I always say the reasons we look ahead to the Future are so that we can be ready for anything that’s the risks the disruptions the crises but also so that we can imagine what could be possible tomorrow that isn’t possible today so that we can I guess motivate ourselves to stay with the hard work of making a better world right by really imagining that exponential benefit and a massive transformative purpose is what you’re telling the world it’s like this is who I am this is what I’m going to do this is the dent I’m going to make in the universe welcome to mindsets and moonshots I’m super excited to be speaking today with a friend an extraordinary author Jane mcgonagle a world-renowned designer of alternate reality games games that are designed to improve real life solve real problems such as hunger climate change and poverty I love that one of Jane’s goals
[00:01:00] is to see a game developer win the Nobel Peace Prize she’s a game designer New York Times bestselling author future forecaster heard Ted Talk on how games can improve the world and that games can give you 10 extra years of life have more than 15 million views and are among the most popular TED talks of all time she is best known as the inventor and co-founder of super better a game that has helped more than 1 million players tackle health challenges such as anxiety depression and traumatic brain injury she’s been named as one of the top 100 creative people in business by Fast Company Oprah Winfrey called her one of the 20 most inspiring women of all time MIT tech review has held her as one of the top 35 innovators changing the world through technology her most recent book one of many is called imaginable it is more than a book it’s a mindset upgrade it teaches you to think more creatively and optimistically about what’s next
[00:02:00] you’ll be excited about the future rather than fearful of it which is everything I love and stand for and what this podcast is all about Dr mcgonagal received her PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in performance studies Jane it’s a pleasure to have you here Peter thank you and congratulations on this new podcast what an important topic I’m really excited to be a part of it thank you and it’s a topic that we both share a passion around I love the new book uh and I was honored to have a chance to blur bit um I I think what I’d like to do is is start in the area of passion and purpose and and get your thoughts about um why a purpose-driven mindset is so important for people what is it that you get out of that why should people strive to be clear about their purpose in life and how do people find it let’s let’s start with that you know small subject M I love that
[00:03:00] question you know I’ve had a very strange uh career path that I have followed um starting out as a game developer and trying to figure out if we could invent games that might have a more intentional impact on people’s real lives or on you know the problems that we all live with and I think um as part of that journey I have observed that when we have a purpose that is bigger than ourselves we think more creatively we’re less likely to give up in the face of setbacks and obstacles and we can push aside feelings of anxiety and replace them with feelings of Hope because we’re being driven forward by our goals by our Ambitions by the biggest positive Transformations that we can imagine and in my work now as a
[00:04:02] designer of games that help people simulate really hard to think about Futures thinking about big future challenges things that might be hard to live through and how we would help others and help ourselves during those types of crises and disruptions what I’ve seen is that when you ask people to imagine how they would help others how they would serve a bigger purpose in these crises whether it’s a new kind of pandemic or unintended consequence of geoengineering or whatever else we might be imagining Mass climate migrations that if you ask people to imagine how they would help others then they tend to approach these possible Futures with less anxiety less dread less hopelessness and a feeling of of power and purpose I I love that so reframing it at rather than oh my God how is this going to impact me it’s like putting yourself on top of it from a how can I help others it brings a whole new set of
[00:05:01] cognitive capabilities to the table yes and so before I have people imagine specific future scenarios I always have them play a quick little game called pack your bags for the future where you answer a few questions about you know what are you good at what do you know more about than most people what do you care about more than most people what are the communities that you’re a member of that you’re connected to and you make this list of essentially all of these assets that you bring to any Future No Matter What challenge or disruption you will have this Knowledge and Skills and these relationships and then we throw the scenario at you and for me the the this methodology really clicked into place when I started simulating pandemics back in 2008 um we were Imagining the year 2019 because you know futurist we love to look a decade ahead so we have enough time to get ready for whatever we imagine and the uh this was
[00:06:00] the first time I really tested this methodology and I played the game myself uh because I always want to get the experience and the benefits and I said well I bring game design to this crisis so I had to imagine what a game designer would do during a pandemic and you know it occurred to me that there’s a stereotype of Gamers they’re they like to stay at home they’re antisocial they play in their basement instead of going out into the real world which is a bit of a stereotype and unfair but in reality during a pandemic what what does the CDC want you to do what do Public Health experts want you to do they want you to stay at home and be an isocial so I imagined you know how could the CDC and game developers work together to drop new game releases during surges and you know incentivize people essentially to stay home play more stay connected and interestingly when the real pandemic rolled around the game development Community actually did that you might
[00:07:00] recall early in March and April 2020 um there was a huge push from the game Community to say look you can stay connected you can do this we’ve got this play the games if you’ve never played these games before come into our community and more people started gaming than at any other time in human history as a result I I love this idea pack your bags for the future and it’s interesting right because when you take a self-inventory of what you have your superpowers are no matter what they are your relationships your Capital your technology your degrees and so forth and then you map that against uh significant objectives in life like uh whatever Grand Challenge you want whatever business you want I I think if you do if you’re self-reflective and you say wow my assets are really good in this area and I’m excited about applying them that passion starts to evolve into a purpose absolutely and you know in my line of
[00:08:02] work we’re having people imagine what they might do they’re not necessarily founding a new company or rolling out a major program when they’re Imagining the future scenario but oftentimes I do find that these ideas that people come up with in the games they they keep rattling around they keep kind of fueling our subconscious thoughts and motivations and then people do start to prototype and build and you don’t actually have to wait a decade for the future to happen once you’ve realized that there’s as you said a connection between your skills and your passions and this new purpose that maybe you’ve learned more about because you’ve been simulating this future and you’ve been exposed to new opportunities to help um you can take action now it’s interesting right like the definition of luck is actually uh you know being prepared to embrace the things that are coming at you in other words if you’ve thought about this future and you meet a person
