"At any given moment, you are standing on the edge of massive opportunity!" - Futurist Jim Carroll

I just finished writing a massive series about exponential trends and opportunities in 2026 and beyond.

As I was writing it, I couldn't help but think that the series had opportunity written all over it!

And then I began thinking that many folks won't see those opportunities because they are too focused on the barriers that get in the way.

After that, I began thinking that it's also true that some people won't be able to achieve those opportunities because some unwanted barriers get in the way.

And that led me to the idea that for some, life is a series of opportunities interrupted by momentary setbacks!

And then I realized that many of my daily posts lately have become far too long, and so I need to shorten the message!

So I'll leave today's post at that! 

---

Futurist Jim Carroll thinks it's better to focus on the opportunities in front of you rather than the barriers that get in the way.

**#Opportunity** **#Barriers** **#Setbacks** **#Exponential** **#Mindset** **#Perspective** **#Momentum** **#Focus** **#Potential** **#Optimism**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/01/decoding-tomorrow-daily-inspiration-at-any-given-moment-you-are-standing-on-the-edge-of-massive-opportunity/

"Don't be average. Don’t be boring. Be bold. Be fascinating!" - Futurist Jim Carroll

2025 is almost a wrap.

And that brings me to 279 days of my Daily Inspiration post in 2025, continuing the tradition that began early in August 2016, where each workday involves a bit of fresh new insight.

Since then, I have not missed ONE single workday. Come hell or high water, power failure or jet lag, the post has gone out!

Here's a slideshow of what I wrote in 2025. 279 inspirations! Today marks 280!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJpEdbKByLE

And then it starts all over again tomorrow, on Thursday, January 1, 2026 - with my "10 Great Words for 2026," which itself began in 2006.
If you haven't signed up, join the 1/4 million who get it every day.

Do so at subscribe.jimcarroll.com

----
There's no doubt that there's a lot of challenge to come in 2026, but there's also a lot of opportunity.

Opportunities become even bigger when exponential trends become a reality.

But here's the thing - it's up to you whether you will turn it into an opportunity, or whether the challenge will bury you.

It depends on the choices you make and the actions you take.

But there is a dark side to velocity.

If you choose to let the challenges rule, you'll slide into mediocrity like
everyone else - you'll embrace it.

But if you decide to be bold, be daring, you'll escape it - and you'll find it absolutely fascinating!

So what's your choice - are you going to embrace, or escape, the potential for mediocrity that is in front of us with this exponential world?

You need to think about the issue of mediocrity in terms of your personal choice and the company you are involved with. If you decide to do boring things and chase average, you'll be mediocre. If you choose to be bold, you'll find things to be far more fascinating! If you take a mediocre organization and give it average tools and vague objectives, you don't get innovation. You get accelerated incompetence.

I explored this side of the equation in my satire "Embracing Mediocrity"—a guide on how to do the bare minimum—and its antidote, "Escaping Mediocrity." In the past, you could survive being "average" because the market moved slowly. You could hide in the margins.

You should choose to buy the books right now. Be bold! You'll find them to be fascinating!

Visit mediocirity.jimcarrolll.com. Use the code BEBOLD, and you'll get 20% off!

Here's what you need to think about.

Read the full post.

----

Futurist Jim Carroll will resume his Daily Inspiration tomorrow with his 10 Great Words for 2026.

**#Mediocrity** **#Bold** **#Fascinating** **#Average** **#Uniqueness** **#Creativity** **#Exponential** **#Leadership** **#Moonshot** **#Excellence**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-26-escaping-mediocrity-dont-be-average-dont-be-boring-be-bold-be-fascinating/

兩種成長模式
https://vocus.cc/article/amp/62c8e7d7fd8978000169199c

Two Types of Growth - Scott H Young
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2013/02/05/two-types-of-growth/

#logarithmic #exponential

Some students can pass numeric exams, but will be utterly unable to apply the lessons unless they do a bunch of word problems teaching them how to apply it. Side note, it hurts me when people say #exponential and just mean, increased a lot, once. It makes me question how well they learned math.

"Don't stay in your lane. The future is happening in the blur between the lines." - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
---

We are on Day 22. You have built the engine (Day 17), fuelled it with an anti-fragile mindset (Day 18), mapped your portfolio of options (Day 19), and opened your eyes to the road ahead (Day 21).

But here is the problem: You are still driving as if the old road signs exist!

This trend is easy to understand but difficult to comprehend.

Here's what's going on. In a linear world, we had "industries." Banks were banks. Car companies built cars. Hospitals treated patients.

Competitors were the people who sold exactly what you sold.

In an exponential world, these definitions are disappearing - because the boundaries that define an industry are disappearing. Why is that? Because the things that defined an industry were some very strict barriers, and a lot of 'friction' was involved to try to do anything. Today, with faster trends, technology, and AI, those barriers are disappearing because 'friction' is being eliminated.

