and creative thinking to push past the obvious safe solutions toward the truly innovative ones you can check it out at id.eu.com/collaboration now let's get back to the conversation you have a framework a simple film the Blake sentence that i'm going to ask you to do Fredrick and we're going to ask everyone to do for themselves as well so you have that future vision of yourself let's attach it to the present what did you learn about yourself that would influence the actions and ways of being you want to be now so this framework is simply as I think about my future self or the sentence I want to be more quality or behavior unless quality or behavior so like friendrick you mentioned the books on your shelf the garden what you're wearing so take that what does that mean for your present how would you answer this sentence yes thanks co i think the other piece that you know came up was that i've been surrounded by laughter and deep conversations with friends and families so for me i want to be more present in the relationships that matter most right that's something i want to i want to focus on and less maybe preoccupied with the noise of things that pull me away from that focus right so and those those might be the two things yeah i want to be more in less so yeah let's let's hear from people what they want to be more in less as well so thank you for everyone who's sharing so we're getting some already more accepting less judgmental less less what do you the smallest stuff and i love it goes back to what you said at the beginning Fredrick these are things you can control it's not the things that you accomplish it's how you show up and how you want to be and you can control that yeah so this was an expansive empathy exercise the big idea was let's empathize with our future selves in order to influence our present state of being. I'm going to keep us moving just because we have two more mind states we want to explore. Thank you everyone for sharing. The next mind state is perpetual experimentation and at IDEO we love experiments. In your book, Frederick, you talk about perpetual experimentation and this is the idea that's the practice of constant small experiments to redefine actions and ideas. So why is this important to a future ready mind state? Yes, it's important to create a better future for yourself, right? And I want to go back to that notion that the future isn't something predicted. It's something to be created step by step. And the step by step is about perpetual experimentation, right? Because it's about doing small and frequent tests rather than waiting for the perfect plan, right? And for me, every experiment moves you toward the unknown and each step brings more clarity that allows you to move forward with purpose. And so even when you experiment just for the sake of a fresh perspective, you expand your ability to see the world from a different angle. And I think that's very important. And each time you do this, you open yourself a little more to the potential for innovation and something better. So for me, again, like the perpetual experimentation fuels that immediate discovery, right? It tests ideas rapidly and repeatedly and keeps us progressing towards what we actually want to see happening. And most of us, we're looking for that big epiphany, right? We're looking for that big reveal. But it's more important to look for those for a lot of these smaller insights, these little insights that lead to new ideas, right? And in every experiment, you can you can look for those. I love that too. Because in your right too often, I think we set goals that are too audacious or we feel they have to be really rigid. So you're inviting us to take just the smallest micro experiments. And in fact, so that's the activity we're going to do next. And we're going to encourage everyone to think of a three day micro experiment. Just one small thing you can you can play with to unlock or just kind of open up some of your mind state over these coming days. So Frederick guide us through this. Like what is the way? How would you set up a three day micro experiment? And maybe give us an example. Yes, it's very important not to overthink or waiting for the perfect conditions. That's the two things we usually like to do. It's to overthink or to wait until the perfect conditions are here. And for like a three day experiment or micro experiment, right, we can look at maybe three areas, right? Maybe in relationship to your health or your relationships or work. And for health, you know, try a new morning routine like starting a day with maybe a cold shower like or a cold bath. That's I think a trend that a lot of people are exploring at the moment or maybe going for a 10 minute walk, right? Outside. For relationships, maybe send a gratitude text each morning before you actually do anything else on your phone to someone you care about and see how it impacts your connections, right? I think that's a shift that we can all do, you know, starting starting tomorrow morning. Or for work, maybe block one hour of uninterrupted focus time to tackle a challenging task, right? The first thing in the morning. It's important to keep it simple and specific, right? Something manageable within your schedule. And then at the end, just reflect on what you notice. At the end of the day, maybe take notice of how does this make me feel, right? Is it helping me in any way? Maybe what response did I get from the people I send a kind message to, right? Or what surprised you, those are insights that really are key to maybe refining your approach. So it's very important again to not overthink and don't wait for the perfect conditions. As I hear from so many people going back to the ice bath, where they say, like, oh, I don't have any ice baths at home. Or, you know, I cannot fit that into my morning because I have other things to do, right? Or I'll wait for the weather to improve. So it's actually warm outside, right? Things that are