[00:09:03] have a conversation that is useful towards that future perhaps you would not have had that conversation if you hadn’t been thinking about that so um that’s fascinating let me take you to your your purpose in life do you have a defined purpose that you want to share I mean my overarching purpose is try to help alleviate suffering using my skills as best I can um and my career has been dedicated to figuring out how can gaming and forms of organized con structured goal oriented play help people alleviate things like anxiety depression social isolation feeling a lack of purpose or um a lack of of Hope for their own future and that’s that’s what I do and I and I and I love you for it let’s take you back to those earliest days can you talk about when you started discovering
[00:10:03] this passion and purpose and how it evolved have you had it since childhood I mean talk well since yeah I mean I was lucky my parents bought us a Commodore 64 a used computer my parents were both School teachers Public School teachers so we didn’t have a lot of money but they were always trying to expose us to new technologies which is great you know build our confidence that we can learn new tech so we had a Commodore 64 used we that came into my house and I was about N9 years old started learning basic programming um started playing the games that had um modes where you could actually design your own levels and uh I definitely felt that passion early on like I can build things that I can make predictions about what people will do when they play my games but then you sit and watch and you’re surprised by what people think of that you didn’t think of and they have different strategies and different reactions and just that whole mode of you know predicting how people will feel and react trying to design
[00:11:00] something that elicits those behaviors or those emotions and then studying it and watching it you know that that kind of iterative scientific process of experience design I mean I was doing that from a very so you started playing which is great and I remember the commodor 64 um which dates us both but uh what happened next when did that go from a uh potentially a passion to a career and a purpose yeah I mean I in 2001 I rolled up to Berkeley to start my PhD program intending to study how scientists communicate their research to the public and had this idea that we might have forms of play that could help people learn difficult but interesting scientific Concepts that was my intention um and then in my first year of grad school I was kind of weirdly became IM mesed in a new community that was just bubbling up in San Francisco the
[00:12:01] earliest experiments in using mobile phones to create location specific gaming so there was a startup that advertised on Craigslist that they needed people to work on a new game that was going to send you out into the City and payones would ring and you get secret codes and you dig up boxes that would have inflatable rafts and you take it to the lake and you gr to Lake yeah super fun and I had a background in theater um working Off Broadway in New York City as a stage manager um and I was like hey I’ll stage manage your games like you know you’ll have props you’ll have actors you players and what happened was as I was starting to write design these games write them help uh stage them the players would come back to the next you know version of the game the next round of the game and they would say the most interesting things to me they would say you know I hadn’t really hung out in the Mission District before but now I’m going back there
[00:13:00] because I feel I just I have like this positive Association and they would say they they were more Curious they were more likely to talk to strangers they would go into you know restaurants they hadn’t seen before they’d read the graffiti in the alley it was like just having this day of play in an unfamiliar location it permanently changed their mindset when they were in that space they felt confident comfortable curious and and I thought you know this weird slippage between the game yes and then their real life behavior and mindsets to me became very interesting and so I started looking for other examples you know are people playing World of Warcraft trying to you know organize the equivalent of a raid in real life to solve real problems like what could I find uh that would and maybe provide evidence that yeah people who play games are approaching their real lives and real world problems with this gameful mindset and when I started writing about
[00:14:00] that and giving talks and in grad school about that suddenly everybody was very interested in my research and that was actually one of the most important things I learned in grad school was if if you know if professors are like come to my office you need to tell me more about this or people like I have to let me I have to play this game like if people are interested then that’s a sign that you’re on to something that you should you know continue building and fing up and if you’re constantly pushing the boulder up the hill and nobody wants to help you I mean maybe that’s not going to be the most impactful purpose and so I left the science communication behind which was fun but it it didn’t create the same sense of for me wow this is a purpose I could have but other people want to take this on with me and it could be a really big deal if we all pursue this possibility together I I love that uh and and it’s so true when you come to a situation with a different
[00:15:01] perspective it gives you the freedom to engage in a very different way uh and also the idea of uh of that game in particular getting people curious and getting them out of their comfort zones into exploring new geographies and new conversations they would normally have by the way that that game company still exists I should give them a shout out I never actually mentioned it’s called The Go game and they’re still running games all over the world uh yeah I I I I love it hey thanks for listening to Moon shots and mindsets I want to take a second to tell you about a company that I love it’s called levels and it helps me be responsible for the food that I eat what I bring into my body see we were never designed as humans to eat as much sugar as we do and sugar is not good for your brain or your heart or your body in general levels helps me monitor the impact the foods that I eat by monitoring my blood sugar for example I learned that if I dip my
[00:16:00] bread in olive oil it blunts my glycemic response which is good for my health if you’re interested learn more by going to levels. Linker levels will give you an extra two months of membership it’s something that is critical for the future of your longevity all right let’s get back to the conversation in the episode let’s go into into the Curiosity mindset cuz you know I think uh curiosity is an underrated uh mind mindset but it’s so critically important um what are your thoughts about a curiosity mindset what’s it valuable for and can people increase their level of curiosity I think that one of the most important habits that we all need to cultivate and practice heading into the next decade is finding ways to essentially unstick our mind about what we believe can and cannot change you know what is true today um what has historically been true
[00:17:00] we tend to get stuck in old ways of thinking or drawing too heavily on patterns of the past you know this as well as anyone when we get trapped in this kind of normaly bias we stop being curious about well could we do this differently could could work change could society change could could learning change when we assume that things more or less have to continue as they are or as they have been then we we innovate less we have less hope for the future we have less ambitious goals and so I do I personally have a habit that I teach when I when I teach future thinking and that I practice in my own life um that helps me develop my curiosity it’s very practical can I just tell you how work I would love that so um I call it flipping the world upside down and you just make a list of things that you believe are true today and are likely to be true in the future so basically you’re trying to you’re trying to stump yourself or like so people
