{"id":5688,"date":"2021-06-24T17:04:38","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T14:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/csa.purpleajans.online\/?p=5688"},"modified":"2021-07-08T16:56:06","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T13:56:06","slug":"the-one-strategy-i-use-most-often-life-lessons-personel-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/the-one-strategy-i-use-most-often-life-lessons-personel-development\/","title":{"rendered":"The One Strategy I Use Most Often Life Lessons, Personel Development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During interviews, I\u2019m often asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s the one strategy from Think Like a Rocket Scientist that you personally use most often<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s called backcasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of us, planning for the future means forecasting. In our businesses, we review the current supply and demand for widgets and extrapolate them into the future. In our personal lives, we let our current skill set drive our vision for who we might become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With forecasting, we look in the rearview mirror, rather than the possibilities ahead. When we forecast, we ask, \u201cWhat can we do with what we have?\u201d But often, the status quo itself is part of the problem. Forecasting takes all our problematic assumptions and propels them into the future. It artificially restricts our vision of what\u2019s feasible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backcasting flips the script. Rather than forecasting the future, backcasting aims to determine how an imagined future can be attained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve used backcasting for most of my life\u2014as early as middle school (though I didn\u2019t know what to call it back then).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was growing up in Istanbul, my moonshot was to become an astronaut one day. I decided to work backward from my ideal future to figure out exactly what I needed to do to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year was 1995. The internet had just arrived at my school, and it was excruciatingly slow. It would take 4 minutes just to load the Yahoo!<\/em> home page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mustering all the patience I could find, I researched the background of every astronaut who had ever worked at NASA. My goal was to identify what NASA was looking for in picking its astronaut corps. I found out, for example, that most civilian astronauts had advanced degrees in science or engineering from a prestigious university in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I then worked backward from that <\/em>goal. I researched how to get into college in the United States. I learned English as a second language. I borrowed every SAT and TOEFL prep book I could get my hands on. I taught myself computer programming (C++), thinking it would be another useful tool in my arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was eventually admitted to Cornell University to study astrophysics and ended up serving on the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers mission. I went from daydreaming about space in Turkey to having front row seats to the action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t get my moonshot of becoming an astronaut (at least not yet\u2014nudge, nudge, Elon and Jeff). But I got to work on one of the most successful interplanetary missions of all time. If I wasn\u2019t aiming high, and if I hadn\u2019t applied backcasting to sketch out a concrete plan for getting there, I wouldn\u2019t have ended up where I am today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backcasting can be applied to just about anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Determine what you want and move back from that ideal future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you want your life to look like? Work backward from that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does an ideal product look like for your business? Visualize a customer delighted with that product and sketch out a roadmap to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of letting your existing reality drive your vision, let your vision drive your reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we forecast the future, we try to predict it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we backcast the future, we create it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.S. Backcasting is one of the many strategies I cover in my presentations on how to reimagine the status quo. If you\u2019ve got a virtual or in-person event coming up, you can learn more about my speaking and submit a booking request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My previous events include keynotes at Microsoft, Adidas, General Electric, Google X, Salesforce, among many others. Here\u2019s what others are saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOzan\u2019s talk resonated with our employees so well that people continually referenced Ozan and \u2018moonshots\u2019 for not only days but weeks afterwards! Highly recommend him a speaker.\u201d \u2014Kevin Mullins, Workhuman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOzan\u2019s presentation was fantastic \u2013 his content is thought provoking, challenging and compelling, packed with pertinent examples to bring his concepts to life. I wouldn\u2019t hesitate to recommend Ozan as a speaker and author for teams looking to improve and challenge how they work and think.\u201d \u2014Jody Lewis, Lloyds Bank<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOzan speaks with ease and keeps his audience intrigued and engaged. His stories are fantastic. Book him. You won\u2019t regret it.\u201d \u2014Anika Hedstrom, Vista Capital Partners<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI felt like I was watching a live TED talk.\u201d \u2014 Mark Whalen, VP, Schikel Corporation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During interviews, I\u2019m often asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s the one strategy from Think Like a Rocket Scientist that you personally use most often?\u201d It\u2019s called backcasting. For most of us, planning for the future means forecasting. In our businesses, we review the current supply and demand for widgets and extrapolate them into the future. In our personal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":6639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[153,151,154,152],"class_list":["post-5688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-life-lessons","tag-ozan-varol","tag-personel-development","tag-the-one-strategy-i-use-most-often"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csa.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}