just hindering you to get started, right? Instead of say to yourself, hey, I can turn my shower actually on cold. And I don't have to wait until the weather is warmer outside. I can do that inside. So it's just a way of getting started. And for me, one of the micro experiments I'm trying at the moment, and you can check with my daughter, it's actually happening. It's three things in the evening that we observed, right? That made us happy. And an additional one thing that we're not so happy about, right? So just kind of like trying to reflect back on the day. And so like, hey, what are these things that make us happy? And what are the things that also make us not happy, right? And maybe we can we can use that to learn something for our next day. And it's a it's a wonderful reminder. And my daughter always comes comes up to me and helps me to do that again, like because you have so many excuses why to not do those micro experiments. And having someone else help you with that is a is a great way to to get started. Just to just reiterate two things you said was one, don't overthink it. And to reflect on how it makes you feel, I thought that was interesting. It's not again, it's not what you're trying to accomplish with these micro experiments, but it's what it how you feel what you learn through it. So we encourage everyone think of what you might do for your three day micro experiment. Something related to it might be your health, a relationship, something related to work, pick it small. I am going to keep us moving because we have one more mine state we'd like to cover. And this one is very exciting. It's very personal. It's called the idea is dimension X. So Frederick in your book, you talk about dimension X as the superpower or the the thing that makes you uniquely you, especially in moments of challenge. So can you tell us a little bit about what is this dimension X and why is it important for future ready mine states? Yes. So when I when I wrote the book, you know, I put out these five dimensions that, you know, we touched on on two now. And I felt that there's something missing, right? There's something missing. And I also felt like, you know, when you write a book about the future, right, you have to include a dimension X because it's just that intriguing piece that is the unknown, right? And for me, the unknown is people's unique superpower. It's that intrinsic strength that really shapes your contribution to the world and makes you stand out. And we all have that. But understanding and leveraging your personal strengths helps navigate and uncertain future, right? So leveraging your dimension X helps you navigate challenges and really contribute meaningfully. So what I wanted to do is really help people to identify first, what is my unique superpower? And there's a couple of ways you can do that, right? You can do that by doing a reflection exercise. You can do that by going through something which is mapping your past life and looking at the highs and lows in your life. These milestones that really shaped you in a way and how you overcame these. So there's also a way where you can ask other people, literally your friends and say, like, hey, why are you my friend? And checking in with them saying, what's a unique thing about me, right? That you value. That might also lead to discovering your unique superpower. So there's a couple of ways of actually doing that. Most importantly, what I want people to do is not just discover it but make use of it. Really use that superpower in everything you're doing because that really helps you to make progress, to move forward and become the person you want to become. So to make this tangible, you've given us a couple of ways that we can think about it to identify it. I want people to imagine you were going to make a t-shirt that had your superpower model on it. What would that t-shirt say? And of course, Frederick, I have to ask you what would you say? And do you have an example of in your book, you share 14 different stories from colleagues and who talk about their dimension X? So I'd love to know what would you say and can you share a story of a colleague of yours? Yes. So I've been on that discovery for quite some time, discovery journey for quite some time, obviously, to really discover like what is my unique superpower that I feel can really help me to move forward and make progress. So what I discovered and to be honest, it changes over time, right? So there could be something that, you know, for the past 10 years has been true but for the last you know two, three months it could have changed. So for me, what I've observed throughout my life is a bias towards action. That really allowed me to just go for it. And just do it without overthinking and without mostly asking for permission to be honest as well. That really served me well and that's a superpower that I use in most of my work to just have that bias towards action and see like, what's the first step I can take here? And just let's go. So that would probably be on my T-shirt. There is a great sign at the B-school as well in the atrium which says the only way to do it is to do it, which I think is a great reminder that, hey, let's get started. And not overthink it or make the big plan first. So maybe two people I want to highlight. I think all of the stories in the book about these incredible human beings that I call future reddies because they really embrace these dimensions of optimism and openness and curiosity and empathy and experimentation. One is Sarah that I've been able to work with for quite some time. She lives in Singapore. And she went through a whirlwind of change. I think she changed jobs 12 times inside Google. Because of reorgs, because of other things, projects winding down, shifting roles, projects shutting down and so forth. That really was not serving her well. And I think she had a health crisis as well that landed her in the hospital. So in that chaos, she