[00:18:03] often say well humans need oxygen to breathe or you need a man you need genetic material let’s say from a man and a woman to make a baby you can’t just have you know a woman can’t have a baby on her own and you make a list of all these things and then you rewrite them so that the opposite is true and then you go look for evidence that these seemingly impossible ridiculous facts could actually become possible in the future so I will literally just I have I have a sort of running list of these facts and then I’ll just go to Google and I’ll do a new search Okay humans don’t need oxygen to breathe what comes up well it turns out German researchers are working on essentially a kind of photosynthesis for animals including humans so that we could breathe carbon dioxide instead of oxygen in environments where there’s not a lot of oxygen could be useful for space travel right um now I don’t know if I’ll ever be on a spaceship needing to breathe
[00:19:00] carbon dioxide like it might not affect me personally but the benefit of this is you start to get better at believing confidently that transformative change is possible so that you’re not getting stuck you’re not slow to notice change you’re not setting these like sad little tiny incremental goals for yourself you’re really thinking about exponential Improvement and you’re thinking about the moon shots and so you know even with the genetic material for babies now I’m like obsessed with this topic even though I’ve had my babies um and I don’t tend toily have more but knowing now that the um researchers are working on ways that two same sex parents can create an embryo a human embryo so that you could have two men be genetic parents for a baby no women involved or two women and no men involved and they’re already doing this with mice they’ve already figured out how to create Living Mice with genetic material from two
[00:20:00] same-sex mice parents like for me again even though it might not impact me personally it just opens up my mindset so that I am I’m now I’m feeling ready for anything totally unstuck and and and able to imagine that the future really could be different right I love this flipping the world upside down I love that that practice uh and so you’re clear you’re not necessarily born with a curiosity mindset you can develop one over time yes absolutely it’s just a matter of you know Finding what makes you curious you know with flipping the world upside down I’ll do this in large groups and we’ll flip a 100 facts and then I say well which are the ones that really jump out at you and make you wonder you know what would it be like if you know if um what’s what’s a good you know uh well the three-day work week for example let’s say that spark your your curiosity your imagination what are we
[00:21:00] doing with the other four days of our week you just uh have to find I guess the questions that connect with your passion yeah here here’s one for you what if kids didn’t go to school and they just played games every day oh well I mean I’m quite sure we could produce um a probably a better education a better educational system absolutely but but schooling is a great one you know um one of the most exciting futur scenarios that I know for sure people are working on now um that came out of flipping facts upside down um a number of years ago I was working with a an education feature of Education group and they flipped uh the fact about Majors right like what what would you do in college if we got rid of Majors like just throw it away this idea of concentrating in these sort of archaic Le defined subjects you know um and one of the upside down possibilities was that would be that people would major major in challenges and instead of studying
[00:22:00] English or history economics you would study um climate mitigation or adaptation you would study economic equality or Economic Security and food Innovation and whatever whatever fueled you this is the world I want to make better this is the problem I want to help solve and all of your coursework would be geared toward experiences knowledge then wisdom that would allow you to be of service when you graduate to that problem by the way uh you know parents a often ask me when I’m on stage you know what should my kids major in you know what should they study and my response is you know study the challenges and the problems become an expert in what the issues are because the technolog is constantly changing and if you understand fundamentally what the issues are what how people are suffering what why things aren’t working you’re going to have you’re going to have valuable contribution
[00:23:00] Society forever yes I love that and I think it’s a good possible intervention at the high school level as well you know if there’s any area of learning that really needs to change because of the amount of suffering that exists in the current model it’s definitely high school you know people feel like they’re forced to spend I mean some of the most curious energetic creative years of their lives studying things that they don’t have a natural passion for and what what a waste of young minds if I could liberate my own children when they get to high school from having to I don’t just study things that they would ra I mean I I totally agree how old are your kids there’s seven so there’s time we have a little bit of time to to reinvent high school I have fraternal twin boys at 11 uh they’re going into fifth grade so a little bit more urgent but I agree it’s like I do not think the current educational system is is uh even 10% in the right direction um you know
[00:24:03] uh I often tell my kids I have three wishes for my for my uh my kids I want them to find their passion and purpose first and foremost um I want them to have grit learn not to give up and then the thing I tell them is ask great questions that um and let’s let’s talk about that because in a world of Google where you can know anything you want uh I think the questions you ask are far more important than the knowledge that you have what are your thoughts about that we have a whole wall at our house you would be excited to know that we call the question wall and it’s by the dining room table and we have all of these um rainbow colored index cards and whenever a question comes up if we’re you know on a family walk or over dinner or watching a show we say okay put it on the question wall and then we’ll write down a question so my one of my seven-year-old daughters um who got
[00:25:02] really into Encanto this year the Disney movie she just sort of randomly out of nowhere one day we were in the car she said why do people sometimes break out into song uh when they’re when they’re in a movie to express their feelings I’m like that’s such a great question like where does this come from this idea of we’ll we’ll just break out into the song as as a for of Storytelling so we we’re like put it on the question wall um and there’s all sorts of weird questions like what was that dead animal I saw on the road we’re like put it on the question wall we’ll try to figure it out when we get home and then once a week everybody pulls a card off the wall and we all spend you know 15 minutes trying to figure out the answer using Google using YouTube whatever we can and then we report back to each other what we learned I love it what a great way to spark uh curiosity and creativity in your in your home world I think I’m going to add a question wall to my kitchen someplace that’s awesome um I
[00:26:01] keep on saying this is the most exciting time ever in human history and uh the only time more exciting than today is probably tomorrow and you know I would imagine that you believe a curiosity and creative mindset is is going to be one of the most important mindsets for the world that we’re heading in can you can you share some thoughts on that yeah I mean look we all just lived through proof 100% evidence that the world and we ourselves can change in radical transformative ways at local scale individual scale organizational scale global scale we just saw how much we can change through our own decisions and intentions now these changes were not ones we wanted to make the shutdowns the Border lockdowns everybody learns and works from home like we’re going to cook our whatever it is we didn’t want to make them but at least we have just witnessed
