Podcast Episode #10: Generate Possibilities by Playing with your Future(s)
How do we plan for the future when we don’t even know what’s coming next?
In this expansive and energising episode of What Is Your Working Title?, we speak with Cheryl Chung, strategic foresight educator and founder of Tent Futures. Drawing on her experience across public policy, education, and futures strategy, Cheryl invites us to challenge our assumptions, navigate uncertainty with intention, and design career paths that are deeply personal—and wonderfully weird.
Whether you’re at a career crossroads, exploring portfolio life, or mentoring the next generation of changemakers—this episode will expand your perspective and help you build options that align with who you really are.
Key Takeaways
🧠 Futures Thinking Isn’t Prediction – it’s about designing for possibility, not certainty
🧳 Use Scenarios to Map Your Own Career – growth, collapse, constraint and transformation
🔄 Plan Transitions Before Crisis Hits – don’t wait for burnout to make a move
🧘♀️ Build Absorptive Capacity – sleep, stretch, journal—small habits build resilience
🎨 Design for a Portfolio Life – one role may not hold all of you, and that’s okay
🧠 Futures Thinking Isn’t Prediction
“Don’t ask me to predict jobs,” Cheryl laughs. She reminds us that futures thinking isn’t about crystal balls—it’s about expanding possibility. The real skill is meta-cognition—thinking about the way we think.
When we challenge assumptions (“I’m not creative,” “I must choose one right path”), we create space for new directions to emerge.
🧳 Use Scenarios to Map Your Own Career
Cheryl uses a classic futures tool—four scenario archetypes—to reflect on her own crossroads. Growth, Collapse, Constraint, and Transformation. She mapped them onto her career options during a period of uncertainty. What emerged was clarity, agency, and a recognition that collapse often comes not from the market—but from burnout.
“Sometimes the most dangerous collapse is internal.”
🔄 Plan Transitions Before Crisis Hits
Why wait for a meltdown? Cheryl shows us how we can use scenario planning to decide: when do I stay, when do I go, and what would each version of the future ask of me?
“Small signals help you act early. Don’t wait till you’re flat on the floor.”
🧘♀️ Build Absorptive Capacity
Amid uncertainty, resilience starts with daily habits. Cheryl’s ‘robust under all scenarios’ strategies? Yoga. Sleep. Eat your vegetables. Practices that ground us so we can meet change with clarity.
“They seem simple—but that’s the point. You can do them in growth or collapse.”
🎨 Design for a Portfolio Life
Cheryl realised that no single role could contain all the parts of her identity. So she created her own mix: teaching, consulting, moderating, art. Her “weird and wonderful” path didn’t happen by accident—it came from curiosity, experimentation, and making room for side quests.
“Instead of 10 jobs I could do, there were suddenly hundreds.”
Tune in for a conversation that will help you break out of linear thinking, expand your possibility space, and build a resilient, meaningful path—on your terms.
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Tags:
#FuturesThinking #StrategicForesight #CareerDesign #PortfolioLife #Resilience #MidCareerTransitions #LifeDesign #WorkingTitlePodcast
