A brief advice to avoid becoming irrelevant at your job.
Tools are already created, learn how to use them.
I’m going to be very straightforward in here, I have applied this philosophy and my life have changed in a meaningful way. I’m not here to tell you positives things or talk to you in a sweet way. I’m here to tell you the truth, I’m going to be direct, I’m going to be the one who will tell you the ugly truth and you will thank me later.
Enough of positive thinking stuff, enough of the “The Secret”, enough of putting the other ones around you first. See, this post is going to be about jobs. Let me tell you something, this post its OK for you whether you have 18 or 45, it doesn’t matter. We are going to share the same fate unless we act quickly.
Look, each day, each year that the galloping technology takes one step forward you and me become less and less relevant to our employees, plain and simple. You may have received a pay rise just yesterday and I don’t care about it, probably your boss just told you that he is happy to have you in the company or shop or whatever. Probably you are waiting for an imminent promotion which I don’t care either.
I’m here to tell you that it is time to get out of the comfort zone, it is time to get out of this autopilot that you just turned on a few years back or you are about to turn on in case you are young. Its time to put an end to this loophole from hell you are in. That loophole that gets you to wake up early in the morning, go to work, watch TV, sleep, repeat. I’m not going to give you that suicidal advice to spend more, go to travel and to not take care of finances because if you are broke or you are living on the limits of your credit cards I will be pushing you to a financial debt inferno from which things are going to get worse for you.
The reason I write this article is to tell you the opposite, you have to work even more but before you freak out, the thing is that you don’t need to work more on the skill you already have, chances are that you may be good or average in your current job, but you are good in one thing. Chances are that in that workplace you are in there are many other cubicles with many other human beings doing the same things you do, as good as you do or even better. There is always someone better than you, always. Probably you are the manager in a shop somewhere but chances are that job you are doing, if you leave, die or quit someone will take charge and will do it as good as you and you won’t be missed even if now you think you are the ultimate piece of diamond on Earth.
Back to the main point, the future for those of you who don’t know yet, will be all about people fixing, programming, creating the robots that will take your jobs or applications that in the past humans were doing, but I’m going too far ahead, probably that’s for the next 50 years. Though right now you may not be replaced by a robot, you will be replaced by someone more versatile than you and that’s where the scare comes in knocking your door.
I’m writing this because I feel the guilt and delight in my soul, it’s like the good and evil battling inside me for what I just did at work this week. I made something to get the designer of the company I work sacked, he got sacked because I did a job he spent 4 years studying better than him, and I acquire the knowledge watching a 2 hours tutorial on Lynda.com. For 20 dollars I beat a tuition of 30k dollar a year. By using 2 tools called Canva and Desygner and simply deliver what a certain boss demanded. I don’t know how to draw, how to paint, how to design things, I just learned how the hell to use a tool. Worth saying this i did this with no intentions to end anybody’s job.
In this modern era, you don’t need to spend thousands and thousands of hours knowing every single piece of code or algorithm or all the tricks and details of HTML and CSS to create a website. Places like Wix.com, Weebly, and even Wordpress let you create a good and stylish web design without knowing how the hell to code. This is where we are heading, this is the state of the situation right now. If you are an accountant chances are an almighty program is being created while you are reading this little rant here on Medium and you are on the brink to get fired and consume your savings because a 20-year-old chap will know how to handle this future program and will become handy for your boss.
Ladies and gentlemen, the industrial era as we know it is over. Data and knowledge are critical, we need to be creative, we need to become the relevant person, the darling for our bosses or co-workers. That era of being good at one thing is a thing of the past, you need to learn to be good at many things, you need to know about digital marketing, how to handle a Wordpress site, how to use designing tools like Blender, how to use basic Photoshop, you need to dominate technology. Imagine that technology is that flying creature in the Avatar movie, that creature will eat you alive unless you go on top of it and dominate it, dominate the tools that 10 years ago took a professional to study for 4 years and you can do it now for free by learning it on Udemy or Coursera in a couple of months. I have created flyers and banners with templates in Canva (a designing tool) it looks amazing and I barely know how to draw, and I studied business for god sake, I took the job of an honorable person, with two daughters to feed…
You know what, it is not my fault, it’s this person fault to be outdated, to settle in, for a refusal to keep learning, to update the knowledge in the area of competence. it’s all about results, your bosses want results, life is about results, it doesn’t matter if you sweat a lot or if you solve a problem with a phone call, your goal is to become relevant to your company, GIVE VALUE TO YOUR COMPANY BY ADDING VALUE TO YOURSELF. Period.
Stop complaining, stop being mediocre in doing one thing waiting for a paycheck, it’s time to UPDATE YOURSELF, even if it is in your own area, or learning another skill, the trick to have a successful life by embracing learning as a lifestyle, not an activity. This is where the system fails, university creates workers to fill a finite space in a cubicle, not entrepreneurs that will not be affected once the robots take office.
HIT THE HEART AND RECOMMEND THIS ARTICLE IF YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW. LET’S GROW TOGETHER.