[00:27:02] every human being on this planet has seen we can change more faster than we thought possible there is no excuse now for continuing with systems and patterns and and habits that don’t work right we can we can change so that element of curiosity and creativity it’s really necessary Now to turn this you know the arguably the most Collective suffering the planet has ever been through I mean has there ever been an event in human history where so many shared this experience of of pain and disruption and grief can we use this moment and and as a springboard for something better to make it meaningful what we’ve had to endure these These past two years and I think if we have a flexible enough mindset if we’re curious if we’re flipping the facts of today
[00:28:00] upside down if we’re thinking creatively about how we connect our skills and talents with the challenges that we Face we really can take advantage of the next decade to to change society faster than we thought possible to ask for a higher level of transformation you know forget incremental stuff let’s just go for the big the big change and and I’m excited about that and we just have to be careful that we don’t squander this opportunity keep reminding ourselves we did it we changed everything we can do it again but from a now from a standpoint of what do we want to change not you know what do we have to change yes let’s not let’s not forget and uh and just the that connection again about about creativity to you know to challenge what we believe to be true flipping the world upside down I love love that lesson uh Jane let’s talk about um an abundance mindset uh a term
[00:29:02] that you used in your latest book urgent optimism how do you define that so okay urgent optimism is a term that I coined after seeing a lot of weird stuff happening in the gaming community so first just at a neurological level what game researchers started to observe in people who play games is that they were developing more essentially grit and resilience in the face of setbacks they were learning faster from mistakes or negative feedback failures they were energized by failure in fact when they were they were wiring um Gamers up and seeing that they were actually experiencing positive emotions after failure if they had an opportunity to try again and so there was this to apply what they just learned to apply what they just learned um and there was just this incredible feeling of I can get
[00:30:00] better and improve and change my strategy to be more successful through my own efforts attention learning from others asking others for help and so we would see just people would work longer and harder on tougher challenges and be energized by it instead of feeling anxious or you know self-doubt lack of confidence or or giving up and when I started working in the future space I was hoping that the same mindset would be developed in people who were playing future forecasting games who were participating in these social simulations where we just imagine what would I do what would I feel um kind of like a a tabl toop role playing game except instead of like Dungeons and Dragons and we’re we’re imagining these Fantastic Adventures we’re we’re sitting around the internet with 10,000 people imagining how we would adapt you know to a a mass you know climate migration ation event or whatever we’re we’re simulating um and I was hopeful we could
[00:31:02] develop that and in fact what I started to see is we would invite people to spend six weeks eight weeks 10 weeks imagining terrible Futures total crises things that you would have nightmares about and they were coming out on the other side of these games fired up like wow I feel so optimistic now I feel hopeful I have purpose I have Clarity and it was totally bizarre totally unexpected by others in the field who had this sense like well if we ask people to imagine the worst that could happen it’s going to increase their anxiety for the future it’s going to create dread or hopelessness or powerlessness but if you bring that same kind of gaming experience where you’re asking people to use their own skills and their knowledge and their communities and service of a bigger goal helping others then people come out of it feeling what I started calling urgent optimism which is
[00:32:00] essentially this balanced mindset of being cleare eyed about risks and possible threats that we face while also filling your brain with positive ideas new possible you know policy Solutions social movements technology scientific breakthroughs wild ideas that could really help us not only address these threats or mitigate the risk but actually create a lot of positive change along the way so this balanced mindset um it it is amazing how good we can feel by being willing to think about events that should be unpleasant to think about is it because it gives us agency in the the sense that this future disaster is one that uh we can bring resources to solve that we’re not powerless in this regard exactly um one of my favorite things I ask people to do when we’re
[00:33:02] running these games is to imagine a happy moment you know let’s say there’s this you know extreme Heatwave or there’s been The Internet’s been shut down for a month by the government for cyber security you’ve been whatever we’re living through write a story like you’re essentially there’s a lot of journaling from the future in these games and you write about it as if you’ve already lived through it so you can create really Vivid memories of these Futures and so I like write about something good that happened like was there a holiday you were able to celebrate or a new family ritual or tradition or a gift you were able to give someone or way you were and and and tell a story about you know different positive emotions like happiness or Pride or love how did you feel love in this future and what people realize is that you know as human beings whatever world we wake up in we will find a way to make art to love each other to help each other to be creative there there is just that’s the human
[00:34:00] spirit and when you actually practice it in a context that’s safe it’s a game it’s not real so you take away all of the things that stop us maybe from doing it in real life because because we have real anxiety with real things to worry about when it’s in the context of the game then you can just explore all those positive responses and strengths and uh and it it really it really works you’re finding your agency to to tap into that indominable human Spirit even in the worst so this s TAPS in as well to the Gratitude mindset that even in the worst circumstances uh we can find things to be grateful for and that sort of I guess flips the mindset from one of uh of helplessness to one of empowerment yeah and I learned oh more than a decade ago um one of the big findings out of positive psychology when they would run meta and analyses of what habits or interventions really increase well-being
[00:35:03] in the long run um there was this habit of not it’s not a gratitude Journal that was people thought early that that that was like kind of the big Habit to cultivate what they found was something almost like a gratitude Journal um but it it’s called three great things and I started practicing it more than a decade ago and my husband and I practice it every single night even if we’re a part if we’re traveling we we call each other or we ma each other um and the way three great things works is you reflect on three great three things that went great today three things that went well and and and why they went well so you know yesterday was a summer solstice so we had our our little family summer solstice traditions and our kids wrote poems and it was great and we’re like wow okay we had the summer solstice tradition that went well and why did that go well well we made time for our family we we made that a priority and you know it’s a good day when we live live with our values right what you’re
