Imaginable ⭑⭑⭑⭑
Genre: Nonfiction
US Publication: March 22 2022
Print: 432 pages
Audio: 16 hours 31 minutes
Confetti Rating: 4 stars
REVIEW:
Not gonna lie, pretty early on while reading Imaginable the future I was most fondly imagining was one where I’d finished it.
That’s because I went into it with the wrong expectations. I wanted the inside scoop on when I’d be buying my first flying car and vacationing on Mars. As it turns out, the “How to” part of the subtitle is pretty important here. This is really a self help book on how to become more open to an ever-changing world.
Jane McGonigal is a video game designer and future forecaster who actually created a video game simulation of a global pandemic about a decade ago that ended up being a heck of a lot like COVID-19. The participants of the simulation exercise found themselves better prepared and therefore able to adapt more easily to the rapid changes it forced into our lives. Through the book, she challenges readers to work through scenarios like a garbage-less future.
Let’s break that one down. The U.S.’s biggest export is waste. Eventually other countries are gonna be like, “Hey ‘merica? We don’t want your trash anymore.” So then what? McGonigal wants you to do things like write down 100 possible ramifications of that, or even have a Meet Up gathering to work through it in teams.
I’d say there was a 0% chance I’d ever get together with a bunch of random peeps for a fun game of “What will I do with my empty toothpaste tubes,” but the author ultimately makes a pretty solid case for never saying never. I knew she won me over when I started sharing random tidbits from the book with my husband over our nightly dinner salads. If I can get the hubs to say some variation of uh huh/wow/mm hmm/interesting at least 10 times about something, it’s a winner.
PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:
A world-renowned future forecaster and game designer teaches us to envision the future before it arrives — and gives us the tools to help shape the world we want to live in.
The COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most disruptive events in human history, has made it more challenging than ever to feel prepared, hopeful, and equipped to face the future with optimism. How do we map out our lives when it feels impossible to predict what the world will be like next week, let alone next year or next decade? What we need now are strategies to help us recover our confidence and creativity in facing uncertain futures.
In Imaginable, Jane McGonigal draws on the latest scientific research in psychology and neuroscience to show us how to train our minds to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. She invites us to play with the provocative thought experiments and future simulations she’s designed exclusively for this book, with the goal to:
Build our collective imagination so that we can dive into the future and envision, in surprising detail, what our lives will look like ten years from now.
Develop the courage and vision to solve problems creatively.
Take actions and make decisions that will help shape the future we desire.
Access “urgent optimism,” an unstoppable force within each of us that activates our sense of agency.
Imaginable teaches us to be fearless, resilient, and bold in realizing a world with possibilities we cannot yet imagine — until listening to this transformative, inspiring, and necessary book.