Becoming a Future-Proof Millennial
Fourteen years into formal education and I have realised two things; what you learn in school is largely impractical, and the education system is designed to train you well for school, but not for society.
Two years into university and I’m amazed how little emphasis is placed on teaching things that really matter. We don’t learn about sales, negotiating, how to be emotionally robust, or quite frankly, personal taxes.
Since its development in the industrial revolution, the modern education system has barely evolved. It still serves, and badly so, its original purpose — to produce process-driven workers for society. And unfortunately, knowing how to do your personal taxes isn’t helpful in creating a process-driven worker.
So why does this matter for us Millennials?
Today’s world is much more complex. The pace of technology advancement and globalisation is changing the way we need to prepare ourselves for the future, the skills we need, and how we develop ourselves. The job market has never changed so rapidly.
10 years ago, there was no such thing as an App Developer or a Data Scientist. Today, these are some of the highest paying and in-demand jobs. Looking forward, more roles will become obsolete through disruptive technologies.
The advent of advanced software, 3D printing and artificial intelligence will disrupt traditional roles across finance, law, retail, health, transport and agriculture. Just recently, Citigroup’s Fintech report in 2016 concluded that a 30% reduction in labour would take place over the next 10 years due to automation within financial institutions alone.
This is already happening, and not enough Millennials are prepared for it. So with an educational system that fails to keep pace with the market, one must ask — how do we prepare ourselves for a job market that’s constantly changing?
Millennials must develop a skillset that can be used across any industry. In formal lingo, these are known as ‘transferable skills.’ More often than not, schools won’t directly teach you these skills, but learning should never stop outside the classroom.
Here are three key skills you should learn to become an agile, robust and future-proof Millennial
1. Sales
If it’s one-thing robots won’t replace, it’s ‘sales’. Regardless of what industry you’re in, what technologies are used or how good the product is, people need to be convinced with the actions you’re taking. Every business needs to secure investors, negotiate with suppliers and land customers. If you can convince others that something makes sense, then that’s priceless.
Outside of the workplace, learning ‘sales’ offers several benefits. It will help you become a better communicator and a better listener. You will learn how to come to an agreement without burning bridges. It will also develop your emotional robustness and resiliency. Salespeople often hear the word ‘no,’ and over time develop a tolerance for rejection. Rather than stopping at ‘no’ you will learn to persist and take on the challenge — a worthwhile trait to have a fulfilling career.
A great starting point is to read Robert B. Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition. The anecdotes, combined with how well it’s written make it an entertaining and easy read.
2. Become an Expert-Generalist
Being a specialist in one area is no longer enough. The phrase ‘’Jack of all trades. Master of none,’’ is becoming a relic of the past. If the demands of modern work are always changing, you need to be constantly learning. With the growing complexity of the world and the predicted levels of digital disruption, you need to be able to adapt and broaden your skillset. As Emoke Starr of Prezi states, ‘’Technology and engineering change so quickly that by the time one becomes an expert at something, it’s time to learn something new.’’ Unless you’re an athlete or a musician, a narrow set of skills in business won’t take you very far.
Which is why the future belongs to expert-generalists. The ability to draw across different fields like economics, science, engineering and technology gives an incredible advantage for innovation. Being able to make sense of jumbled pieces in a complex world offers a competitive-edge. Take for instance one of the great innovators and expert-generalists’ of our time: Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity, all multibillion dollar companies operating across different industries. Musk’s knowledge across economics, engineering, physics and computer science has allowed him to create some of the world’s most disruptive companies.
3. So what steps can you take to get you closer to becoming an expert-generalist?
- The first is to develop a foundation. When learning something new, focus on the fundamentals not the details. Without the fundamentals, the details are baseless and have nothing to hang on to. This will make it extremely hard to analyse patterns and develop relationships across multiple fields.
- The second component is to read a lot across different topics. It’s quick, cheap and easy to do. There are many amazing books out there written by experts from different fields that act as our guide. Learn from them.
- Thirdly, and most importantly is to remain curious. You need an incentive to keep learning. With curiosity, you can actively engage in different topics, making it much easier to learn vastly.
4. Critical Thinking
The Internet has opened access to more information than ever before. Through a device that can fit in your pocket, you have more information than any world leader would have 50 years ago.
Let that sink in for a moment. You are able to receive news from across the globe instantaneously, buy almost anything anywhere and you have the ability to learn anything you want. One would think Millennials would be able to do anything. Not quite, actually far from it.
More information doesn’t mean more knowledge. Information and knowledge are two different things. Information is just data, and frankly the Internet’s polluted with it. Knowledge, on the other hand, is the ability to draw upon facts and principles. Distorted or misleading information can lead to poor choices, and with information exponentially increasing, it becomes harder to identify what you should and shouldn’t absorb.
As Riza founder of exClone says, “more information will make younger generations more exposed, but less educated.’’
Put simply, to become more knowledgeable, the key isn’t in the amount of information; it’s the ability to identify quality information.
And how do you do that? By thinking and analysing critically. Now I know what you’re thinking; we often hear this at school, and it may seem fairly obvious, but it’s so often forgotten. As an alternative to boring, hour-long classes here’s a post that cuts to the chase and specifies how you can improve your critical thinking skills.
In ending this post, I just want to leave some food for thought.
As Millennials, we are always pressed with the question of, ‘’What do you want to be in the future?’’. There’s this expectation that we should already know what we want to do. Yet with the pace of change that’s happening, ‘’what we want to be’’ may not exist anymore. An economic shift is underway and we need to adapt.
So instead, one shouldn’t ask ‘’what job do I want in the future,’’ because job roles will always change, one should rather ask ‘’what problems do I want to solve,’’ because problems will always be there unless acted upon.
Written by,
Eric Nguyen