realized she wasn't listening to what her body and mind truly needed. So by tuning into herself and reading started to listen to herself and embracing openness and curiosity, she found strength in uncertainty and learned to see unexpected turns as opportunities for growth. So now when something changes in terms of your job or new responsibilities, she sees that as a great opportunity to learn. So she reframed that as something that just happens to her where she says, "Oh, this is another change in my role or in my job or in my work." She now sees that as an opportunity for growth and an opportunity to learn. And that small shift in how you approach that really gave her energy and she's now thriving in what she's doing and she's incredibly successful. So that's Sarah. Another one is Newton, a friend of mine, who really, his life took a transformative turn when he asked himself, when he asked himself the question, "What would I do if I didn't care what others thought?" Right. That's a good question. And so this question really sparked a journey of discovery, leading him to become a world champion in powerlifting, actually. And transition from engineering, he had an engineering role into a role at Google that focuses on well-being and mental health. As he went through a mental health crisis himself and suffered from burnout, he really embraced curiosity and what he says, he said, he was riding the wave of curiosity and letting go of control and letting go of what other people thought of him. To really finding a path of purpose and strength and leadership that really inspires now others to care for themselves and to now he starts the movement around mental health and really inspires a lot of people by sharing his story and what he learned throughout these years by literally asking himself that question, "What would I do if I didn't care what others thought?" So really two incredible human beings and there's more of these stories in the book that really showed how focusing on yourself and focusing on what you can control by making a shift in your perspective really unleashes something new. So we went through this last portion somewhat quickly, Dimension X, in terms of how to do it in your book, there's a lot of robust, the key activity that you encourage folks to do is to map a timeline of key events in your life, in your career and look for what was the unique way that you address that challenge or what you learned through it and that's one way to identify your Dimension X. And so I encourage everyone to do that, but give it all that, we are wrapping up, we're going to do a couple questions, but I just want to recap where we've been so far. So again, we are talking with Frederick Ferrett about his new book and we've covered three states, three dimensions to encourage a future ready mind state. So the first one was expansive empathy. The big idea here is extending empathy not just to others, but to your future self. And doing so encourages present day actions that can help move you towards your long-term goals of how you want to be in the future. We talked about perpetual experimentation and this idea is lots of like, shift in your focus towards rapid goals and adaptive progress and we talked about doing a three-day micro-experiment. The big idea is to test ideas rapidly and learn. You're not looking for epic epiphanies, you're not looking to overthink it, just to get little insights. And the third one we just talked about was Dimension X. The big idea is this is your unique superpower, the intrinsic strength that shapes how you show up in the world and how you contribute. And it's really important for navigating uncertainty such as in the future. That's wonderful. And Frederick, even though today we focus very much about your book as it relates to individuals, but throughout the book it is geared towards also leaders and organizations. There's a lot of strategies for both to apply to your personal life in being future ready and at the organizational level. So lots, lots there on that. I appreciate how many activities and tactical ways you can approach that. So Frederick, it is such a delight to have you. Your creativity, your humanity, it shows up in everything you do. So I am going to start to wrap us up. I do have one last question for you, Frederick. I usually like to wrap with asking guests if they had advice for their younger self. It's appropriate today that I ask you what would advice would you give to your future self. While you think on that, I'm going to wrap us up. So again, thank you everyone for joining us. Today we've been hearing from Frederick Ferrett, Google's first chief innovation evangelist and author of the bestselling book What's Next is Now, How to Live Future Ready. It is available at your favorite bookseller. And if you want to dive deeper into things like a unique superpower, I encourage you to check out idea use course from superpowers to great teams. It's a self-paced course and there's a bunch of resources also at our website, idiou.com. And with that, Frederick, final advice for your future self. Yes, thanks for the shout-out for the book. As we focus a lot on individuals today and I think you should definitely start with your own future, right? And not help others first to invent their futures, right? Start thinking about how do you want to be in the future. There's also a good reminder that connections are the bridges that turn individual dreams into shared realities. So reminding us that the future is best built together. So let's take that seriously and let's build better futures together. So thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much, Frederick. And thank you everyone for joining. Bye. Thanks so much for joining us. If you like what you're hearing here, you can find so much more by subscribing to the Creative Confidence podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you'd like to listen. We're excited to keep fueling your creativity.