How to Use Backcasting
Anytime you set a goal, you create a “gap” between your “current” self and your “future self.”
This gap represents all the action steps required — everything you need to learn, change, and do to reach your goal. To close the gap, you have to figure out what those specific action steps are. Then you need to go out and do them.
There are so many ways to determine your action steps. And the way you choose to determine them can make a significant difference in the overall outcome of your goal.
As opposed to the traditional approach of forecasting, which works off of assumptions about what could be true, backcasting is about defining your desirable future and then working backward to figure out what must be true to achieve that desirable future.
Through backcasting, you force yourself to deal with reality — what’s true and what must be true to achieve your goal. Where traditional goal-setting and forecasting relies heavily on assumptions, backcasting relies on cause-and-effect.
You can use backcasting for a wide range of applications, not only for goal-setting. In this post, you’ll learn the steps for using backcasting as a goal-setting method that will help you:
Define your desirable future;
Determine what must be true to achieve it;
Create daily and weekly behavioral targets to make them true.
Define Your Desirable Future
All traditional goal-setting begins with defining a desirable future.
Without a clear and well-articulated vision of the future, it’s difficult to know where you’re going and what action steps you need to take to get there.
Start by writing a future statement — a clear description of your desirable future. Future statements tend to work best for backcasting when you include a specific metric or target and as much description as possible. Each detail you include in your future statement provides a new insight into what’s required to achieve it.
Work Backwards
After you’ve written your future statement, it’s time to work backwards to determine to create an action plan.
The keystone of backcasting is the opposite approach to projecting. Rather than forecasting and making assumptions about what you could do to achieve your desirable future, instead, work backwards.
To do this effectively, the key question is:
What must be true for my desirable future to become a reality?
What must be true can be re-framed as:
What must I or others do or not do?
What must happen or not happen?
What must I or others eliminate?
What must I or others acquire?
What must I or others create?
Each of these questions will help you determine the specific requirements of your desirable future.
Create Projects
Now that you know what’s required for your desirable future, the next step is to convert each requirement into projects.
Think of projects as a series of actions (taks) that must be completed to achieve the requirement. Each requirement you identified can be further “backcasted” to determine action steps and tasks you need to complete.
Here’s how:
1. Turn Requirements Into Projects
Take your first requirement and re-write it as an objective, including a metric and a feasible target date. This is your project.
Then, capture as many tasks as you can think of that need to happen today, this week, this month, and this year to complete this project and achieve the objective.
To do this, consider the same guiding questions as before:
What must I or others do or not do?
What must happen or not happen?
What must I or others eliminate?
What must I or others acquire?
What must I or others create?
2. Assess Your Risk
Next, you need to assess your risk.
The simplest way to think about this is:
Along the way toward achieving your desirable future, what could go wrong?
For each obstacle, brainstorm possible solutions or preventative strategies for each.
Depending on your sector, industry, and ideal future, here are potential obstacles to consider and plan ahead for:
Market shifts
Resource scarcity
Regulatory changes
Environmental impacts
Stakeholder opposition
Supply chain disruptions
Sustainability issues within the supply chain
Technological failures
Competitor innovations
Economic downturns
Legal challenges
For any potential obstacles that could hinder your progress, consider what you can do today, this week, this month, or this year to mitigate their potential impact.
3. Make Your Projects Public, Interconnected, and Collaborative
Using tools like Notion, you can create simple and accessible project management systems to align your team and make measurable progress.
One of the clearest ways to display your current project tasks for your team is using a KanBan board, like the one below:
Continue to repeat this process for each requirement, turning each into a project with tasks and making those tasks available to your team.
Each project represents a milestone along the way toward achieving your desirable future.