Here's what I didn't share, the AI image of me as 18th Century Royalty tells a very different story. My "Past Me" looks like she leads through fear and intimidation, and frankly looks like she's about to stab the artist. Clearly, for me, time travel should be a forward-looking experience.

Today, however, isn't about what silly images I shared with my friends on social media. It's about playing with technology. Be it GPTChat, DALL-E or 4D printing, new technology toys and tools are exploding on the market daily, and I'm playing with (and learning about) all of them. 

I have a question. What are you thinking now?

• "Oh no. Not more silliness. I'm going to ignore this."

• "Jo, these look fun, but I don't have time to play with this stuff." 

• "Nice, but this has nothing to do with me and my career."

• "Wow, nifty. Let me see what I can do?"

I know I said traveling in time into the past was not a good look for me, but I want you to come on a journey into the past with me. Not as far back as the 1700s, but just a short hop to the 1990s. We accessed this new thing called the internet through dial-up modems. In early 1993, the fastest available modem could transfer data at a maximum speed of 14.4 kilobytes per second (kbps). 

I couldn't figure out what that meant, so I did some digging for you.  

How long would it take to download a 4k movie if we still used dial-up internet? According to Redditor 7yearlurkernowposter

"A quick search says it's reasonable to assume 20 GB for the size of a 4k film. Assuming you got the full bandwidth of a 56k line (which never happened), it would take 33 days." Today on a 5G network, we're closer to 5 seconds.

What was also true then is that most people I spoke to about this new thing called the internet said things like...

• "Oh no. Not more silliness. I'm going to ignore this."

• "Jo, this looks fun, but I don't have time to play with this stuff." 

• "Nice, but this has nothing to do with me and my career."

Sound familiar?

I actively chose the last option. "Wow, nifty. Let me see what I can do?" Playing with emerging technology has always manifested in a positive ROI on my time, both professionally and personally. 

• It created down payments to help me buy my homes.

• It created invitations to opportunities where "applications are not needed." I already had the job; the question was, did I want it?

• It created requests to share my ideas and thinking with others to develop solutions to problems no one else was tackling.

While I couldn't and still can't code, my curiosity about emerging technology and how it might be used to create the future impacted my career. 

And now I want you to travel in time. I want you to travel into the future.

Imagine what would happen to your career if you brought an idea to the table with this level of impact. Imagine what would happen to your career if one of your direct reports came to you with an idea like this, and you helped them bring it to the people who could say yes.

Imagine what would happen to your career if you found yourself at this year's holiday party, canape in hand, chatting with the CEO of your company, and you said, "Have you heard of this cool thing?" and shared one of the "toys" you found?

As a CEO, imagine what would happen to your company, customers, and your career, if you were known for your ability to show people where technology can take them. Are you creating an organization where investing in Future-Play in your organization so the silly and surprising don't get squashed?

Regardless of title, part of our job is to dabble in the future. Explore ideas and tools that aren't just about making things better but about making things we couldn't imagine the day before.

Take time to learn how to play with the tools, even the ones that look like toys, of the future. When you do, everyone wins.