If you don’t want to read it, you can watch this video.
Someone in the Mastermind Group put in a very interesting Google talk about the future of work. I listened to it while I was in the gym. Currently, we have a very compartmentalized economy. It’s “winner take all” meaning there are a select few who are getting most of the pie. It used to be that whatever you did, you shared your prosperity.
Now, you can get the whole pie. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. If you’re the guy making the pie, it’s great. It’s awesome. It’s over the top wonderful.
If you are in line for a piece of pie, it’s cataclysmic. I was listening to his talk and it reinforced some concepts that I have. This shit is going to get realer than real. We’re about to reach an apex. This thing isn’t just hitting the USA, it’s hitting the world.
When I was listening to this talk, I just started laughing because this guy in the audience asked this question. He asked, “If you have children, what would you tell them in light of what’s coming in the future?” The responses were very interesting.
Some people feel that a large percentage of doctors will be displaced. I’m going to explain that to you. When I was in the medical field, the floor used to operate like this. There were four wings. Each wing had four or five nurses and a “Tech.” Now what has happened is a floor will have six or seven “techs” and one nurse. Now what’s going to happen is that nurses are going to disappear and there’s going to be a computer to tell those techs what to do until we get to the point where we can have robots.
Doctors are never going to disappear but they are going to become centralized. There will be a doctor in the control station. They’ll be doing diagnostics on their iPad and stuff. They will not have to be there. It will be remote medicine. I mean, this is in our lifetime. You won’t have to go to the doctor. The doctor will come to you on your computer screen or your phone.
Automation is going to reduce the need for doctors. One doctor will probably be able to do the work of ten in the future because of the efficiencies of scale. What I am saying is that fields that you never thought would be displaced, will be displaced.
In this talk, they said the fields that will not be disrupted are fields with high levels of creativity and entrepreneurship. I was sitting there saying, “They are telling the truth.” I have wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was eleven years old. I was told I wasn’t smart enough or good enough. I heard, “I have a job and that’s good enough for me, so it should be good enough for you.”
I refused to accept those notions. I finally got myself into the position where I was an entrepreneur or self- employed hustling. I’ve never been happier in my life.
Since these were academic guys giving the talk, they couldn’t go too far out on a limb. They have reputations to worry about. But, I’m not an academic guy that has to worry about that. I will say that this thing’s going to kick off really, really hard in about five to seven years. It’s already happening and it’s impacting many people. But, it’s going to accelerate. It’s going to increase. It’s going to decimate many professions.
I know a lot of people who have been laid off. They asked me, “If you were me, what would you do?” I say, “I was you!” I went through that. You’re going to have to make some very hard decisions. You’re going to have to change your lifestyle.
There are no safety nets. There is no such thing as a sure job. It doesn’t exist anymore. There was this article I read about this doctor who got sick and she had to go on food stamps. Can you imagine? She never saw that coming.
I went from being a reseller and having to do a lot of physical work to the creative side. It just made sense to me even though I still don’t make as much money now as I did when I was in the storage auction business. A lot of people don’t understand why I left the storage auction business. They think it’s all about money.
Let me explain it to you. I have learned that I have great intuition. I instinctively knew that on July 17, 2009, that it was my last shot at being a writer. Something inside me said, it’s now or never. I traded money for the future. I made a value proposition loaded decision that I was going to be better off in the future as a creative person than a person that did a lot of manual labor.
If you’re in the storage auction business or you’re a reseller, you are doing a great deal of manual labor. You are trading your time and your body for dollars. That’s just a fact. I moved away from that because I know the power of being a creative person.
I made a choice and it’s looking to be a very good one. I can do what I’m doing now, forever. What I’m telling you is start where you have to start to get experience.
In the future, you will not ever be able to get comfortable with something that is successful. It will be removed because new stuff is always coming into the marketplace. I realize for me to continue to have this writer’s lifestyle that I have to continue to produce.
Studies show that people with more education make significantly more money. The guys on this talk broke down what they meant by education. They broke it down. They said education was life experiences and self-taught which is what I’ve been pushing for so long. For many people, they think education is a “degree.”
This might insult you and it should. If you see friends and family with a college degree are living in poverty and you are going to follow that path, you are an idiot. That means you don’t have something that’s critically important in any level of education. I’m talking about critical thinking skills.
I expanded the definition of education for myself in 1999. When I step into a room of people, I often find myself to be the most educated person in the room. It’s because I never stopped learning. Many people my age are done, and I’m 47. They don’t read books. They don’t try anything new. They’re done. You can’t be in a position of stasis and be safe.
If you don’t know what you want to do in life, do not go to school to try and figure it out. You’re wasting too much time and money playing around. Don’t go to school.
You are going to have to let go of things and ideas from the past that no longer work. Getting a college degree is no longer a guarantee for middle class prosperity like it was in past decades. Get over it.
For those of you who want to get into the world of business, you have to start and get over your fear. The changes that are coming will impact everyone. You have to start a business because you’re going to need it to survive and thrive in the future.
Don’t wait until you are in dire straits and lose your job. Do it today. Think about your future.
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