On the right side of history in the future
In between yoghurt, and non-alcoholic juices from a corner somewhere, we briefly talked about the future of work, and our collective fears about the future itself. I took notes and here’s what I had to say about it:
“I’m not as concerned with what’s going to be around because there’s a million different possibilities in the future and I’m pretty positive about the pattern we’re seeing now. Frankly, I’m a lot more worried about what’s not going to be around, what we have now that we’ll eventually lose and what we can do to make ourselves relevant in the sense that we’re in the right side of history, career-wise.”
In between reading a few books about it, and following people on Twitter (Naval, Andrew Yang, Josh Wolfe, to name a few…) who are actively talking about it, I have come to a conclusion that it’s a subject I plan on pursuing proactively. It’s a massively complex subject that could span a lifetime to understand and one that I can’t possibly personally justify with just a single medium post. I can only hope to know more about it, so I would know where to position myself should the worst case scenarios occur.
The good news is that there’s loads of resources and research materials available to anyone with an iPhone and an internet connection. All it takes is a trigger of a mild curiosity, clarity of thought, a mind free of biases and pessimism to ask the hard questions in order to get to the conversations, problems that really matter, that we ought to be talking about as early as now, while we have time, while we can still keep up and learn, while we can still afford to take calculated risks. The main goal is to be optimistic about the future. The only way to do that is to be prepared, let go our egos, and baggages that are holding us back, the old ways that won’t bring us anywhere, the outdated voices that are more counterproductive and harmful than wise, the negativity that’s keeping us from actually pursuing the things that we are meant to do at the highest possible level. Everything else, with the exemption of our personal lives, is just noise. Worry about the right things and if you’re having any doubts about what is ‘right’ and ‘worthy’, anything that costs you more of your time, than money, anything that was born out of peer pressures, anything that you didn’t want to think about much less spend money on in the first place.
If I would fail, it would not be for my lack of self-awareness, or work ethic, or courage. The world is constantly divided into issues that are binary, and there could be a million different things I am absolutely wrong about, but that statement couldn’t be more closer to the truth than anything I’ve ever spoken about. I really do hope I, and others who are of the same sentiments, are in the right side of history.