[00:36:01] doing is you’re not just being grateful for random things you’re focusing on the agency of yourself or others you know um where where it’s not just that good things exist or happen but that you’re making them happen or others are making them happen and that aspect of agency combined with being grateful for what’s working or going well um is uh it that’s like the sort of magic boost that really makes that a powerful practice I love that um you know I I practice a very similar thing when I go to sleep at night it’s what are the things the three things today that gave me the greatest joy right um and it’s usually around the kids uh but uh but adding the element of why I think uh adds a real great uh value to that um the flip of that uh I’m curious is is uh in the morning sometimes I set out what are the three
[00:37:01] most important things that if I do today today will be a great day I like that I have I’m I’m sort of like an epic to Todo Lister I have like insan ambitious I’m I’m sort of the opposite of that um I find that the more things I set out for myself to conquer the more that I do it’s like this positive upward spiral like every time I get something done like yeah I’m getting stuff done what else can I do um but so for me personally it’s like having this huge you know I mean I literally keep a word dock where I like a page a day of like one every you know of of Wireless um and then I uh I I feel like I mean to me that feels more like that feeling in a good RPG you know where like wherever you turn there’s another Quest there’s another challenge yeah and and Crossing that thing off the list right right that checking that box is it’sit you know hits good dope me you know that’s an
[00:38:02] abundance mindset actually so here can I tell you a funny story sort of funny I mean it it’s interesting how all this ties together um so I think some people know I had a severe concussion back in 2009 um when I had an accident and part of my recovery process was trying to bring a gameful mindset to that recovery and I was super depressed I had Suicidal Thoughts I didn’t know why I was thinking this way or feeling this way I later found out that during recovery from a concussion and and it seems for many people long covid the same kind of neuroinflammation while your brain is trying to heal it doesn’t want you going out into the world doing stuff it wants you basically curled up in a ball safe sound not going to hit your head again not going to get in any trouble and it intentionally depresses you so that you don’t take action because it wants you to to conserve all of your energy for healing and stay safe so but the problem
[00:39:02] is it can go too far which is why one in three people with concussion get suicidal thoughts because literally their brain blocks them from imagining any you know good outcome of action like you basically you literally can’t imagine anything good happening um and so um one of the one of the things that worked for me in my recovery was essenti forcing myself to come up with this abundant list of things I could do even though I could barely get out of bed I couldn’t read I couldn’t work couldn’t email couldn’t run couldn’t play video games I like anything I would normally do couldn’t do I’m like I need a s an abundant sense of there are actions I can take that will bring about a benefit to myself or others today so that I could you know just force my brain Force those those neuro um circuit like back into believing something good Could Happen through my own efforts and actions and I had really B I mean like
[00:40:01] the list you wouldn’t think they were so exciting like um you know uh smell smell a new perfume that I’ve never smelled before or bake cookies for the people who work in the pets in the apartment building you know and not not from scratch I mean like the preformed ones you stick them in the oven but I’m like maybe I’ll bring cookies to someone today and just by having a sense that when I woke up they’re all these things I could do even though they’re not the things I would normally want to do or derive meaning or purpose from that turned out to be the most um important thing I did in my recovery and when I turned you know my gameful experiments into Super better which is that app that so many people have used and and clinical trials have been run and it really does help people recover from concussion faster um that’s that’s the thing that seems to work is giving people a sense of their own agency that there are abundant things I can accomplish even if my normal abilities
[00:41:00] are diminished or my normal opportunities are scarce I’m gonna come up with things I can do again driven by my own values and whatever passions and talents I have um I’m GNA find a whole list of things that I can do so that we can force our brain to imagine positive outcomes of our own actions even when it’s trying to make us curl up in a ball and be safe and still take one second and tell people about super better so um super better is an app that is free and um it takes you on a kind of gameful Journey to reframe a Health Challenge that you have as a kind of heroic quest in which you can collect powerups that really do make you feel stronger and better in which you get really clear about your bad guys things that trigger symptoms or or things that prevent you from following through on new habits you’re trying to form and you’re
[00:42:02] collecting allies from your real life or the super better community that can give you powerups when you need them or help you come up with strategies for fighting bad guys and then most importantly you’re coming up with these Quests for yourself figuring out things that you can do each and every day that are going to help you live a life that is true to your authentic self and your values even if you have debilitating migrant or long covid or just kind of crippling anxiety or posttraumatic stress disorder and um you know I’m so thrilled that it has been tested in randomized control studies at pen at OSU Cincinnati Children’s Hospital it’s been evaluated by independent researchers to be um powerful for depression anxiety chronic pain and concussion and I’m hoping you know as somebody who experienced a year of on covid uh myself when I I caught uh
[00:43:00] covid in the very first wave early adopter got there first um prevaccine pre-treatments and uh I spent a year recovering with a lot of neuroinflammation and um I’m hoping that super better will be able to help the many millions of people now who are experiencing a change sense of self um and uh and so yeah if if anybody could use help with their own recovery super better is a free resource and um it seems to be very helpful for things like neuroinflammation and depression anxiety and pain nice let’s talk about uh more about an abundance and exponential mindset and I’d love to hear your your thoughts here you know I tell people listen if you’re going to watch uh CNN the crisis News Network 24 hours a day you’re going to be in a in fear and scarcity mindset because your your neural Net’s being wired to think and
[00:44:00] fear and scarcity and yet we’re living in this world of massively increasing abundance um and where technology is enabling you know extraordinary breakthroughs every day how do you how do you communicate this to folks and how do you frame this so I lead a public Community for the institute for the future called urgent Optimus and we yeah um we we are Community to practice building urgent optimism and one of the activities that uh has been really successful I think in increasing our sense of abundance and hope is something we call signals of Hope scavenger hunt so once a month we pick a theme I devise essentially scavenger hunt list where you go out into the real world into your community or online looking in the news looking on social media for signals of change that give you hope for the future