Technology is not just speeding things up; it is melting the walls between sectors. If you define yourself by your "industry," you are already obsolete, because your biggest threat - and your biggest opportunity - is coming from outside of what you define it to be. From a personal career perspective, this has pretty profound implications - because if you are an 'expert' in a certain industry, what happens to you when the industry begins to blur?

The discipline you must master in 2026 and beyond is Boundary Dissolution.

Why are the walls between industries crashing down?

It goes back to the "Tomorrow's Company Won't Have Walls" idea - the new corporate structure allows companies to bend and shape, mold and modify, shift and change. We are moving from firms as closed, industry-defined “things” to firms as cross-sector systems that route data, payments, identity, logistics, and care across different partners at high speed.

To do a lot of these, they are hiring the people who are experts at the career pivot - people who bring a broad range of skills across a vast number of different knowledge areas, who have worked and can work in multiple different industries.

The new leader of the future is Gumby!

He or she doesn't have bones, but they have ambition. And in a rigid world, they bend the rules of every industry to build the future.

Don't take my word for it. Look at what is happening right now among the world's biggest players.

---

**#Boundaries** **#Convergence** **#Blur** **#Industries** **#Orchestration** **#Flexibility** **#Disruption** **#APIs** **#Innovation** **#Exponential**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-22-boundary-divergence-dont-stay-in-your-lane-the-future-is-happening-in-the-blur-between-the-lines/

“If you are the fastest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.” - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
---

The 1987 editorial "Tomorrow's Company Won't Have Walls" stands as one of the most accurate corporate prophecies of the modern era.

And it had a profound impact on my life.

It's probably fair to say that if I hadn't read it, I wouldn't have stepped out on my own to start my own company, chase my own career, do my own thing - and become a global freelancer, a nomadic worker, a lone wolf, long before the trend became real and the idea fashionable. Like I've said - I haven't had a job for 35 years, and I work really hard to not have to get a job!

It's worth reading, because it predicted with precision the modern organization of today.

Think about where we are now: many organizations don't define themselves by the depth of their staff - they do so by the reach of their skills network.

But in 2026 and beyond, the sophisticated reach of a networked organization is not enough.

It's no longer about the reach of your skills network, but also the speed with which they operate.

If they aren't as fast as you, it will slow you down even further, stunt your progress, and ruin your ability to align with exponential trends.

That's why, in 2026 and beyond, you have to stop letting slow partners kill your speed.
The Issue of Network Velocity

We are on Day 20. We have built your internal engine: You have the Unapologetic Uniqueness (Day 17), an Antifragile Mindset (Day 18), and Optionality Architecture (Day 19).

Do those things, and you are getting ready for our exponential world.

But as they say, "but wait, there's more!" Now, we must look outside.

You can have a Ferrari engine (your mindset), but if you are driving in a convoy of tractors (your partners), you are going to move at the speed of a tractor!

And here's the thing about what this means to the networked organization, and perhaps your role in it as a freelancer: in a linear world, we picked partners based on stability, history, and comfort. We stuck with the vendor we’d used for 20 years because "they know us."

In an exponential world, loyalty to the past is a guarantee for failure. If your supply chain, your technology vendors, or your peer group are evolving linearly while the market accelerates exponentially, they aren't just slowing you down.

They are anchors.

This means that another discipline you must master going forward is Network Velocity.

Learn why.

--
**#Velocity** **#Network** **#Freelance** **#Speed** **#Agility** **#Partners** **#Scale** **#Synchronization** **#Exponential** **#Frictionless**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-20-network-velocity-if-you-are-the-fastest-person-in-the-room-you-are-in-the-wrong-room/

Folks wanted cheaper egThrow out the roadmap. Build a portfolio of instant pivots instead.” - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
---

Build options, not plans!

We are on Day 19 of this series and have covered a lot of ground. We’ve established the necessary foundation: the future is terrifyingly fast (Day 16), your only defense is being (Day 17), and you must adopt an "antifragile" mindset to feed on the chaos (Day 18).

The question today is this: How do you plan when you can’t predict? Or when what you predict doesn't happen because something else does. Or a trend is too complex 

Welcome to the idea of Optionality Architecture. Instead of building a plan, build a series of pivots, so that you are ready for whatever the hell happens!

Think about this idea. Planning is dead. Reacting with prebuilt plans is in.

Here's why.

In a linear world, the five-year plan was the gold standard. It was a single, rigid path based on the comforting (but false) assumption that the future would look mostly like the past. Strategy was about prediction and sticking to pre-determined plans.

A five-year plan today? Laughable! In an exponential world, a single, fixed plan is a strategic liability. The moment you commit to one path, a technology curve goes vertical, or a Black Swan event lands. The old strategy instantly becomes an anchor that guarantees you miss the shift.

