Welcome to The Shift!
Field Guide to the Future of Work and Living.šµš»āāļø
Tips + tools to transform your work and thinking. I curate the best content & conversations online and interview interesting people to share their stories & successes.
Exploring different perspectives on how technology might shape the new worlds of work.
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A radically remote future of work
The global pandemic has forced companies to change how they do business, speeding up existing trends in remote working, tech/AI and changing employer-employee relations.
As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in April:
Weāve already seen two yearsā worth of digital transformation in two months.
Many companies have adapted quickly to the new world of work, but the speed of the transition has exposed limitations around skill sets, agile working, trust, and business models. Weāre now facing a tsunami of job losses.
How can companies adapt to new ways of working that are still unfolding? Will government policy support the changes? How will AI and digital transformation change how we work and live?
The world of work is changing and thereās been a shift in mindset from White-collar professionals to no-collar professionals. Work is something we do not a place we go to. We want flexibility, remote working, education, collaboration, purpose AND paycheque.
Iām excited to be around for this ā we have an opportunity to reinvent how we work and live to be happier, more productive humans.
Industry 4.0: Shaping the new worlds of work.
The full-stack freelancer
In some ways, the world has been catching up with how many freelancers work and thatās given us a head start. Weāre used to working remotely and flexible working. Weāre seeing the rise of a new kind of worker, the Full-Stack Freelancer, who responds to tech-driven trends.
Full-Stack Freelancers are responding to a series of technology-driven trendsāāācontingent employment, intensifying globalization, and automationāāāby taking advantage of the other side of the coin: technology finally becoming powerful enough, cheap enough, and user-friendly enough to be deployed productively by a single individual.
They borrow freelyāāāfrom tech startups, digital nomads, lifestyle designers, independent contractors, the sharing and peer-to-peer economiesāāābut placing them squarely inside any of these categories is not quite right.
Thatās because Full-Stack Freelancers manage a portfolio of income streams, not a job based on one set of skills.
It requires a skill that virtually none of us are educated for: portfolio thinking. Tiago Forte
And itās something thatās available to everyone. It can enhance personal growth, creativity, and learning.
The rise of the creator economy
Over 50m people around the world consider themselves creators despite the creator economy being just 10 years old. Itās the fastest-growing type of small business. There are now 2m professional creators making content full-time ā and 200,000 of these are writers, podcasters, musicians and illustrators.
As Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon said: āCreators, weāre on the verge of the āSecond Renaissanceā of the arts making this the best time in history to be an artist.
The internet is just 30 years old, and it has revolutionised the way we live and work.
Why has creatorship grown so quickly?
Thereās been a societal shift in consciousness towards caring more about feeling fulfilled in our jobs, having control over how we spend our time, and being our own boss. Itās not a simple path but people aspire to follow that path that gives their lives meaning (and never leads to a cubicle). The creator economy has led to more startups here to help creators find their niche and make a living.
The burnout generation
So, how do you avoid burnout when your work is your passion and we live and work online? Iāve been there with years of hustle, precarious gigs and living in expensive cities. Energy is finite and we need to respect that. My strategy is to earn more and hustle less ā work smarter not harder with scalable systems ā creating digital products & services that offer high value. As Anne Helen Peterson says, burnout is a societal problem, not a personal one.
We canāt do this forever. I think weāre gonna have to decide as a society and as a generation to figure this shit out.