[00:45:00] so we can look for signals of climate hope um this this month we were looking at local signals of Hope you had to take a photograph of it with your own eyes find something in your own community and then we share them and we talk about you know what would the world look like if these signals were scaled up so yesterday uh the community was talking about a very strange signal of change that on one hand it it’s coming from from a place of um scarcity and and urgency but maybe pointing to a more abundant future so I don’t know if you saw in the news in Sri Lanka the government has mandated a 4-day work week for public sector workers they are being paid their full salary but on the fifth day they’re being asked to go home and grow food in their own backyards or their own communities because there’s a huge food short AG food scarcity right now and they’re trying to figure out how do we make food abundant in this what
[00:46:01] what is a more resource limited environment so people are being paid now instead of that fifth day of work to essentially increase the food security of the community increase food abundance and and to take a personal role in in growing local food and on one hand this is sort of a I mean it’s sort of a scary signal of change right because food insecurity is scary and yet on the other hand in our urgent op Community people find a lot of Reason for Hope that such a radical experiment is being tried like INRI Lanka for god sakes that’s awesome and so you know if we could what would you know the idea that we could spend a fifth day if we do as many countries and organizations are experimenting with going to the four-day work week and spend that fifth day doing something purposeful that builds local resilience or improves the health and well-being of our community or family I I just love that I would love to spend a
[00:47:00] fifth day um doing that I I I find that absolutely fascinating and I love this idea of signals of hope you know when I run my abundance 360 Summit every year um one of and I focus in on abundance exponential longevity and moonshot mindsets principally I put together a um a PowerPoint deck called proof of abundance or proof of exponentials right and it’s like over the course of the last year here’s all the things that are proving we’re moving in this direction so you know one of the examples from this past year was in 2022 there’s going to be more new electric power coming from solar than any other source right and it used to be something that was an ignored uh source of of energy production in the United States and so there’s hundreds of these and yet um it’s I I think about you know our brains are neural Nets and we need to be
[00:48:00] constantly updating our neural net on this is now possible this is now possible I always say the reasons we look ahead to the Future are so that we can be ready for anything that’s the risks the disruptions the crises but also so that we can imagine what could be possible tomorrow that isn’t possible today so that we can um I guess motivate ourselves to stay with the hard work of making a better world right by really imagining that exponential benefit or or outcome and electrification of everything is definitely one of my biggest sources of hope I’m I am a fan of all the jobs that could be created of all the skills that could be created across society as we do a clean energy transition at scale hey everybody I hope you’re enjoying this episode I want to tell you about something I’ve been doing for years every quarter or so having a FLOTUS come to my home to draw Bloods to understand
[00:49:00] what’s going on inside my body and it was a challenge to get all the right blood draws and all the right tests done so I ended up co-founding a company that sends a fonus to my home to measure 40 different biomarkers every quarter put them up on a dashboard so I can see what’s in range what’s out of range and then get the right supplements medicines peptides hormones to optimize my health it’s something that I want for all my friends and family and I’d love it for you if you’re interested go to myli force.com back/ Peter to learn more let’s get back to the episode so you know it’s it’s I know why the brain is wired for fear and scarcity right it saved us 100,000 years ago but it’s not serving us today um and I think you know creating an abundance mindset that allows you to flip the situation the analogy I use instead of slicing a pie into thinner and thinner slices we’re going to bake more pies because we can are any other tricks that you have for
[00:50:00] helping people uh Envision an abundance mindset because people like hanging out with people with an abundance mindset oh totally um and by the way that’s my biggest beef with the web 3 Community is I think that while they talk about abundance and helping Empower people financially and to you know own their own assets and their revenue streams I think there’s way too much actual scarcity baked into the products and services right now so I have a challenge to the web 3 Community which is to actually Design Systems of abundance and stop relying on artificial scarcity to to create wealth um but I will I have a very practical technique that I when I work with organizations um to think about the kind of abundance that we encounter in games because there a very specific type of abundance that that is designed into some games and I think some of the most popular games that
[00:51:01] exist because um be specifically because of their abundance so you think about a game like fortnite there are abundant opportunities to play like you’re you’re trying to survive as long as you can up you’re out do you have to wait to play again no like right away you can drop in again drop off that Airship it’s it’s as soon as you’re out you’re back in the game that’s really interesting we have so many games where like you’re out so you sit on the sidelines you’re done you’re out of the tournament you’re out of the real but fortnite really created abundant opportunities to play the sense of you can just get right back in the game that’s a game to look at for abundance also Pokemon go I tell organizations spend some time in Pokemon go and look how abundant everything is Pokemon go could have been designed where that first Snorlax that you encountered in Time Square only one of them first player to catch it gets the Snorlax but instead they designed it so that anybody who was in Times Square got
[00:52:00] their own copy of the Snorlax so instead of competing with strangers you had people shouting out anybody who has a phone nearby might be playing you’re like Snorlax Snorlax and you’re creating this sense of community and Collective you know we’re sharing our intelligence because we can all benefit the the way that they have used these Poky stops um all over the world where you just walk on up and you can swipe you can spin this disc and they give you free assets for the game free balls free potions free poers whatever and that you can spend them every five minutes they could have Tim limited it they could have said once a day you know but they didn’t every five minutes this incredible sense of they giving me what I need to be successful everyone wins the economy is powered by Abundant assets and I so I just challenge you know folks spend some time in this world and think you know what if we tried to bring this kind of abundance to learning or to some of our
[00:53:02] workplaces or to other you know anything that you design or create any experience can you seal a few of these you know design techniques um from fortnite or Pokemon go because people feel feel more you know likely to collaborate and share and try again if they get out of that scarcity Minds and realize there’s enough opportunity here for everyone which is how it should be in the real world for sure and it is going that way right we are going to have a squander abundance of energy and water and food as we reinvent how we do these things you one of my favorite examples along the lines that you’re saying is the educational system versus the gaming system so in the educational system you start with 100% at the start of the year and every time you get something wrong your grade goes down and in the gaming system you start with zero and every time you get something right your score goes up yeah perfect example