The winning move is to stop worshipping the plan and start architecting the possible.

That's why the new principle you must master for 2026 and beyond is Optionality Architecture.

Beyond being a cool phrase that rolls off your tongue, it's a critical survival and success strategy you need to go forward.

To get it, you must understand what it is.

The most successful individuals and organizations in an exponential world don't just have options. They systematically construct portfolios of options.

Keep reading - learn your options!

----
**#Optionality** **#Pivots** **#Portfolio** **#Flexibility** **#Adaptability** **#Diversification** **#Strategy** **#Career** **#Revenue** **#Exponential**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-19-optionality-architecture-throw-out-the-roadmap-build-a-portfolio-of-instant-pivots-instead/

"Always remember that conformity is where tomorrow's greatness goes to die." - Futurist Jim Carroll

----

Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
---

I've long suggested that one of the best ways to align with the future is through this thinking: when everybody is running one way, run the other way!

Be the contrarian. The hole in the bucket, the square peg with a bunch of round holes, the one who says "why not?' when everyone else is saying 'why?'

We are on Day 17. Yesterday, we looked at the terrifying math of the future—the sheer scale of change that is coming. 1-2-4-16-64 vs. 1-2-3-45.

When faced with that kind of overwhelming scale, the natural human instinct is to feel overwhelmed. And I am willing to admit that one reaction I see in common with all of my audiences is that this feeling is universal. I've been doing text-message-based polling from the stage for over 15 years, and one overwhelmingly consistent attitude is that people feel universally overwhelmed by the speed of the future.

So they try to avoid it. They try to fit in. They take the cautious route.

They choose the comfortable over discomfort.

The result? When we feel a need for comfort, to fit in, to follow the herd instinct, we try to be like everyone else. We look for safety in numbers. Case in point: we look at our competitors and say, "Well, they are doing AI this way, so we should too." Korn Ferry made this observation about AI: "Among the most expensive keeping-up-with-the-Joneses games in corporate history."

Need more proof? We seek out "best practices," which is usually just a fancy word for "copying the average."

I rest my case.

In a linear world, fitting in was a survival strategy. You survived by being a cog that fit perfectly into the machine.

In an exponential world, conformity is a death sentence.

Here's why: read the full post at the link below.

----

**#Uniqueness** **#Conformity** **#Contrarian** **#Rebellion** **#Innovation** **#Curiosity** **#Differentiation** **#Misfits** **#Authenticity** **#Exponential**

The story of Oblio has defined much of Futurist Jim Carroll’s approach to life.

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-16-unapologetic-uniqueness-always-remember-that-conformity-is-where-tomorrows-greatness-goes-to-die/

“Your brain is built for addition. The future is built on multiplication.” - Futurist Jim Carroll

---

Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.

---

When exponential change arrives, it never goes well.

That's because most people fail to understand what it means and don't act, which is a problem. After all, there is a remarkably narrow window between "this will never work" and "how did we miss this?"

We are on Day 16. Earlier in this series (go back to Day 2), we confronted the staggering velocity of change—the doubling of scientific knowledge, the acceleration of technological breakthroughs.

But there is a massive, invisible chasm we have not yet crossed:

It is the gap between intellectually knowing the numbers and viscerally comprehending what they mean for your reality in 36 months. It's called the scale-blindness epidemic, and why your brain cannot comprehend what is coming.

Consider this: you can read the reports on AI growth, computing power, or synthetic biology until your eyes bleed. You can nod your head and agree that things are moving fast.

But deep down, you don't believe it.

Why? Because you are a human being. We are linearly wired creatures living in an exponential world. Our brains evolved to track linear threats—a lion moving across the savannah at a constant speed. We understand “1, 2, 3, 4, 5.” Slow, linear growth.

But it seems we are biologically incapable of intuitively grasping “1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32.” Wildly fast exponential growth.

Because of this evolutionary flaw, the vast majority of leaders suffer from "Scale-Blindness." When we look at an emerging exponential technology, our brains instinctively project its growth linearly. We do a 1-2-3-4-5 - not a 1-2-4-8-16-32. We look at what it can do today—which is usually underwhelming—and assume next year it will be maybe 10% better. And the fact is, it could be 100% better, or 1,000%, or maybe even 10,000%

And because of our blindness, we fail to miss out on the significance of the trend.

Think about it another way - if we see a 10-foot wave coming and prepare accordingly, completely blind to the fact that the exponential function will turn it into a 100-foot tsunami by the time it reaches shore.

That's why principle **#16** in this series isn't about learning more facts; it's about forcing your brain to undergo a sort of exponential shock therapy so you can cure this blindness before it's too late. That's because there is comfort in incremental thinking!

