January is when everyone becomes a psychic.
Economic forecasts. Political forecasts. Tech forecasts.
And of course, the personal ones—usually disguised as resolutions or “where I see myself by the end of the year” visions.
Most of it is theater.
Because forecasts don’t really work.
Even experts aren’t great at predicting the future. We’ve all watched confident predictions age badly—recessions that never came, candidates that never won, and startups hailed as unicorns that vanished without a trace.
And yet every January, we line our predictions up again, hoping this time the future will behave according to our PowerPoint decks.
Why do we keep doing this?
Because deep down, forecasting scratches a very human itch: Control.
There’s a seductive impulse underneath it all that says:
If I can predict the future, I can control it.
But here’s the shift that changed everything for me:
If I can create the future, I don’t need to predict it.
The most interesting people I know don’t spend their time trying to guess where the world is headed.
They start with the future they want and then reverse-engineer it.
That’s called backcasting.
Forecasting starts with the present and tries to guess forward (and often fails).
Backcasting starts with a future you want to create and asks: What would have to be true for this future to exist? And what can I do today to move in that direction—even if it’s just one step?
Here’s an example from my life:
When I was a tenured professor, the forecast was clear: keep publishing, climb the academic ladder, land at a more prestigious school, then teach until retirement.
I could see the whole path. And that was part of the problem.
So I asked a different question: What do I actually want to create?
I wanted to write books for a broader audience. Speak in rooms beyond academia. Build a platform that let me think and create on my own terms.
Backcasting helped me sketch the path in reverse.
If I wanted to write a book, I needed a literary agent. To get an agent, I needed a platform. To build a platform, I needed an audience. To build an audience, I needed to start creating consistently.
So I launched a blog. Started a podcast. Shared early ideas and ran small experiments before I felt ready. Most of it felt invisible at the time, but it built quiet momentum that changed everything.
That’s the power of backcasting.
Forecasting makes you reactive to events outside your control. You’re waiting to see what the job market does, what the competition does, what your peers do—before you decide what you will do.
It locks you into someone else’s timeline. Someone else’s moves. Someone else’s game.
But when you backcast, you flip the script. You decide what future you want, act like it’s real, and work backward to meet it.
Forecasting makes you a spectator.
Backcasting turns you into the author.
Same story, different role . . . and a completely different ending.
P.S. Backcasting is just one of the tools I teach inside Moonshot Thinking—my flagship program for organizations who are ready to take and land their moonshots in 2026.
Enrollment opens Tuesday.
Only 5 spots are available. I’ll review the applications on a rolling basis.
Related
Bold
