Many people may not know this about me, but I studied computer science in college. I earned a diploma in Computer Science from Mount Royal College in Calgary, Alberta. I remember staying up all night debugging COBOL programs and telling myself I did not want to spend my life doing this.
I never had the foresight to see how technology would evolve. I eventually transferred to the University of Calgary, where I decided not to waste my previous knowledge. I pursued a business degree with a major in Management Information Systems, with many of my electives in human resources. Although I studied MIS, I never worked in the field.
Fast forward to today, and the pace of technological change is staggering. That knowledge was not wasted after all. I have now invested close to 150 hours studying different aspects of artificial intelligence, and the journey has reshaped how I think about learning and foresight.
The Books I Never Chose
I have always been a reader. For years, I had memberships in book clubs like Book of the Month and Quality Paperback Book Club. Every month they would send a book, and because I often forgot to contact them in time, I ended up with titles I would never have chosen on my own. The thing is, I really enjoyed most of them.
Unfortunately, I did not take notes while reading those books. And when I took notes, I did nothing with them. I wish I had known then what I know now.
Had I known what I know today, I would have engaged in syntopical reading and intersection thinking, looking for connections across books, ideas, and industries. These are lessons learned, not regrets. It is never too late to do things differently.
What Rohit Bhargava Got Right
In his Non-Obvious Trends series, Rohit Bhargava makes a point that has stayed with me:
“Long-term decisions start in the short term, so understanding how the world is changing in real time is far more valuable immediately than trying to guess what will happen in the world 20 years from now.”
You do not need a crystal ball. What you need is a system for paying attention.
The Haystack Method: A Five-Step System for Spotting Real Trends
Bhargava's Haystack Method offers a structured approach to identifying non-obvious trends by moving from raw observation to a defensible, named insight. It has five components.
Gathering is the starting point: collecting stories, articles, and ideas from everyday life. The key habit is to always summarize what you save and why it caught your attention, so the material stays useful when you return to it later.
Aggregating is where meaning gets added. You group disconnected ideas around bigger themes and follow your intuition about what feels significant. Bhargava recommends grounding this stage in Maslow's hierarchy to connect surface observations to deeper motivations.
Elevating means stepping back and looking for the bigger picture. You move from a cluster of related ideas to a broader pattern, making connections across industries and identifying an underlying shift rather than a surface-level observation.
Naming distills the elevated idea into something simple and memorable. A good trend name carries a specific point of view and communicates meaning quickly. The right name is part of what makes a trend usable.
Proving is the discipline check. An idea is not a trend simply because it feels true. This step requires gathering enough concrete examples and research to show that the pattern is real and accelerating, which is why the folder from the Gathering stage becomes essential evidence.
Together, the five steps form a loop: the habit of saving and annotating material at the start pays off at the end, when you need proof that a trend is more than a hunch.
The SIFT Framework: How to Think Non-Obviously
Later, along with Ben DuPont, Bhargava wrote Non-Obvious Thinking: How to See What Others Miss. The book introduces a complementary framework for developing the mindset that makes trend-spotting possible. SIFT stands for Space, Insight, Focus, and Twist.
Space is about creating the mental conditions for new thinking. That means learning to breathe properly, ditching snap judgments, carving out moments of calm, and giving yourself permission to slow down. Non-obvious thinking rarely happens in a rush.
Insight is about sharpening your ability to observe and interpret the world around you. Tools here include asking better story questions, reading body language, getting hands-on experience in unfamiliar environments, and putting yourself in rooms with people who think differently than you do.
Focus is about narrowing all that gathered material down to what actually matters. Identify the real problem beneath the surface one. Find the common thread running through your ideas, and learn to be a satisficer rather than getting paralyzed by too many options.
Twist is where originality enters. Once you have a focused idea, the goal is to take it somewhere unexpected. That might mean reverse-thinking a problem, finding a third option beyond the obvious two, or choosing language that makes your idea feel fresh rather than familiar.
Together, SIFT and the Haystack Method form a complete system. SIFT builds the thinking habits, while the Haystack Method applies them to spotting trends.
How to Start Seeing What Others Miss
So how can you learn to spot trends and capitalize on technological changes? A few practical starting points:
Start a folder. Whether physical or digital, begin collecting articles, ideas, and observations that catch your attention. Always jot down why something interested you, not just what it was.
Slow down deliberately. Create small moments of calm in your day. Insight rarely arrives when you are rushing. The connections you are looking for tend to show up in the pauses.
Read outside your lane. Pick up a magazine, book, or documentary on a topic you know nothing about. This is one of the fastest ways to develop intersection thinking and spot patterns others overlook.
Ask better questions. When you encounter something that frustrates or puzzles you, ask why five times. The surface problem is rarely the real one.
Commit to consistent observation. The people who spot trends are not necessarily smarter. They are more deliberate about paying attention, and they have a system for doing something with what they notice.
Curiosity, a folder, and the discipline to keep showing up are all it takes.
Want to Go Deeper?
Everything described in this article depends on one underlying skill: knowing how to turn what you read into thinking you can actually use. That is exactly what the Applied Knowledge Is Power Executive Workshop is designed to do.
Across two focused two-hour sessions on March 26 and 27, 2026, you will learn how to read strategically, extract what matters, connect ideas across books and disciplines, and apply knowledge when it counts. The syntopical reading and intersection thinking skills that would have changed how I approached those book club titles years ago are built directly into the workshop.
It runs live on Zoom, and lifetime recording access is included. Early bird pricing of $597 is available until March 21st, after which the price returns to $697. Seats are kept small intentionally.
If you want to be the most prepared and interesting person in any room, reserve your seat here.