----
**#ScaleBlindness** **#Exponential** **#Velocity** **#Disruption** **#Innovation** **#Acceleration** **#Linear**

Futurist Jim Carroll believes that most organizations are falling way behind when it comes to the 'acceleration gap.'

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-16-scale-blindness-your-brain-is-built-for-addition-the-future-is-built-on-multiplication/

"Scale immediately or fail slowly. There is no middle ground."- Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
--

We are on Day 15!

You’ve listened to the edge (Day 13) and filtered out the hype to find a real structural signal (Day 14).
You have identified a real trend!

Now, you face the moment where most legacy organizations fail.

People often talk about something called "pilot purgatory," and the fact that people and organizations get stuck there. It's the tendency to test or trial a new idea - and then get stuck there, never moving beyond the testing or 'pilot' phase. Yup, it's a form of purgatory!

Let's put the challenge in context. For years, I have advised leaders to follow a simple, powerful mantra for innovation in a fast world: Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast.

Most organizations are pretty good at the first two. They "think big" in strategy sessions. They "start small" with innovation labs and proofs-of-concept.

But they completely fail at the third and most critical step: scale fast. They end in a state of perpetual experimentation where they run dozens of small, safe tests that generate interesting things - but never make it out of the starting gate. And in doing so, they mistake motion for progress - they believe that the mere fact that they are testing a bunch of things means they are making progress.

They aren't.

Here's the problem - in a linear world, you could slowly roll out a new initiative over two or three years. You had the luxury of all the time in the world.

But in an exponential world, that doesn't work. You are surrounded by the problem of legacy - existing processes, IT systems, organizational sclerosis, and bureaucratic inertia designed to keep doing things the same way. That means to move fast, you need more effort than ever before - because in this new fast world, you need to move instantly from a "safe experiment" to "massive deployment."

The discipline to do that? Let's call it! Escape Velocity.

I have been covering the issue of velocity and scale for years. When I look back through my own archive of blog posts, keynotes, and Daily Inspirations, I see a clear pattern of organizations that understood how to achieve this momentum. But some did.

Learn what they did differently!

----

**#EscapeVelocity** **#Scale** **#Innovation** **#Momentum** **#Exponential** **#Leadership** **#Legacy** **#Disruption** **#Speed** **#Deployment**

Futurist Jim Carroll has seen way too many organizations stuck in a state of perpetual pilot purgatory.

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-15-scale-immediately-or-fail-slowly-there-is-no-middle-ground/

"Leadership today isn't about what you chase. It's about what you ignore." - Futurist Jim Carroll

----
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com.
----

We are on Day 14 of my 26 Principles for 2026 - guidance to guide you through a world of exponential change. If you don't remember why this is so critical, go back and read the intro!

Recently,? You’ve humbled your ego (Day 12) and opened your ears to the young (Day 13).

You are ready to listen to the future.

But suddenly, you have a new problem. You can't hear anything but noise.

Have you noticed how much hype is out there these days?

Separating reality from hype has always been a challenge - I've certainly been covering that issue for a long time. You can't speak and write about the future without giving people advice and guidance about what's going on out there, and separating the real from the noise.

But there is more hype than ever before - and so on Day 14, I want you to think about the importance of developing what I call Hype Immunity - aka the discipline of ignoring almost everything.

Think about it: In our old, slow, linear world, change happened slowly enough that you could evaluate new technologies, disruptive trends, new products, and new innovation opportunities, one at a time. You had the luxury of waiting to see what settled, what was real, and what you really needed to worry about.

That luxury of time is gone. Forever. In an exponential world, you are bombarded daily with "game-changing" breakthroughs. There is just so much to keep track of! AI agents today, spatial computing tomorrow, quantum adoption next week. .

For a long time, folks like me have been talking about the tendency of people to chase 'shiny new objects."

Remember the 'metaverse '? Wasn't it the hottest thing on the planet just a few years ago ? It was just reported that Facebook lost almost $100 billion in its ill-fated efforts to drag everyone into some weird new virtual world. Companies that followed the shiny object that it represented probably wasted as much.

Here's the thing - If you chase every shiny object, you will exhaust your organization and achieve nothing. That's why the critical leadership skill in 2026 is no longer just spotting trends—that’s easy. The critical skill is rapidly filtering the 99% marketing hype to find the 1% structural shift that actually matters to your business model.

The discipline you must master is Hype Immunity.

---

Futurist Jim Carroll believes that his hype-filter is one of the most important skilsl he has developed — and one that differentiates him from most of his peers!

**#HypeImmunity** **#Leadership** **#Innovation** **#FOMO** **#Strategy** **#Exponential** **#Trends** **#Disruption** **#Focus** **#Future**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-14-hype-immunity-day-14-hype-immunity-the-discipline-of-ignoring-almost-everything/

"Know when to get your age out of the way." - Futurist Jim Carroll

----

Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.

