Author: Jocelyn K. Glei
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Fact: A substantive portion of the working population now earns its livelihood doing a job that didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago.
We’re at an interesting crossroads in terms of careers. We still want them, but they don’t exist anymore. In the US, the typical job tenure is now 4 years, with most workers cycling through about 11 jobs in their lifetime.
If the 20th-century career was a ladder that we climbed from one predictable rung to the next, the 21st-century career is more like a broad rock face that we are all free climbing. There’s no defined route, and we must use our own ingenuity, training, and strength to rise to the top. We must make our own luck.
The lightning-fast evolution of technology means that jobs can now become indispensable or outmoded in a matter of years, or even months. Who knew what a “Community Manager” was ten years ago? What about an “iPad App Designer”? Or what about “Chief Scientist” (at LinkedIn)?
A substantive portion of the working population now earns its livelihood doing a job that didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago. And if your job itself hasn’t changed, chances are you’re using new and unanticipated technology and/or skills to perform that job. (E.g. You’re a designer who blogs, a comedian who uses Twitter, or a branding consultant turned e-tailer.)
A substantive portion of the working population now earns its livelihood doing a job that didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago. And if your job itself hasn’t changed, chances are you’re using new and unanticipated technology and/or skills to perform that job. (E.g. You’re a designer who blogs, a comedian who uses Twitter, or a branding consultant turned e-tailer.)
Ten years from now, we’ll probably all be doing some new type of work that we couldn’t even possibly imagine today. The thought is both exhilarating and frightening. How do we prepare for a future filled with uncertainty?
1. Explore, relentlessly. The tools you use today will not be the tools you use in the future.
You may have heard the term “life sport” before. It refers to sports—like golf, tennis, or swimming—that you can play from ages 7 to 70. The ever-brilliant Kevin Kelly recently expanded this concept to include technology as life sport, outlining a must-read list of “techno life skills” that we should all cultivate. As Kelly puts it: “If you are in school today the technologies you will use as an adult tomorrow have not been invented yet. Therefore, the life skill you need most is not the mastery of specific technologies, but mastery of the technium as a whole—how technology in general works.”
Whether it’s interviewing someone over Skype, developing an affable Twitter persona, learning how to publish an e-book, or experimenting with a new task management app, we must become adept at testing out new technologies that can benefit us in our personal and professional lives.
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