Visioning

About five years ago I was taking a break from work and surfing Reddit when I landed on an article about climate change. It wasn't the first one I'd read, nor was I oblivious to the problem previous to that, but it was the first time that the full implications of climate change really hit me viscerally. More importantly, it was the first article that made clear to me that some of the worst consequences of climate change could land squarely on my children within their lifetimes, especially under a business-as-usual scenario.

I spent a good deal of time trying to find counterpoints to that article. Surely not, I thought, if this were at all legitimate everyone would be talking about it, people wouldn't be working on anything else (a quaint thought I now realize). But the upshot was that I decided very quickly that, knowing what I knew, I was obliged to work on the problem every day for the rest of my life until it was solved, and that's more or less what I've done.

On the one hand, working on an issue that worries me a great deal keeps me from ruminating on it (some of the time). Whoever said that action was the antidote to despair wasn't wrong. On the other hand, focusing on an often grim subject much of the time can be draining, and I spend a lot of time well outside of my comfort zone. If you'd asked me in 2015 where the last place would be that you would find me several years from then, in Washington D.C. lobbying members of Congress would have been somewhere high up in the list. So it's difficult and often slow-going work.

One thing I don't tend to do is picture what success would look like. At a recent staff retreat we went through a process called visioning, where you vividly imagine yourself 10 or 15 years in the future, a future in which the goal you've been working so hard has been realized. For us, that was having successfully passed the bill we've been supporting, and helped the country pivot towards aggressively acting on climate change. What does does that future look like? No really–in vivid detail. What do we see when we look around? What does it sound and smell like? What are we doing day to day? What kinds of things are we thinking about and what does it feel like to look back on our past success?

When I first heard of this exercise I was skeptical. Somehow, I thought, picturing success feels like "jinxing it". And I worried that thinking about such a future would just bring into contrast the current reality, and how far it sometimes seems we have to go. But that wasn't the case. It was a surprisingly salutary and invigorating experience. It made me realize how very rarely I think about what I'm really working towards, and what a wonderful outcome that would be. I suppose that means I spend all of my time thinking tactically, and focusing on the next hurdle. It also made me realize how rarely I think of what I want outside of the cause–what I'd do for fun, for example, where I'd live, and what my new goals would be.

I pictured myself working at a University and pursuing a masters in Computer Science. I thought maybe I'd be living in Seattle or Portland. I'd spend my time studying in coffee shops and geeking out on craft beers. I'd spend my evenings going to Meetup groups about obscure programming topics, and I'd play a lot too. I'd be goofing around with fun and "pointless" projects like I used to–little electronics projects like robotics, 3D printers, and toy graphics games. I would still be an activist too, focusing on a new cause. I've learned that it's dangerous to be oblivious to what's happening around you, and you can't take for granted that important problems are being addressed. I don't see myself ever forgetting that lesson.

The lesson was a stark illustration to me of the power of storytelling. We had Peterson Toscano, host of Citizens' Climate Radio guiding the exercise, and he's phenomenal at what he does. He managed to perfectly transport us to his imagined future. And, as I described earlier, it was the "little things"–the sights and sounds and smells and tiny details that made it possible to put myself into that setting. Though, I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me, since those things are what exactly what I love about good books.

Anyway, I love this concept. You can listen to a podcast episode or two of Peterson going through these steps with guests. I hope to make this kind of practice a regular thing myself, and I think that, whatever your cause is, or whatever goals you're working towards, you can benefit from stepping back and picturing what success would really look and feel like.