Design your life – Learn a new skill.
What would you do if your job was made obsolete tomorrow?
Artificial Intelligence is here, and we are beginning to see how some human-operated tasks will become jobs for intelligent robots and automation. The machine age has already done it once.
Rather than burying our human heads in the sand, we can begin to prepare for change.
You could, for example, improve your employability by learning a new skill. What if your primary ability to earn money failed? Corporate downsize, injury, AI, automation, whatever the case may be–it happens. It happened to me. In fact, it was one of the best things that ever happened for me. A redundancy kick-started my first business, and the rest is history.
Learn a language, study design and discover your creativity, earn a certificate, take a short course in something that interests you AND is a valuable skill for employment or starting your own business. Micro-credentialing, also known as nano-degrees, is become more popular in universities and colleges now. They are mini-qualifications that demonstrate skills, knowledge, and/or experience in a given subject area or capability.
Study and learning is a great exercise for your mind, too. As they say “use it or lose it!”
What do you really want?
An exercise that I give to clients–and adapted from my Creative Coach Peleg Top, is the ‘What I really want!’ process. I spent ten years of my professional life wondering if I was on the right track. This process helped me to get clearer on what was important to me and the things that I would consider devoting my life to.
It goes like this:
divide an A4 page into 3 columns
title the first column ‘What I really want!” and then write down all the things you really want
title the second column ‘What I’m really good at!” then write down all the things you are really good at
and finally, title the last column ‘What I really love to do!” and list all the things that you love to do
Aim for 20 items in each column. Peleg had me keep going until I reached 200 in the first column, so 20 should be a cinch for you.
What’s really powerful about this process is that you’ll get the obvious things out of the way, like bigger house, new car, more money and then move on the those things that really matter.
Would love to know how you go with this process.
Next week we’ll dive into what to do with your list.
In the meantime, be amazing!
Dan