2020 has been a “trash fire” of a year, in the sense that it has been largely tumultuous and generally not awesome for most people. However, it sometimes feels as if it’s an ongoing trend throughout my entire life. I’m in my mid-30s, and in the course of my admittedly short life, I have seen the fallout of the events of 9/11, two major recessions, the rise of the internet (for better and worse), and now a major pandemic (though who can forget SARS, H1N1, and the Zika virus, which kept me grounded at home while pregnant with MoonGirl).
I remember doing research for a project for my 1st grade class on the rainforest and my dad taking me to the local library to search through the card catalogs. And now, much of the world’s wealth of information can be found within minutes. On top of that, there is the rise of new careers that would have been incomprehensible even a decade or so ago (social media influencers, data scientists, rideshare drivers, etc.) at the same time many industries have disappeared or have changed beyond recognition. To be honest, I can’t even stay up-to-date on all the technology.
Acknowledging this constantly changing landscape, I have thought quite a bit about what that means for my own personal goals and the future. How do I “future-proof” my life against the unknown? The two words that I keep coming back to is “learning” and “flexibility”.
“Learning” is just that: constantly learning new things, new technologies, new ways of thinking and looking at the world. The majority of the things I learn will never be useful except in the occasional trivia game, but I never know when something I read about one day may lead to an idea in the future.
Also, related to this is to put in the work needed to learn something. So many times I have been in Facebook/LinkedIn groups and someone will post a question along the lines of “I want to be an <insert career of choice>. How do I do it?” And this always frustrates me, because this person wants others to hand them a step-by-step guidebook on how to succeed without putting in the work. There is so much information online; there are books and videos aplenty. Put in that work. Read the information with discernment. Do those exercises and tutorials and practices. And then come back with specific questions that people with greater experience will be delighted to help on.
“Flexibility” is the ability and willingness to pivot from one thing to another. Industries will appear, change, and then disappear. The key is being able to change with it.
This, of course, doesn’t negate all your learning. Maybe you spent a lot of time learning one subject, but because of circumstances, you can’t work in that main industry anymore. That doesn’t mean that learning it was a waste of time. There are ways of leveraging that knowledge in new ways.
Perhaps you can write a guidebook or create a class with your knowledge. Perhaps you can start a consulting business. Perhaps you can use the skills or experience learned in one industry and apply them to another, like John Le Carre using his previous work experience to write spy novels, or a former world traveler helping others to book complicated train trips. In order to do so, you will need to learn how to set up your own business or do marketing or even how to write a compelling novel.
So, it comes full circle, “learning” and “flexibility”.
Of course, this will not negate or control for all the things that may happen in the future. But it can allow me to meet the future with more grace and readiness than otherwise.