Three Visionary Sights

This was part of an address I gave to graduating students sometime early this week:


Today I want to share 3 visionary sights we need to have in order to grow as an individual. Developing and cultivating these skill sets would stand you in good stead for the future.

• Hindsight: The ability to reflect and learn from the past

• Foresight: The ability to predict and prepare for the future

• Insight: The ability to interpret and respond to the present

Hindsight: ability to understand a situation after the event has happened; what caused it and what should have been done; it is learning from experience. Hindsight is action informing thought. It involves critical reflection of one's experience in order to integrate knowledge gained from the experience with knowledge already possessed. Once that has been done, we should make a determined effort to implement any new approaches in how things ought to be carried out in future endeavours. You would have opportunities today to reflect on the activities that you participated in to hone this important skill set. I believe with hindsight you would be wiser in tackling the upcoming ‘O’ levels. Teachers are encouraged to be reflective practitioners too!

Foresight: ability to foresee what is to come before it happens. It is the capacity to detect and avoid dangers, assess the consequences of action and envision a desired future. It has to do with scenario planning, anticipating what could possibly happen. Foresight is thought informing action. This is to ensure that things turn out well or you come out as champions. Through the games you’d be playing and the lecture you’d hearing, you would be given opportunity to hone this critical skill set. However, despite our good planning and careful execution of life’s programmes, many things in life are unpredictable. According to Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can possibly go wrong does go wrong.” In such situations, we need insight.

Insight: ability to perceive clearly what is to be done in the here and now moment; a sudden understanding of a complex situation or problem and how to go about handling it. This comes about through the integration of knowledge based on experience (hindsight) and forward planning (foresight); and more often than not, a special revelation regarding what to do with present reality. Let me illustrate with a simple example: Before taking a Math exam, you would have already done a lot of practices (assignment, revision exercises); you’re building up your experience base. In the exam, invariably there would be many similar problems you’d have encountered before based on your hindsight. In addition, some of you would still hunt around for additional exercises to look for interesting questions you have not attempted before; this is having foresight. As you know, sometimes in the exams there would be a question or two you have not come across before. This is where you need to rely on insight. But you do know that the question is within your grasp. You have to rely and integrate all the techniques you’ve learnt; this is where problem solving strategies would come in handy eg. Working backwards, seeing whether there’s a pattern, starting with smaller numbers, etc. As you do so, your eureka (aha!) moment will come and that’s when you’ll feel elated.