Comments to: crs@uvm.eduReviewed as of 4/20/98
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PERSONAL LIFE PLANNING: EXPANDING THE REALM OF THE POSSIBLE
INTRODUCTION
A major goal of future studies education is to enhance the ability
of learners to envision new possibilities, decide which are
attractive, and implement them. Another way to put this is that we
would like to help people become better planners--planners who are
capable of taking the future into account.
Many techniques can enhance student's capacities to think about
societal futures--to do social planning. ("Social planning is too
important to leave to the planners"....so runs the argument.) But
there is a lesson to be learned from some of the master reading
teachers, such as Sylvia Ashton-Warner or Paolo Freire, who have
found that when vocabulary words are ones which mean something
special in the personal lives of the learners, learning is more
rapid. Similarly, futures methods will be more interesting if
introduced in connection with content that is most important to the
learners: personal futures.
The following exercises provide several methods for personal life
planning.
> Assessment: Everyone is a planner already. The purpose of this
first exercise is to give participants an opportunity to think
about how they go about planning.
Writing assignment: Plan a vacation that you would like
to take. Where would you go? Who would go with you?
What would you bring? How would you get there? What
would you do once you got there? How long would you
stay? What sort of planning and preparation will you
have to do before you leave? What information will you
need?
Share papers in groups of three, so everyone reads two other
papers. Then allow each person five minutes to say why she/he
chose the vacation she/he did, and how she/he figured out what
planning and preparation would be necessary. The two listeners can
ask a few questions, like newspaper reporters might, but not too
many. They will have their own turn to talk. The teacher keeps
time, and follows up with discussion of different goals or values
for vacations, and different means of planning.
> Futures perspective: Alvin Toffler, in Learning for Tomorrow (New
York: Vintage, 1974.), presents an exercise that often confronts
the participants with their tendency not to consider likely social
futures when they do personal life planning. He asked students to
help formulate a collective image of the future by writing down on
a slip of paper seven events he or she thought likely to occur in
the future, and to date these events. (Toffler) avoided saying
anything that would restrict the kind of events or their distance
into the future.
The results were listed in chronological sequence, with their
dates, for all to see. Toffler probed for the assumptions and
methods that led to the forecasts. One tendency Toffler observed
with several classes was to exlude oneself from the picture--to
give impersonal events. So he asked for a second list of events:
List seven events that will happen to you personally, and give
dates for each.
At this point, the students can be asked to compare their two
lists, putting all 14 events in chronological sequence. For each
social or impersonal event, ask them to state whether it would
affect any of the seven personal futures, and if so, how.
> Life planning: This is the key exercise of the sequence. It can
be performed as a writing exercise or a class discussion. Some
parts of it can be usefully expanded with sketching, writing of
poems, word collages, or other creative approaches. The basic
approach can be modified for a wide range of ages.
Goals: List five things you hope to do or accomplish in
your lifetime.
Priorities: Put a number from one to five beside each, to
indicate which is most important, second, etc.
Preparation: For each event, list what you would need to know,
be able to do, or any other preparation necessary.
Help: What sort of people could help you achieve your
goals?
Time: Give a date for each event, by which you would hope
to achieve or complete that activity.
Problems: List one possible future event for each of the five
goals which would make it difficult to achieve the
goal.
Alternatives: For each goal, list two alternatives that would be
interesting or attractive to you if you could not
achieve the original goal.
First steps: For each original goal, list one thing that you
could do within the next year that would be astep
toward the goal. Could you take any ofthese steps
within the next week?
> Impacts: Within a student's lifetime, it is quite possible that
(a) Petroleum-based fuels will become extremely costly and may, in
fact, be virtually exhuasted; we will shift to other forms of
energy; (b) Space colonies with 10,000 inhabitants will orbit the
earth; (c) Widespread famines will force world leaders to deal
with the problem of overpopulation by placing legal limits on
family size; (d) Other: (invent additional possibilities or use
ones from the Toffler exercise).
Have each student pick one of the five goals from the previous
exercise and consider the impact on it of the three possibilities
above.
Goal:____________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
Assume the possibility occurs.
What could you do to make it more likely for you to achieve your
goal?
How will it affect your ability to achieve your goal anyway?
Future possibility
a) End of petroleum fuels
b) Space colonies
c) Limit on number of
children
d) Other
These four exercises can provide a stepping-off point for a wide
variety of other activities. Scenario writing ("future
autobiographies") are one possibility. Another is to reason
backward from a future date at which a goal is achieved, so one
develops a list of events with years that lead from the goal back
to the present. Values clarification exercises provide a guide to
the specification of goals. (See, for example, Values
Clarification, by Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum.) Each teacher
will probably want to design additional activities that pursue the
student interests stimulated by the four exercises.
If we are going to become better planners--planners who take the
future into account--it behooves us all to begin with the planning
activities over which we have direct control: the planning of our
own personal futures.
CREDIT: Duane Dale, University of Massachusetts, Cooperative
Extension, Amherst. Reprinted from Futures Information Interchange,
University of Massachusetts School of Education, 1976.
Comments to: crs@uvm.edu
Reviewed as of 4/20/98