Being Human in the 21st Century #8 — Fear and Working
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The world around us is rapidly changing thanks to technological advances. I hope that you’ll join me on the journey of figuring out just what it is that we need to do to realize our full potential, understand our meaning in life, and leave society and the world in a slightly better place than when we got here.
Fear and Working
This last week was an eventful one for me. Between coming back from Unsettled, losing my job, and accepting an offer for grad school, a lot of major life changes happened. When I think about work, two specific things come to mind. First, I can’t believe just how afraid I was at the prospect of quitting and leading a life that involves perpetually operating in ambiguity. Second, the idea of the changing nature of work has become even more top of mind as I think through working before I move to and once I’m in school.
One of my previous newsletters was centered around not fearing change, especially as it relates to technology. Despite that and a month long experience with Unsettled that made me much more at peace with the unknown, when I was heading into work on Tuesday, I was thinking that if my role didn’t get eliminated (out of my control) then I would ask for a slow wind down through July so I can finish some work they need while also focusing on my nonprofit and other things more in line with my passions before heading to grad school. If you had asked me that morning if I wanted to figure out an alternative lifestyle to being in a corporate job to fund my passions outside of work, absolutely! Yet I would never have left that day if it weren’t for my role getting eliminated and me being asked to gtfo (politely). My fear going into that chat (around not being able to quit because of financial reasons) made me realize how much I’m limiting myself. How can I possibly judges others for not getting on the change bandwagon if I myself can’t get over my fears. I just got lucky that the decision was made for me and forced me into the unknown career-wise.
Reading about how a law in Canada repealed forcing women to wear high heels at work shocked me. The fact that even existed blew my mind. America’s maternity and paternity laws don’t help the appearance of working in the west. My main hope for the future of work lies with the increasing trend of freelancers and folks making money in new ways. I just spent the weekend at bitcamp at the University of Maryland and got to see the kind of awesome opportunities available to students today. There are now people who are able to actually make a living off of attending (and winning) hackathons. There are also new ways of making money off of digital currencies and a whole variety of other new forms or passive and active income available to us.
Despite all of the changes coming, we still have a need (and that need will only expand) for the complex infrastructure of existing commodities and goods that are fundamental for our standard of living. One of the most important roles of government and general social development in general is investing in human development. That way we can actually all prepared to work in a heavily digital future. Soon enough there will be jobs for people to talking to aliens, traveling to Mars, and manning drone delivery infrastructures across cities. I imagine there’s going to be an increased need to people to help set up personal security, like setting up VPNs or encrypting all of your devices. There are going to be more and more jobs coming up to tend to all of the new developments that keep coming out.
I think it’s really exciting to see all of the new opportunities at hand. We just can’t let fear get in the way of us achieving the lifestyles we want to be leading. We have an unprecedented opportunity to find new ways to make a living and work remotely and generally automate away a lot of the mundane work in their lives. If we maintain the right outlook on life and all of the changes coming our way, then we can find it easier to enjoy all of new, cool things around us.
Top Three Articles
Old Mice Made Young Again With New Anti-Aging Drug — Singularity Hub
NYPD officers accessed Black Lives Matter activists’ texts, documents show — Guardian
What Africa Can Teach the United States About Funding Infrastructure Projects — Harvard Business Review
You can see a full list of content consume here.
That’s all folks!
Happy learning!