---

We are on Day 13. We just spent Day 12 dismantling your personal hubris - getting your ego out of the way. One of the most important aspects of that?
Showing your wisdom the door!

We need to dismantle the collective, generational delusion of your organizational hierarchy!

We need to talk about age.

Yup.

Sorry.

Depending on who you are while reading this, there might be a major reality you need to consider - it might very well be the case that your grey hair is now a strategic liability.

The unique nature of our times? I call it "The Wisdom Inversion!"

Think about where we are at this moment in time.

In a slow-moving, linear world, wisdom was cumulative. Grey hair was a proxy for foresight. The people at the top of the pyramid had seen the most, so they knew the most. You paid your dues, waited your turn, and eventually, you got to hold the steering wheel.

In an exponential world, that model is completely broken.

When technology, culture, and consumer behaviour shift radically every 36 months, your 30 years of experience isn't just irrelevant; it’s often a dangerous anchor to an obsolete past. You might have earned your way to the top, but by the time you get there, your experience, insight, and wisdom are probably wildly out of date.

The result? Right now, in boardrooms across the world, rooms full of 55-year-olds are making massive strategic bets on a future built by, and for, 25-year-olds.

They are trying to interpret TikTok dynamics through a PowerPoint lens.

Need an example? They are analyzing decentralized finance business models - weird things involved crypto and blockchain and stuff like that - using banking models from 1995.

And your younger employees? They are rolling their eyes. They are quietly laughing. They are sitting in the back of the room, biting their tongues, watching leadership steer the ship toward an iceberg they spotted five miles back. They are frustrated because they are native to the future that senior leadership is only visiting as tourists.

If your strategy is being dictated solely by the oldest people in the building, you are driving forward while staring into the rearview mirror.

That's why a discipline you must master in 2026, and beyond, is Wisdom Inversion.

Keep on reading - because you need to deal with this reality!

----

**#2026** **#Change** **#Navigate** **#Future** **#Inspiration** **#Principles** **#Speed** **#Growth** **#Guidance** **#Exponential**

Jim Carroll's 1997 book, Surviving the Information Age, continues to be a powerful indictment of the change barriers that come with slow-moving minds in an era of fast change.

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-the-wisdom-inversion-know-when-to-get-your-age-out-of-the-way

"The hubris of experience guarantees failure." - Futurist Jim Carroll
---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
---

We are on Day 12.

We’ve spent the last two weeks stripping away the internal barriers to speed—the fear, the linear forecasting, the lack of collaboration, and the organizational complexity (Day 11).

Now, we face the final, most formidable internal enemy. It’s not out there in the market. It’s looking back at you in the mirror.

It's you.

It is the ego of the successful leader. To really get ahead in 2026, you need to understand the trap of hubris and why your past success can be your biggest future liability.

What do you need to think about? The challenge of successful experience and why it can get in your way.

In a linear, slow-moving world, 30 years of continued success was your most valuable asset. It proved you knew the formula. You had "seen it all." Your intuition was unimpeachable wisdom. You knew exactly what to do, when it needed to be done, and how to do it.

Those days are gone.

In an exponential world, where entire industries are being reinvented every few years, that same 30 years of experience can become a catastrophic liability. Why? Because it can get in the way. It blinds you. It clouds your judgment. It can bring to light your lack of skills in how to respond to the profound changes that are underway. It conditions you to believe that the future will behave like the past.

It locks you into old pattern recognition for entirely new patterns!

When you combine a track record of linear success with an exponential shift in reality, you get a dangerous psychological condition I have written about extensively, and that's the trap of hubris.

It’s the arrogance that says, "I know better than anyone else." It’s the belief that your past wins grant you immunity from future disruption. It is the ultimate drag on velocity because a leader or individual blinded by hubris will drive full speed off a cliff, ignoring every warning sign along the way because they are convinced their internal map is better than the external terrain.

The discipline you must master to avoid this fate is Strategic Humility.

You need to know what it is, how to identify it, how to avoid it - and how to shed it!

Read the post to learn how.

---
**#2026** **#Change** **#Navigate** **#Future** **#Inspiration** **#Principles** **#Speed** **#Growth** **#Guidance** **#Exponential**

Futurist Jim Carroll has seen a lot of hubris within the leadership teams has has spoken to, as part of his keynote preparation process - and that insight has shaped the way he has pulled together his trends and innovation keynote.

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-12-strategic-humility-the-hubris-of-experience-guarantees-failure/

"Don't protect your knowledge; connect it." - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
---

"If I have an idea and you have an idea, we have two ideas. If we share those ideas, we have a movement!" That's what I wrote some years ago here in my Daily Inspiration, in a post talking about the power of collaborative insight.

In a collaborative world, the size, scope and reach of your 'idea movement' becomes even more important, and that's why you need to think about connecting your knowledge with other knowledge - rather than hoarding it.

