What Is an Assumption Ground Audit?
Nola Simon lays out the assumption-ground audit — the practice of surfacing the assumptions, values, and past experiences silently steering your decisions — and introduces Make It So, the eight-week cohort built around it, launching June 1 and capped at 20 people. The version of futurism here is deliberately small: not flying cars and stage predictions, but the noticing practices and daily decisions that accumulate into the groundwork of the future of work. The test she poses: future you is a stranger, but a stranger who knows your past — what are you doing today that this person will thank you for?
- →Run an assumption-ground audit before you plan: name the assumptions, values, and past experiences that are silently steering your decisions at work and at home.
- →Model futurism as a daily practice — a dog that can't be rescheduled is an investment in future you, and small moments accumulate into the future of work.
- →Treat future you as a stranger who knows your past, and make today's decisions ones that person will recognize as groundwork.
- →Test community across geography before conceding that connection has to happen in person — shared ways of thinking travel farther than a commute.
- →Map mindset work to the calendar: eight flexible weeks over the summer set the stage for a busy September, and for the five years after that.
What is an assumption-ground audit?1:13
It's a structured look at the ground your decisions stand on: what you believe to be true, the assumptions you make, the values you hold, and the experiences you've had. All of it is personal, and all of it is woven into how you move through daily life and work — you can't divide the two. The audit surfaces that ground so you can adapt for a future in which future you is a stranger, but a stranger who knows your past.
What is Make It So?0:22
An eight-week cohort experiment launching June 1, capped at 20 people, built around everyday futurism and the assumption-ground audit as a leadership practice. It's designed to be mostly asynchronous with three levels of access — a fully async tier, a tier with regular office hours, and a one-to-one tier that includes Substack founding-member access to trend and convergence reports. It's aimed at people who treat futurism as a leadership capacity for a world where ambiguity is normal and change is constant.
What is everyday futurism?2:29
Futurism stripped of the sage-on-stage version — no flying cars, no predictions delivered as answers. It's the integrated ways of thinking, noticing, and deciding in daily life that accumulate into the foundation of the future of work. The point is to make foresight approachable and tangible: something you weave into your regular way of being rather than an untouchable practice.
How is futurism a daily practice rather than a grand gesture?4:04
Because investing in a future version of yourself happens in small moments. Nola's example: she got a dog partly because she was sitting at her desk too much and wanted a reason to walk away that couldn't be rescheduled — a decision made so that the person she'd be in ten years hadn't been fully subsumed by sedentary work. A walking habit, a story you stop telling yourself, a noticing practice: that's where futurism actually lives.
Does real connection have to happen in person?5:49
Not for everyone — and the claim deserves questioning. From a home two hours outside Toronto, an in-person meetup is a four-hour commitment with an uncertain return, and Nola has had better luck connecting with people who think in futurism terms globally than locally. Make It So doubles as an experiment in whether shared understanding, built mostly asynchronously, produces genuine belonging.
“Future you is really a stranger — but a stranger who knows your past.”
Nola Simon, in this episode- Make It So — the eight-week cohort ↗Sign-up linked from the homepage.
Full transcript (click to collapse)
Houst, and today I want to talk about the Make It So offer that I'm launching June 1st. So the sign-up page is open now. It's capped at 20 people. And I'm looking for people, smart people, who understand how to implement... They're interested in futurism. They understand how it's a leadership capacity, and it's essential for being able to manage in a world where ambiguity is normal change is constant, and the convergences of multiple different aspects of life and work are really what are going to be designing the future of work, right?
So the practice that I have is everyday futurism. It's designed in conjunction with an assumption ground audit. So what decisions are you making based on what you believe to be true, the assumptions that you make, your values you hold, your experiences that you've had? All of these are personal, and they're woven into your daily life and how you move through your personal life, but also how you work.
You can't really just divide it up. So how do you adapt for the future? And especially when future you is really a stranger, but a stranger who knows your past and who understands how you make decisions. And so it's an experiment. It's eight weeks. It's designed to be mostly asynchronous. Three different levels of access.
There's a completely async access which is cheaper. Then there's one that actually has regular office hours. And then there's a one-to-one personal coaching version as well that also gets you access as a Substack founder member, and that's where I'm gonna be publishing trend reports, convergence reports.
I haven't figured out the wording for it. And that's really what we're gonna look at. And how this is different is, again it's designed to create belonging and recognition for you as an individual, belonging in the fact that, you're part of a cohort a group of people who are interested in learning how their individual thinking practices their noticing practices, their, views on the possibilities for the future can really be woven into the daily decisions that they make, and it's not all about prediction and flying cars futurism. It's about the integrated ways of thinking and making decisions in your daily life that accumulate and then become the foundation and the groundwork for the future of work, right?
It's not a big, messy practice. It's not untouchable. Sometimes futurism feels you're a sage on stage, and you've got all the answers, and what you say goes. That's not the version of futurism that I really appreciate. It's how do we make it approachable? How do we make it tangible? How do we make it feel like it's something that you can integrate into your regular way of being?
And we all do it really. Even if you're, like, a walker or a runner, you're investing in a practice that is contributing to a different future of you. I got a dog because I noticed that I was sitting at my desk way too much, and I wanted an excuse to be able to walk away from my desk that couldn't be rescheduled, right?
And, there are other reasons I wanted the dog too, but that was one of the big reasons is I did not want to be the person who in 10 years' time had- completely subsumed to a sedentary way of life because work was all that was ever valued, right? That's investing in a future version of you, and so futurism happens in small moments.
It's not the big, large, grand gestures that it can be, but it's, it doesn't have to be. And it's about the storytelling, stories that we tell ourselves, stories that we tell other people how we're influenced, how we influence others. All of that is really useful, and I've boiled it down into a systematic approach that I feel is valuable.
And so again, it's an experiment. I wanna see who's interested in it how they engage, how it drives belonging, and how it really helps set people up for operating with futurism as a core of their practice and ways of showing up. And that's a form of leadership, a different way of thinking, a different way of being.
And I think there's a lot of potential in how we view community and how we engage. There's a school of thought these days that because everything's changing, AI is involved, and, everybody's disconnected and lonely and all that stuff that, connection has to be happening in person.
And I still have an issue with that because the reality of my circumstance hasn't changed. I still live in the middle of nowhere. It takes two hours for me to get to Toronto. So if you tell me that my only opportunity really to connect is to have to commute, that's a really high bar for me because that's a four-hour investment, and what's the return on that?
Maybe I'll find somebody nice. Maybe I'll find somebody who thinks like me. I'm looking for more certainty with that. And honestly, I've had better luck connecting with people who think in a futurism aspect globally than locally. So this is my attempt to see how we can, build that common understanding, but also does that actually facilitate community?
And so I'm sharing what I know, that my current state and how I've got to my current level of thinking but also it's an experiment in how I design for the future as well too, right? So is it worth eight weeks? You're gonna have to assess that for yourself. As I said, I've tried to design it with intention with a lot of flexibility, especially over the summer.
But if you do the work or the groundwork, the mindset work, does that set you up for September when everything gets busy? And are you really setting the stage for 2027 in the next five years? That's really the question that you wanna pose to yourself if you're looking at engaging in this. Anyways as I said, it's called Make It it's on the front page of my website.