[00:54:01] it just how do we flip that so that when you’re winning and everybody’s winning everybody’s score is going up together yes I mean and I know college professors who changed their uh their syllabus and their grading methods where you every activity you earn points stop whenever you want you want to pass in grade you got to see you’re happy great you do enough activities till you get 70 points you’re done you want an a there’s abundant opportunities you know just do twice as much you know and you you can get extra report yeah yeah yeah and uh from what I hear from from the professors it really changes you know they show up wanting to know what they can do today to earn points not what do I have to do to get my grade it’s uh it’s it can be very simple tweaks wow that was that’s interesting when I was in seventh grade you know I was at a at a a prep school that was on a 4.0 grading average and I found out when I
[00:55:01] got a be on an exam it dropped me from a four to something else and I there was no way to get back to a four because there was no and so I negotiated with my my seventh grade biology teacher that if I got 100% of the next test he’d erase the last score but I mean yeah it’s so you know that was the young Premed in me but the idea of Reinventing education where you can go as high as you want as your energy and your passion drives I love that do you want to go somewhere a little bit slightly dystopic but it’s exactly on this topic and I’m actually kind of fired up to talk about it yeah yeah absolutely so one of the things that I’ve studied in my research at The Institute for the future are the social credit scoring systems that are being piloted in China China right yeah and um you know I think folks who have heard about it but maybe not been exposed to the details of these programs they they have this idea that there’s one social
[00:56:01] credit score program and it’s designed by the government in fact the government has asked different municipalities and different companies and organizations to create their own versions and they’ve been prototyping and experimenting with many dozens of different approaches to a social credit score which you know for folks maybe who haven’t heard about it it’s the idea that you have a a number that reflects actions you may have taken that are beneficial to society or detrimental to society so if you’re caught smoking on a non-smoking area then you lose points if you um visit your Elder parents often and to take them food you gain points and they have all these like surveillance Technologies to track were you jaywalking were you donating blood um and so on one hand it’s there’s this whole dystopian surveillance State aspect which is horrible but still you know I think we need to study these
[00:57:01] things and watch what’s happening and see what we can learn from them um could are there ethical versions or better versions and what or can people found right and people one of the things that seems to make these systems work better in that they do not increase anxiety or a sense of you know being watched but that people actually feel like their communities are getting safer or better is when there are very few ways to lose points hardly anything you do can decrease your score but there are abundant ways to earn points so that instead of feeling like if I make one mistake I’m G to be fined or not allowed to you know I’ll be do I’ll be like lower on the list for medical treatment which some of the systems do this right you mess up now you’re really experiencing significant harm instead those systems where it’s like a hundred ways to earn points for every one way you can lose points those um
[00:58:02] seem to have uh less delerious effects and you know I’m not in favor of authoritarian surveillance State Technology and yet as I look at these programs and how they how the technology is likely to spread I’m also a realist and I do think surveillance technology will be scaled up and will be imped I want us to at least be able to think about what are the what are the ways to minimize harms and maybe do something that could have a positive impact uh and avoid you know the dystopian version yeah I listen I I I love this aspect of gamifying life and allowing people who want to do good to the world and their Community to be recognized in that fashion uh in ways that are of of real value and you know facial recognition all of that is is here now you know if
[00:59:00] you I just traveled back and forth to Greece and you know getting on the airplane it’s no longer you know showing your passport and ticket it’s like smile at the camera it’s like green light yes you’re the right person coming on so it’s here it’s coming fast and um as I like to say to people you know do you really think you have privacy um you know so that’s a completely different conversation all right let’s talk about one of my last but most important uh mindsets one that is uh I know true in in your life and the work that you do which is a moonshot mindset the the sense of uh of taking on a challenge that is a little bit scary and bigger than you normally would going 10x bigger when the rest of the world is going 10% uh what are your thoughts around moonshots are are they are they good are they bad how do you how do you talk to people about it yes well I mean I’ve famously set a moonshot for the game developer Community back in
[01:00:00] 2008 when I started speaking publicly about the idea that a game company or game designer would be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and yes uh it wasn’t it’s not a prediction it wasn’t a prediction it was a provocation I wanted to get developers and designers thinking seriously what kind of game would we have to make that this would not be a laughable idea what what kinds of benefits could we conceive of for games how would we measure them how would we justify or or really validate a global positive impact would it be on Mental Health would it be on um a sense of social uh solidarity feel like we have more in common with people that we used to feel divided from I how could we imagine the benefits such that even if a game developer never gets even nominated for
[01:01:00] a Nobel Peace Prize let alone win it that we have shifted the types of games that we believe we have an opportunity to create and uh and so it’s funny somebody um just last month was asking me about this prediction they’re like oh you predicted that a game developer would get a Nobel Prize by 2023 because it was 15 years ago I was like that’ll be plenty of time like no problem now it’s next year and so you know it’s a reminder it’s not a prediction it’s a provocation let’s use the moonshot to expand our our sense of purpose and what we might try to achieve and whether or not we actually get there now we’ve we’ve created a new set of possibilities in one sense the gaming industry um you know puts these moonshots into every game where it’s the you know the final boss battle you know and it’s um and it’s a it’s a journey to get there but
[01:02:01] you’ve got this end goal that’s motivating you in in you know I mean you know this better than everybody uh how much energy people in uh invest into a game over the course of weeks months years um but we don’t necessarily have that in our lives cuz we don’t allow ourselves or maybe it’s not framed properly uh and we don’t know how to frame it properly well I mean one of the things that always stood out to me about the X prize is that it’s really about lifting up an entire community and increasing our Collective capacity our collective intelligence about a problem that we’re that we’re trying to solve or a goal we’re trying to achieve and you know whether one team wins there you hopefully are creating a whole field a whole movement and I think with gaming you know that’s always been so fascinating to me a new game drops and a a whole Wiki goes up overnight and you’ve got thousands of people streaming
[01:03:01] their play so that we can all like you take right you take a problem that literally nobody knows anything about and you’ve got hundreds of thousands or millions of people all trying to solve it at the same time and the collective intelligence about that problem the the incredible surge of intelligence that’s created through everybody playing it at the same time right um one of my favorite stats was like one in four people who play the Call of Duty series take off work or school the day that a new game drops because they want to stay home and play and be part of that first 24 hours um that’s you know I think it’s trying to how do we create that sense of incredible concentrated collaborative concentration on a problem whether whether it’s through something like a game or an ex prise or these social simulations that I run when you when you get that creative lift of everybody trying to do it at the same time that’s that’s what gets me really