We are on Day 10. You have set a Moonshot goal (Day 9) to grow 10x. Now you need the collaborative velocity to achieve it - you realise that more than likely, your internal 'brain trust' is too limited and too slow to gather and obtain the knowledge it needs to move forward.

Take a look around your current organisation or your personal network. Do you honestly believe the resources, knowledge, and talent currently within your four walls are sufficient to achieve that 10x goal?

Of course they aren't! They were assembled to achieve yesterday's 10% goals - not a 10x goal!

And therein lies the difference. In a linear world, power came from hoarding knowledge. You built high walls around your R&D lab, protected your trade secrets, and tried to hire the best people to work exclusively for you. Your internal capabilities defined your speed.

But in an exponential world, the speed of innovation outside your organisation will always exceed the speed of innovation inside it. There are more smart people outside your company than inside it. If you work on your own or in a small team, know that your knowledge is now, and will forever be, limited. There are more breakthrough startups working in your field than you have R&D teams; there are other teams who are working faster, smarter and better than you.

And in that context, you need to learn how to connect with them!

If you try to build everything yourself, you move at a linear pace. To move at an exponential pace, you must shift from "owning" knowledge to "accessing" it through rapid partnership.

I have been obsessed with this shift from "slow isolation" to "fast collaboration" for years. It is not just about working together; it is about how fast you can form the connection to solve the problem.

Read the full post to learn why this is now critical.

---

Futurist Jim Carroll identified the power of collaborative networks in a 1987 document he wrote called Linkage. It predicted the emerging concept of LinkedIn, which would not appear until 20 years later.

**#2026** **#Change** **#Navigate** **#Future** **#Inspiration** **#Principles** **#Speed** **#Growth** **#Guidance** **#Exponential**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-10-dont-protect-your-knowledge-connect-it-futurist-jim-carroll/

"Know this: if your goals feel 'realistic,' you are thinking too small." - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
----

We are on Day 9. You've committed to the pivot (Day 7), and you are increasing your execution velocity (Day 8). You are moving faster.

But are you aiming high enough?

In an exponential world, you can’t just think big - you need to think bigger!
And so day 9 is all about aiming higher and achieving the moonshot mentality. Here's your key thought: in 2026 and beyond, the idea of being just 10% better is dead, and being 10x better is critical.

Think about it: in a linear world, success was defined by incrementalism. Growing sales by 5%, cutting costs by 10%, or improving efficiency by 15% year-over-year was considered a victory. You achieved this by working a little harder, squeezing a little more out of things, and making safe, small, "feasible" bets.

Realistic things.

Things you know you could accomplish.

In an exponential world, incrementalism is the path to irrelevance. Small steps won't work. Thinking small is a guarantee for marginal success. While you are striving for 10% growth, an exponential competitor - maybe someone leveraging AI, developing a new business model, or developing new skills - is aiming for 10x growth and will wipe you out before your five-year plan is halfway done.

To survive in 2026, you must stop trying to improve the status quo and start trying to replace it. You need to shift from linear goal-setting to exponential ambition.

Moonshot thinking!

The discipline is Aiming Higher!

As Sly and the Family Stone said - I want to take you higher! To understand the scale of ambition required for 2026, you first need to see where the trends are actually going. You cannot plan for 2030 using 2025 thinking. If you take today's shifts and extrapolate them to their 10x conclusion, the future looks radically different.

So let me take you into my world of "Radical Extrapolation" - I'll take some trends I've covered and take them higher.

I'm Sly.

You're the family.

Let's get high!

Keep reading - go to the full post!

----

**#Moonshot** **#Exponential** **#Innovation** **#10x** **#AimHigher** **#Space** **#Capital** **#Commercialization** **#Transformation** **#Breakthrough**

One of the highlights of Jim’s career was the moment he was invited to keynote an event at NASA, with a room full of astronauts, mission directors, rocket engineers, and others, with the focus being on ‘thinking BIG’. The second highlight was when he was invited back for a repeat performance!

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-9-know-this-if-your-goals-feel-realistic-you-are-thinking-too-small/

"The greatest risk today isn't the speed of change: it's your failure to pick up your pace." - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
---

We are on Day 8. You've committed to the pivot (Day 7). Now, you have to run.

That's why the principle you need to align to is "Velocity Alignment."
What is it? Matching your internal pace with external reality!

In a linear world, speed was a differentiator - the future belonged to the fast! Being faster than your competitor was a real advantage - if you mastered speed, you had what you needed to stay out in front in a competitive world. Speed wasn't a mad rush, though - you had the luxury of "measured paces," long development cycles, and five-year roadmaps.

Five-year roadmaps! As they say, LOL to that! In our faster world, you can barely plan for next month!

