Prospective storytelling

A couple of months back, I started playing chess online. I have known the rules of chess for a long time but I was never really a serious player. After a few embarrassing losses against random internet strangers, I started learning more about chess.

As I was learning the strategy and nuances of chess, I could not help but draw parallels between chess and life. You have an end goal of checkmating your opponent and there are, quite literally, an incalculable number of different ways to get there. To reach the end goal, you need to set, plan for and complete several long-term and many short-term goals. Not everything that happens on the chessboard is under your control but unless its too late, there are almost certainly many ways out of extremely bad situations.

A couple of weeks later, I read a tweet about modern careers being all about retrospective storytelling, basically an explanation of your past decisions and their results, much like a chess player explaining a chess position that they have reached. The rest of the story is unpredictable, the same as the game.

Then I had an epiphany.

Let’s call it Prospective Storytelling. If you have an end goal in sight (this may be an end goal for your life, career or an important long term project among other things) and it seems complex and/or overwhelming, a prospective story may be helpful before you chalk out the detailed plan. This story is a living document that can change based on any new development until the end goal is achieved. Once the story is ready, the planning part becomes much easier as you can pick a small part of the story and plan at a granular level while remaining confident about the macro-level direction.