⏳ How do we take a journey into the future to improve the world we’re in — together?

A few years ago, I joined the Long Time Project to explore how we can build empathy across generations — not just by thinking about the future, but by feeling it. As someone working in strategy, I’m trained to plan ahead. But most of the time, I’m helping teams respond to what’s happening right now.

And yet, the real power comes when we connect the now with the not-yet. When we stretch our time horizons, not to escape the present, but to understand it differently.

🪞 Thinking long and short — at the same time

From climate breakdown to the cost of living, we’re facing problems that demand long-term shifts. But our systems reward short-term fixes.

Roman Krznaric describes this as the “tug of war for time.” So how do we practice “timefulness” — being rooted in the present, but accountable to the future?

At Adur & Worthing Councils, we’ve tried to apply this through:

• Our Mission Control governance model that supports long-term goals through short-term action.
• The Thriving Together programme, where residents explore the future of their neighbourhoods, from seafronts to public services.

🔗 Explore our approach

🔧 Tools for futures thinking

During the Long Time Project, we tested creative tools that made future thinking feel real. Some that stuck with me:

• Human layers: standing in the shoes of someone from 300 years ago, and then 300 years in the future. It shifted how I saw today’s decisions.
• Future personas: creating characters from the future to help us see what they might need, fear or hope for.
• Letters to ancestors: imagining what we would have wanted those before us to do differently — and what future generations might want from us.

These tools helped public servants like me think not just about services, but relationships across time.

🔗 Try them yourself

🧠 What this means for public services

It means rethinking:

• Our role: from service providers to stewards of possibility.
• Our methods: from delivery plans to experimental learning.
• Our relationships: from short funding cycles to long-term coalitions.

It’s what Nesta calls radical imagining — designing not just for better versions of today, but for fundamentally different tomorrows.

🔗 Read Nesta’s futures thinking framework

We’ve seen this in action:

• In North Ayrshire, where the council works with communities on a 10-year community wealth building strategy.
• In Paris, where urban planners use participatory scenarios to reimagine life in 2050.
• In Stockholm, where the public sector hosts “design fiction” events with artists and civil servants.

🛠 Five small steps to start now

If you’re working in innovation, participation, delivery or strategy, here’s how you can start:

1. Time travel with your team: use the human layers exercise to connect with future generations.
2. Run a ‘what if’ week: invite residents or staff to imagine how today’s small decisions might play out in 30 years.
3. Map your time biases: where are you stuck in short-termism? Where can you afford to slow down?
4. Design for the unborn: test a new policy idea by asking: what would a future child think of this?
5. Make the future feel: use objects, smells, sounds or stories to create emotional connection to what’s not yet here.

💬 Final thoughts: long time is a mindset, not just a method

This isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about creating conditions where multiple futures feel possible — and worth working for.

When we work with urgency but without imagination, we burn out. But when we stretch time, we can hold paradoxes, learn from ancestors, and build for those we’ll never meet.

So let’s stop seeing future thinking as a luxury. It’s an act of care. Of responsibility. Of hope.

If you’re doing this in your own organisation — whether through storytelling, prototyping or public engagement — I’d love to learn from you.

Because the future isn’t somewhere else. It starts here, together.

This blog is inspired by work with the Long Time Project, and builds on practices from Adur & Worthing Councils, Nesta, North Ayrshire Council, City of Paris, and the Swedish Government’s Public Sector Innovation Lab.