Retrospecting My Future

Last week in my dreams, I was visited by the ghost of my future self. In a mist straight out of The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, which my family and I had watched the week before, my ghost proceeded to tell me how badly I had failed to meet my 2025 art practice goals. I railed against my Ghost of Art Practice Future while scrambling through the studio debris thinking surely I could find at least one finished painting. Alas, I could not.

Digital collage from original photo and charcoal drawing. Anne Kearney

When I awoke I found myself, just like Scrooge, thinking that surely this future could be averted. But how?

Enter the premortem.

We all know what a postmortem is. The image that comes to my mind is of a wry and slightly jaded TV murder-series coroner throwing around terms like “trace evidence” and “blunt force trauma” while piecing together the probable cause of death for an unlucky victim. A postmortem is about creating a narrative – a mental model – to help explain what happened and ideally shed some light on how to keep the rest of us safer. This is good information but it doesn’t do much for the victim.

What if, in a recursive reality where time paradoxes were possible, the postmortem could be performed before the person died in order to provide timely information that would avert their death?

That is, in essence, what a premortem tries to do.

Gary Klein, who coined the term premortem in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article, says that, "Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the premortem operates on the assumption that the 'patient' has died, and so asks what did go wrong.”

What’s wrong with regular planning?

Why does a premortem work better than just planning the regular way?

One of the reasons is that people tend to be charmingly optimistic. And this optimism can lead to some pretty big planning mistakes. Of course, not everyone is optimistic all the time — depressed people tend to be more pessimistic in general, for example — but being overly optimistic when thinking about the future is a common enough phenomenon that psychologists have coined the term “optimism bias” to describe this human tendency.

Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who spent decades studying human thought and decision making, sums up this tendency in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow: “Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters optimistic overconfidence. In terms of its consequences for decisions, the optimistic bias may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases.”

This bias toward optimism appears to transcend gender, ethnicity, nationality, age, and even species — starlings, for example, have also shown a tendency toward unwarranted optimism. In fact, even if we know about the optimism bias, we have difficulty escaping its pull. Case in point: as I write these words, I am thinking that surely I am less susceptible than others to the optimism bias and thus more capable of realistic planning and eventual success. My future ghost does not agree.

On the surface, a built-in cognitive bias toward optimism seems strange. Why on earth would our brains be wired for optimism? Wouldn’t a healthy dose of fear and pessimism keep us safer?

It turns out that optimism has some distinct advantages. An optimistic outlook keeps us from the paralysis of worrying about things over which we have little or no control. It encourages forward thinking and action. And it can smooth over our interactions with other people. Not surprisingly then, optimism is associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and stress — all of which can adversely impact quality and quantity of life. Optimists also tend to work harder and longer which, one can imagine, leads to a range of good outcomes.

A slightly delusional optimism is what allows people to pursue a career in the arts, to say “I do,” and to decide to become parents. Perpetually believing that a painting is almost done is what enables me to keep at it for the twenty hours – or days or months – that it actually takes to finish.

Ignorance, it turns out, really can be bliss.

The problem with optimism

Given the benefits of optimism, I certainly wouldn’t wish this bias away.

And yet while optimism is important, it can be problematic if it comes at the expense of realistic forecasting and planning. One consequence of overconfidence is something psychologists call the “planning fallacy.” This phenomenon describes the very human tendency to underestimate the time, costs, and risks associated with a task. Even worse, studies have shown that these planning errors are not just a characteristic of the inexperienced — on the contrary, the planning fallacy is hard to shake even when we should know better.

College students reliably pull all-nighters and turn in half-baked arguments because they have underestimated — yet again — how long their term paper will actually take to complete. Managers routinely promise more than their team can realistically deliver. Building renovations famously end up taking longer and costing more than even seasoned contractors estimate. And artists are perpetually scrambling to pull together their exhibition even when past experience has told them that it will take longer and cost more than they think. This last example illustrates the recursive Hofstadter’s Law — a corollary of the planning fallacy — which states that things always take longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

If the ghost of my future self had spoken in my dream it likely would have warned me of the dangers of being overly optimistic, of falling prey to the planning fallacy, and of ignoring Hofstadter’s Law.

To make matters worse

Our problems with planning extend beyond simple optimism. It appears that the mental models that we rely on to understand the world, make decisions, and envision the future are themselves susceptible to optimism bias. Although it’s true that our brains are drawn to vividly bad things in the world — fires, accidents, and other catastrophes, for example — studies have shown that people are more likely to gloss over the abstractly bad and problematic in favor of the positive. This means that positive things are more likely to become solidified in our mental models than negative things. And this, in turn, makes those positive things both easier to remember and more likely to influence our predictions about the future.

And so we happily say, “Let’s go for a second baby! Labor wasn’t too bad and I don’t remember the infant years being all that hard, those adorable moments were many, and I’m sure we’ll be able to afford college somehow.” This is an excellent mindset for ensuring the survival of the species. But it is not so great for ensuring the success of your next project.

Re-enter the premortem.

The premortem sidesteps our problems with overoptimism and skewed mental models by asking not what might go wrong but what did go wrong. It doesn't ask us to make predictions and assess risk — things at which people are infamously bad — but deals instead with absolutes. The project has failed. You can now turn your mind to identifying all the things that led to failure. And then start thinking about what you could have done to keep those things from happening.

The prospective hindsight of a premortem helps one build a useful mental model of a failure without having to actually experience that failure. This model, in turn, can be used to anticipate and mitigate problems for next time which, in the circular world of the premortem, is actually this time.

