We can't predict the future, yet we do it all the time. We organize projects, events, days, weeks, and years. We plan to buy a home, build a career, travel, get married, raise children, teach a class, retire, or get in shape. Our ability to model the world as it is and might be is a gift, but mental time travel is also really hard. Fortunately, since planning is a skill, everyone from playful improviser to rigorous planner can greatly improve, if they are ready to learn:

• The principles and practices of nonlinear planning.


• How to grow and sustain hope with willpower and waypower.


• When to pivot or persist with paths, goals, values, and metrics.


• How myths, memories, fears, and feelings shift the future.


• Why the plans of an octopus are the product of evolution.


• How artificial intelligence is poised to transform what we plan.

If you hate planning, you're doing it wrong. The uncertainty of change makes us crave chaos or control, but it's as dangerous to be rigid as it is to move fast and break things. To organize the future, we will find better ways, because happiness is a prediction, and it's also the freedom you'll feel upon realizing there is no one right way to plan.