The sad truth is that in our new exponential world, speed is no longer a differentiator; it is the baseline requirement for existence. The external environment is accelerating so rapidly that if you don't do the minimum to keep up, you are guaranteed to not just fall behind - but perhaps, become rapidly irrelevant. our personal workflow, your team's processes, your organizational cadence—are still running on linear time, you are falling behind every single hour.

The interesting thing for me, as we head into 2026 in the context of the issue of speed, is that perhaps my book of 2012 is now out of date. The future no longer belongs to those who are fast - it belongs to those who are fluid!

Here's the key thing you need to ponder - the disconnect between external velocity and internal friction is where companies die, and careers stall.

The Evidence: 10 Ways Speed is the New Currency

Throughout my blog posts and keynotes, I have documented how the fundamental metrics of success have shifted toward velocity. CEOs have brought me in to talk to their teams to help them understand the reality of speed and the necessity for corporate velocity. The things I talk and write about aren't theoretical; it is the new operating reality across every sector.

Here are 10 examples from my analysis of how speed is now the primary metric:

(read the rest of the post in the link)

In an exponential world, speed is no longer just an advantage but the absolute baseline for survival.

You must immediately align your personal pace with this accelerating reality to avoid falling behind. That's the essence of Principle **#8** - velocity alignment!

---

Futurist Jim Carroll identified 'speed' as being the core metric for future success over 25 years ago.

**#2026** **#Change** **#Navigate** **#Future** **#Inspiration** **#Principles** **#Speed** **#Growth** **#Guidance** **#Exponential**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/12/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-8-the-greatest-risk-today-isnt-the-speed-of-change-its-your-failure-to-pick-up-your-pace/

"Remember - in an exponential world, the static become extinct." - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
---

Day 7? Let's focus on Relentless Reinvention, and why "staying the course" is the most dangerous strategy of all

Days 1 to 6? We've reset your clock, cleared your path, built your courage, turned on your radar, accelerated your learning, and embraced rapid mistakes.

Now, we arrive at the hardest emotional discipline of them all: knowing when to change - and doing the change.

In our old, slow-moving linear world, "staying the course" was a supreme virtue. Once you set a career path or a long-term leadership strategy, you stick to it. Changing direction mid-stream was seen as a sign of weakness, indecision, or flakiness.

But in an exponential world, "staying the course" when the terrain is fundamentally shifting beneath your feet isn't grit; it's suicide.

When technology, industries, or market dynamics shift exponentially, your current role, skill set, or leadership approach can become obsolete overnight. The most successful leaders in 2026 won't be the ones who cling the hardest to their past identities; they will be the ones with the agility to abandon a doomed path instantly and reallocate their personal energy to a new one.

In that context, the discipline you must master is Relentless Reinvention.

Reinvention? It's often known as 'the pivot.'

What Reinvention Looks Like in Real Life

It is easy to discuss the concept of the "pivot" in the abstract—as a strategic necessity on a whiteboard. It is much harder to recognize what it looks like in the trenches of real life.

In my book Now What? Reinvention and the Role of Optimism in Finding Your New Future, I documented the journeys of individuals who faced this exact precipice, with several of the stories looking at their pivot during the pandemic of 2020. They didn't just "change jobs"; they fundamentally reinvented their skills, their time, and their identities to align with a new reality. You can get the book here.

Here is what Relentless Reinvention looks like in practice:

(keep reading)

----

**#2026** **#Change** **#Navigate** **#Future** **#Inspiration** **#Principles** **#Speed** **#Growth** **#Guidance** **#Exponential**

Futurist Jim Carroll has reinvented his future multiple times throughout his career, considering it to be just like a regular software upgrade.

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/11/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-7-remember-in-an-exponential-world-the-static-become-extinct/

"Make more 'better' mistakes!" - Futurist Jim Carroll

---

Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.

---

In 2026, your new ROI should be ROF - "Return on Failure"

We are on Day 6. We've reset your clock, cleared the path, built your courage, turned on your radar, and accelerated your learning.

Now, we need to completely rewire your relationship with failure.

Why? Because, as the saying goes, in a fast world, innovators fail faster!

Think about it. In a linear, slow-paced world, mistakes were expensive, permanent, and career-limiting. You spent years perfecting a product or strategy behind closed doors to ensure a flawless "Big Bang" launch. The ultimate metric was ROI—Return on Investment—and "failure" meant negative ROI.

Those days are gone. In an exponential world, that math is backwards. The new reality is that not making mistakes fast enough is the biggest mistake of all.

If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't moving fast enough. You aren't testing the boundaries. You are operating on old assumptions while the world shifts beneath your feet.

In that context, your goal isn't to avoid failure; it's to maximize what you learn from it to do it better the next time, right away. Every failure gives you invaluable data, insight, and lessons about speed. You need to make more mistakes, make them faster, and make them better, meaning they are small, calculated experiments designed to yield maximum learning, not sloppy errors born of carelessness.