My premortem

When I started exploring all the causes for my failure to achieve my 2025 art practice goals, I had no problem coming up with scenarios that were dramatic and arguably far-fetched. I suffered a venomous snake bite on the way to the studio — this scenario is vivid in my brain after having just read a New York Times article about the hazards of venomous snakes, albeit mostly in rural India and Africa. I was hit in the head by falling debris while walking under an apartment balcony and ended up in a coma — the getting hit in the head part actually did happen to me recently and that recency makes my brain consider it highly likely to happen again.

I had to dig deeper before I unearthed more realistic scenarios from my murky cognitive depths – things like lack of planning, absence of accountability, and simple procrastination.

Now that I have a better handle on the causes of my own future failure, I get to go back in time, to the present, and correct those things. The future is now.

Why did I fail and what could I have done to prevent it?

I failed because I had no deadlines or accountability to push me. If only I had formed an artist-in-residence relationship with reDirect to make me accountable for getting things done!

I failed because I didn’t schedule and protect studio time. If only I had blocked out studio time in my calendar and defended that time against things that seemed more pressing or interesting but that, in retrospect, were less important!

I failed because my studio space was unwelcoming and that made it hard to get into a creative mindset. If only I had spent a bit of time at the beginning of the year making my space nicer! But note: although it’s true that one’s workspace can have a tremendous impact on well-being and productivity, the promise of effortless workflow and creative bliss that the ubiquitous studio-porn dangles in front of artists is an empty one. I do want my space to be more inviting – curtains, for example, and a bit more storage would help – but I know from past experience that the siren call of design and organization can end up shipwrecking my creative voyage.

I failed because every time I picked up a paintbrush I was paralyzed by overthinking and indecision. If only I had reminded myself of the tricks I already know for encouraging creative flow! It’s not that I necessarily want to make things easy – in fact I do some of my best work when the process is hard and fraught – but I do want to keep myself moving.

I failed because for every hour I spent on my own work, I spent five hours scrolling social media and getting caught up in cute baby videos. If only I had taken my own advice on limiting these sink holes of time!

There’s more, but you get the idea.

Putting my premortem where everyone can see it is a bit daunting. It shines a public spotlight on my intentions. But as I’ve just identified, the accountability that this spotlight brings is one of the things that will increase my chances of following through on those intentions.

This year, instead of succumbing to optimistic ignorance and hoping for the best, I’m looking 2025 squarely in the eye. I reject Rizzo the Rat’s aversion to thinking about the future, manifested in his cry upon seeing the Muppet’s Ghost of Christmas Future: “Oh, this is too scary. I don't think I wanna see any more!”

Instead, I’m following the path of Ebenezer Scrooge who, according to Charles Dickens, said: “Ghost of the Future! I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But, as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart.”

Anne Kearney is the 2025 ReDirect Artist in Residence. You can read more about her here.

Introducing reDirect’s 2025 Artist in Residence

I am delighted to be the reDirect Artist-in-Residence for 2025!

I have long been interested in both art and people. My earliest memories are of “making things” — playing with pipe cleaners, cardboard, glue, and whatever else I could get my hands on. As the years have passed the materials have changed, but the common root of what drives my art is a love of exploration and discovery. How do these materials work? What can I do with them? What can I learn?

My interest in people — particularly in human psychology and behavior — blooms from this same root of curiosity. How do people function? How can we influence them for the better? What experiments can we do to learn more? These interests eventually led to a degree in cognitive science from Stanford and a PhD in environmental psychology from the University of Michigan where I had the great fortune to meet many of the people currently on the reDirect board.

My environmental psychology career has taken me from academia to consulting to working with NASA where, as my daughter once explained to a friend, I “helped design spaceships so that people don’t go crazy.” Art was often relegated to the backseat during those years but it was always along for the ride.

When I embarked on my adventure as a full-time artist about seven years ago, I assumed that the choice to embrace art was a de facto choice to leave the world of psychology behind. But as I developed my art practice and artistic voice, I realized that my background in cognitive science and environmental psychology was the primary driver of my artwork — not only pointing me towards particular ideas and themes to explore but also helping me see how to keep working at my best. Like many epiphanies, this one seemed obvious in hindsight.

My years studying human cognition and psychology have shaped the way I look at the world. And as I create and struggle as an artist, I have become increasingly aware of the focus and insights that this particular lens brings to the creative process. When I started a blog that explores these connections and insights, it felt like coming full circle.

As a reDirect Artist-in-Residence, part of what I will be doing is continuing my written explorations of art, life, and environmental psychology as a way to help bring reDirect’s SEE Framework to life. This writing will take the form of blog posts — personal essays flavored with science — that I hope will resonate with readers not only because we are all creative (and we are) but because we are all human.

I welcome the structure that this Artist-in-Residence will bring and I look forward to the opportunity to dive deeper into the ideas embedded in SEE!

            - Anne

Anne Kearney is an artist and writer who currently lives in the vibrant city of Barcelona. Anne’s artwork is inspired by her decades of experience as an environmental psychologist working for universities, non-profits and NASA. She is energized by the struggle of finding ways to communicate the essence of abstract ideas through simple art materials. Her writing explores what cognitive science and psychology have to tell us about creativity, making art, and functioning at our best in this complex world. Anne has a BA in Psychology/Cognitive Science from Stanford University, a PhD in Environmental Psychology from the University of Michigan, and has studied art throughout her life.