[01:04:00] excited is it possible I mean the amount of of uh of cognitive Surplus that goes into gameplay uh is massive right just around the world I don’t think you’ll have any idea of the of the amount is it is it possible to um and I know you’ve worked towards this but you know moonshot here for me is how do we engage the same game Dynamics and and game play into soft in the world’s biggest problems right X prize is a is a a take on that in some regard but how do you think about that and in the field in the in the frame of of uh moonshots and and incentivizing people to go for something big I mean my personal moonshot for applying the creativity and collective intelligence of Gamers to real world problems is to have something like a Super Bowl Sunday uh where once a year there is a game that drops that is related to a real crisis or challenge
[01:05:00] that we might face so you know the most people I’ve ever had concurrently participate in a simulation of a future challenge is about 20,000 people right um what if we it it’s good it’s good it’s I mean we definitely see a lot of cool otherwise hard to predict stuff come out of that but what if you could have 200,000 or 2 million or 20 million think about the amount of um just having that 24 hours of creative lift around a problem and gaming out the internet’s got you know let’s say this you know the the satellites have been shut down internet’s down GPS is down telcoms down how do we like survive as we try to um live through this incredible shutdown have people game that out for 24 hours what would you do what would you need how would you help what are your skills how are you putting them in service of the problem if we could have millions of people do that once a day I mean one for one day once a
[01:06:00] year we would we would have some very interesting ideas generated but more so the people who participate what I have found the biggest lasting impact is that you are forever hailed by that problem that if things start to happen in the real world that are suggestive this is a growing threat the risk is more likely it jumps out at you because you have essentially created that dopamine response in your brain the same way we had people playing pandemics for the next 10 years anytime there’s anything new virus what what I I should listen to that because you have a dopamine response to it so prepped your brain you prepared that Network to pay attention yeah so even if you know 19 out of the 20 million people participating don’t have any actually great ideas like 20 million out of 20 million will have prepared their brains to pay attention be less shocked be able to you know act faster notice the changes faster
[01:07:01] hopefully adapt faster not get into this situation where we’re denying reality right we want people to feel smart When A disruption happens instead of denying it which we saw so much of really in the past decade especially last couple years instead of denying what’s happening let’s make you feel smart when it happens and feel like you are one of the people in the planet who is supposed to do something about it yeah you’re you’re again it’s the concept of agency uh that yes I know about this problem I’m familiar with it I understand what it means and I can take an action uh to help amiliar it or move it forward I I imagine when you take on a moonshot um it changes the way you think about what’s possible it stretches your mind in in some in some way right I mean and I I go back to the game world uh which is sort of the analogy for life where I’m starting the game and I’m learning along the way I’m such a noob at the
[01:08:00] beginning and there’s like this I’ve watched on YouTube videos the you know the uh the boss battle at the end there’s no way I’m going to possibly be able to achieve that but you know as you play the game you’re gaining the skills to get to that final level I mean I really think that experience of personal growth and noticing wow I I’m getting better I am improving I mean that’s that is definitely part of the structural benefits of moonshots right is that because you’re you’re all if you set such an ambitious goal that you’re not achieving it tomorrow you’re not achieving it next month or even next year you’re going to stay on that path and be able to keep reflecting and keep noticing I’m getting better learning more figuring stuff out taking in that feedback um and it I think you know I likeed like to say as a futurist working on the 10e timeline and imagining things 10 years out we have all this time
[01:09:01] spaciousness as a result I mean if you’re trying to solve a problem by Tomorrow there’s like a limited maybe set of actions you can realistically take if you have 10 years to solve it now you can imagine much more ambitious interventions and Transformations so I think you know for me using time spaciousness it’s kind of like a a cathedral or Grand Canyon for our imagination the same way that we’re in these big beautiful spaces with with high ceilings or open expanses we think more creatively we think more optimistically we just think bigger right so moonshot is like is like the same thing I I love that you know and one of the challenges we have as humans is when we see a problem in the in the future um uh climate crisis as an example we sort of see the disaster that’s going to be hitting you know 10 years from now 20 years from now we accelerate it to today and we forget the fact that we do have a decade or two of
[01:10:03] exponential Tech growth that are going to give us brand new tools to solve it and um and I think that’s part of you know the exponential uh thinking that I’m trying to encourage folks all right we’ve come to the end of our conversation here and I know so excited about all of these topics here’s my challenge my question for you if tomorrow uh you could snap your fingers and I would fully fund an x- prise um and launch it globally uh what is an xprize you know a grand challenge that you’d want the world focused on solving do you have an idea of what you’d love yeah absolutely um we need a long we need a long covid X prise or maybe think more expansively about postviral chronic illness postviral um disability so that we were thinking about all forms of chronic fatigue autoimmune um responses to
[01:11:00] infections that have historically been so under researched undertreated you know people have been shamed out of you know even believing like that what the symptoms they have are real we saw that replicated with long covid but now the world is waking up and saying okay our bodies do this weird thing and it is affect many hundreds of millions of people by the end of this you know pandemic that we’ll have lived through um I mean that is to me that that not only solves the problem we have today but it makes the whole future better if if this is something we can understand and know how to prevent or reverse or correct then we can face any you know viral future we face which we know there’s going to be more viruses this is this is what we’re if we’re if we live long enough you know knock on W for decades more we’ll see this again we’ll live through this again um so in a way it’s about um making
[01:12:03] us I think braver for the Futures that are coming and helping alleviate suffering that is on the ground today I love that all right an ex prize for addressing long covid and for the implications of our future pandemics and actually you know preventing those future pandemics because you’re right this is just this is the early warning system hopefully we humans uh are smart enough to have paid attention here Dr Jane mcgonagal uh a pleasure Jane thank you for your time and your Brilliance and thank you for the work that you do in the world thank you Peter I can’t wait to listen to all the other episodes