Work is changing and it will never be the same. But that’s good news! We’ve talked more about this here.
The question is —how do you future-proof your career, and build skills to take advantage of the future of work, instead of trying to run away and hide from it?
- Hone the right skills
Embracing the future of work as an employee translates not only into acquiring more knowledge but is also about identifying and refining the skills that make you unique.
If your job is going to be taken by robots, make sure you’re the person learning to code the robots, rather than the person whose job those bots will be pinching.
- Figure out how to learn fast and become a learning worker rather than a knowledge worker — knowledge ‘expires’/ becomes obsolete so fast these days—life-long learning is the future.
- Cultivate skills that will be relevant in the future. Don’t invest too much in the left side of the brain/algorithmic type of skills. If a task implies following a set of established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion, it’ll be among the first to be automated. Become good at the right side of the brain/heuristic kind of work — interesting, challenging, creative—the kind of tasks that requires you to find a creative solution yourself. You can take a look at some of the skills predicted to be highly valued in 2030 here — and how fast they are changing.
- 2. Be strategic about the industry you’re going into
- As Clare explains in this extremely insightful article, don’t go into a dying industry. It doesn’t matter how clever you are, going into a dying industry is really hard. Unless you’re at the disruptive element of it. If your job is going to be taken by AI or robots, make sure you’re the person learning to code the robots, rather than the person whose job those bots will be pinching.
In the next post, we talk about a third very important strategy, which is how to be a great remote worker.