In other words, make more better mistakes!

You really need to understand why this is so important - read the post for more.

---

Futurist Jim Carroll can count the mistakes he's made on many hands.

**#2026** **#Change** **#Navigate** **#Future** **#Inspiration** **#Principles** **#Speed** **#Growth** **#Guidance** **#Exponential**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/11/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-6-make-more-better-mistakes/

"Learn faster than knowledge appears. It’s your only sustainable advantage." - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
----

We are three days into resetting your mindset for 2026.

Day 5? It's all about learning velocity, and the fact that you need to stop relying on your degree and start learning for your life!

I want you to implant this idea firmly in your mind right now: skills decay. Add to that concept the idea of the half-life of knowledge. Layer on top of it my often-repeated phrase - the ability to master just-in-time knowledge is key.
The former is happening faster because the latter is becoming smaller. Once you understand that, you need much of what you need to know for 2026 - your ability to align and realign to the new velocity of knowledge will be key to everything you do.

Think about the change we are in the midst of. In a linear world, your education was a finite event. You went to college, got a degree, learned a trade, or got a set of professional skills, and that block of knowledge was something you could rely upon for a 30-year career with only minor maintenance.

But in an exponential world, knowledge is not just growing; it’s exploding. I've written about this a lot, but it bears repeating. I often share on stage the fact that the average half-life of a professional skill has collapsed from 10-15 years to just 5 years today. Or the fact that it is said that half of what you know today will be obsolete in five years, if not sooner. In some high-tech fields, that timeline is compressed even further, with knowledge potentially doubling in a matter of months or even hours.

This means that if you are relying on what you already know, i.e, with your past degree, your decade of experience, to carry you through 2026, you are driving on fumes. Your battery is empty, your mind is out of gas, and you'll soon hit the limit of where you can go.

Bottom line? The knowledge that got you here is decaying faster than you can replace it with linear learning methods.

In that context, the defining characteristic of a successful professional in 2026 will not be their stock of knowledge, but their rate of learning.

Principle 6? The discipline you must master is Learning Velocity.

Learn more in the post!

---

Futurist Jim Carroll spends a LOT of time learning new stuff, knowing that this is the key to everything!

**#2026** **#Change** **#Navigate** **#Future** **#Inspiration** **#Principles** **#Speed** **#Growth** **#Guidance** **#Exponential**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/11/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-5-learn-faster-than-knowledge-appears-its-your-only-sustainable-advantage/

"Know that the future whispers before it shouts. Listen now." - Futurist Jim Carroll

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing his end-of-2025 / introduction-to-2026 series, 26 Principles for 2026. You can follow along at 2026.jimcarroll.com. He welcomes your comments.
--

We are three days into resetting your mindset for 2026. You understand the speed of change (Temporal Literacy), you’ve started clearing the deadwood (Self-Pruning), and you’re building the courage to act without perfect clarity (Ambiguity Tolerance).

Now, you need a radar system! One that allows you to do a better job of understanding what comes next, and what you need to know about it, long before you have to do anything about it! Way back in 2007, I wrote about the idea of this when I outlined my 'Trends & Innovation' Model.' Right there, at the top of this iterative loop, is the 'radar'. It's what you do to find the signals through the noise.

I'll come back to this in a moment - for now, keep the idea in mind.

Here's how things have changed with the model. In a linear world, change happened slowly enough that you could afford to be reactive. You could wait until a trend became obvious, analyze it, and then adapt. 

In an exponential world, by the time a trend is obvious, it's usually too late to leverage it.

That means if you are reading about a disruptive technology on the front page of a mainstream business site, the exponential opportunity phase is likely already over. You are now in the reactive phase, playing catch-up against those who saw it coming three years ago. And that's why the idea of Anticipatory Intelligence has become so important in 2026 - you need to work harder to stay ahead of the trends that might impact you, before the trends actually impact.

This is a problem for most folks. The mistake most professionals make is that they are so obsessed with managing the present—the daily fires, the quarterly results, the immediate emails—that they never lift their heads to scan the horizon. They are driving a 200-mph Ferrari while staring intently at the dashboard indicators, oblivious to the cliff approaching up ahead.

To lead in 2026, you need to shift from being reactive to being anticipatory. The discipline for this is Anticipatory Intelligence.

Here's what you need to do....

(Keep reading!)

---
**#2026** **#Change** **#Navigate** **#Future** **#Inspiration** **#Principles** **#Speed** **#Growth** **#Guidance** **#Exponential**

Futurist Jim Carroll believes that developing his ability to do effective online research in the mid-1980s is one of the key skills that has allowed him to chase the unique career that he has!

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/11/decoding-tomorrow-mastering-2026-4-know-that-the-future-whispers-before-it-shouts-listen-now/