Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Kevin O’Keefe asks: So I now have two granddaughters- two years old and six months old and I’m constantly thinking about their future. Of course no one can predict what our world will look like but many people are starting to make educated ?guesses. I think you would agree that there’s been a huge shift in terms of what type of jobs we will have 20 years from now. With all the research that you’ve been doing regarding learning, where do you think the younger generation should start these days?

It is quite literally impossible to make such a prediction. About 25% of the US workforce today works in job categories that didn’t exist in the 1960 census. About 60% work in jobs that didn’t exist in 1940.

Of the job categories that existed in 1960, only one has been eliminated: elevator operator.

There is no way someone in 1960 could have predicted jobs such as web designer, podcaster, cyberathlete, or hundreds of other modern jobs.

One of my mottos is that the ability to adapt is more important than your ability to plan. When the World Wide Web was introduced in the 90s, I was in the middle of things, and we just had to learn as it evolved. When a new programming language comes out, you learn it by doing, not by taking a class. Everyone figuring out AI right now is learning as they go.

Future-proofing yourself isn’t about learning any particular set of skills per se. It is the ability to learn and adapt to whatever might change in the future.