Thriving on Overload is a futurist manifesto
I have been very slack at keeping my blog updated! Slightly late to share: my fifth book, Thriving on Overload: The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information, is now out.
To learn more go to the Thriving on Overload website, which includes full details on the book, as well as on the Thriving on Overload Interactive Course, which offers in-depth learning on the topic, the Thriving on Overload podcast, which includes all the interviews I did for the book, and a growing set of resources to help people thrive, including our weekly Tips for Thriving newsletter.
I am currently busy promoting the book and working with clients to help their executives and teams thrive on overload, while I continue my futurist work, including extensive keynote speaking and strategy facilitation.
How we can all be our own futurist
The way the book came about is that I worked long and hard on a proposal for a book about how to think about and create the future. My agent told me that futurist books are very hard to sell, however there was one chapter in my proposed book, titled “Thriving on Overload”, that he could sell if I made it into a book.
He was absolutely right that it was a better idea, with far broader reach and impact. In writing Thriving on Overload I distilled the lessons I had developed and refined over more than two decades working as a futurist, making them applicable to anyone whose work involves working with massive information.
Yet below the surface the book is in fact a kind of futurist manifesto, laying out the mindset we all need to be aware of change today and equipped to shape a better future.
The underlying themes of the book of how we can open ourselves to meaningful signals and change, make sense of the world, and perceive opportunities for systemic change are in essence providing the tools for us to all be our own futurists.
To see the possibilities of the future and act to create them we need to integrate the paradoxes of being wide open to ideas and signals, while also tightly focused on what is relevant and will support useful action.
This requires applying both our often well-developed skills of analysis as well as nurturing our often less-applied capabilities for synthesis.
We need to be whole to see the whole, and from that take the action that will create a future we want to live in.
I’d love to hear your reflections if you read the book.
