This is going to be a quick post on the key lessons I’ve learnt in 2018. I hope in sharing these that you can take something from them and maybe learn something new in 2019.
Categories
What I learned in 2018
Tag: Life Lessons
I’ve put together this impromptu post after I contributed to a Reddit conversation on how to build a great cv and why recruiters aren’t contacting you about that dream job.
The time is upon us once more, a new year is here with a feeling of new beginnings for many.
The infamous new year, new me movement is currently invading your local gym and many people are taking these first few weeks of the year to ponder what their resolutions for the year ahead should be.
New year resolutions are an age-old tradition within our society.
They actually date back to 4,000 years ago. The ancient Babylonians are thought to have been the first people to make New Year’s resolutions.
If we were to unpack the purpose of resolutions, my simple take would be that these serve the purpose of the pursuit of betterment in one’s life. Identifying things we don’t enjoy about our lives at this moment and doing something about it.
Of course this can be a great activity to partake in if done in a thoughtful and sustainable way.
This piece hasn’t been written to knock resolutions or the pursuit of developing oneself. Rather, it provides an alternative method to support you in building sustainable changes in your life over the next 12 months.
I personally find traditional resolutions to be less than effective for many.
I think we can all find examples of the same people who set the same resolutions each year and still feel no closer to those changes 10 years later.
What could we do instead?
A proposal that I’d like to ask you to think about involves putting what you know about the concept of resolutions to one side.
Instead, let’s do a simple review and reflection of the year that’s just been.
This is an activity that I’ve been doing over the last few years.
Historically I’ve set macro goals for each year
I break these down into micro levels of what I needed to achieve by certain points of the year so I can fulfil those main goals.
However I find this approach to be cumbersome, stressful and often led to many of these goals rolling into the next year as I had set unrealistic time frames for a lot of them.
I made the decision to step away from using the beginning of each year to set out a list of new goals to try to achieve. Instead, I pursued a new approach in using this time to reflect and review what has just passed.
This allowed me to see a number of things including:
- What went well
- What I enjoyed
- Memorable events
- What I can work on in the year ahead
In taking the time to reflect and review these points, I’m able to identify the things that made me happy and went well (even those I didn’t expect would).
This provides me with a sense of achievement and peace.
Plus, it helps with not falling into that mental zone of beating myself up because I feel like I haven’t done anything to progress in the previous 12 months.
Of course, these are not set in stone.
They will no doubt evolve over the year in a few ways depending on what life throws at me.
Personally I find this approach more meaningful.
You should take time to appreciate your successes.
Smile at the things that make you happy. Rejoice at the habits, behaviours and experiences that you continue to implement which provide growth.
I combine this with key questions ask myself throughout the year.
These makes sure I’m clear on what I value and want to do more of.
What you can do: A framework to develop sustainable habits and behaviours
- Grab a piece of paper or open a word document, divide the page into three columns. Now label one – What went well? The second: What did I enjoy? And the last as: What can I work on?
- Now spend 30 minutes reviewing the last 12 months. Place the thoughts that come into your head in each column.
- Once you’ve completed this, make sure (and this is the really important bit) to read all of your responses in depth to really appreciate everything you’ve noted.
- The final step is to look over your what can I work on column. Take the final part of your reflection session to produce the 3-5 top things you want to work on in the year ahead.
Do remember these don’t need to be complicated.
They could be as simple as I only read 10 books last year, so this year I want to read 15.
Or I want to increase my meditation sessions from twice a week. So, maybe I’ll commit to 3 sessions a week this year and see how it goes.
The key is to appreciate your starting point.
Too many of us don’t understand that goals need to be personalised to where we are right now. This is why many of us fall down in the second week of the year, we simply ask too much too soon.
A common example of this being when people want to improve their physical fitness.
Let’s say person x wishes to improve their physical fitness this year, great, so what do they do?
In my approach, you would review your starting point and what’s happened over the past 12 months.
- What physical activities have you been doing?
- How many times a week do you do these?
- Do these supplement your lifestyle?
These are important points to review before making plans for the next 12 months.
You might then say, I already workout twice a week. I feel like a 3rd session will bring more benefits to my lifestyle. Great, you’ve assessed your starting point, feel you can add a bit more and assessed that this is a sustainable change.
Sadly, this is not the approach many of us take.
We often come from a place of having no historical physical activity practice and then jump into a gruelling body and mind crushing routine of hitting the gym 5-6 times a week.
This leads to said people running themselves into the ground with no energy. Those resolutions are out the door by week 2 of the new year.
Going forward
Instead of resolutions, why not consider a time of review and reflection.
Build sustainable habits, behaviours and routines
I’m not saying it’s the one answer that will work for you.
It’s an alternative. It could be the more successful approach to making the changes you really want.
So, what’s it going to be?
Follow the 99% or do something different?
Before you go… 👋
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
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How many times have you been asked the question, “So, what do you do?”
I wonder if people even know what they mean when they ask that.
I usually respond to this question with comical answers for my benefit. Sometimes I revert to my completely sarcastic self. I’ll say, “Well, I’m a confused late-thirty-something with no clue what’s next, worries about the future, and now I’m trying to find my best self…what about you?”
They often respond with blank stares.
When I try to explain what I actually do for work, those stares become even deeper.
Although impressive in my head, explaining to others that I juggle 10 different job roles to make cold hard cash complicates things. The problem is that we use a ‘job’ as the reference point for the explanation. Whereas, the title means nothing. I deploy a diverse set of skills to create a career I enjoy.
But that doesn’t sound as sexy or aligned with the ‘societal view.’
So, I just mumble something like, “I work in learning and development. What about you?”
Conversations with strangers at parties, events, or whatever always turn into unexpected learning experiences. The weird intro of ‘Who are you and what do you do?’ has always felt odd to me.
Do they ask me what I do as a human, or do they just want to know about the job that pays me and provides my standing in society?
Come to think of it, why do we make professional occupation the first thing we ask people we’ve just met? Who even made this the norm? – so many questions.
Job titles create a mess
We often use them to determine how to value someone and what they’re good at. Most of us know they don’t work, yet we still play the game. They form the wrong metric on any playing field. Value comes from many measurements and is incredibly context-specific.
For work in the modern era, job titles mean nothing.
Skills act as the currency we must focus on in the career economy. Many companies have woken up to this in the last few years.
We’ve seen an explosion of “skills-based organisations” like they’re some newfound religion. In reality, skills have always driven success. The corporate world just chose to ignore them.
If you didn’t focus on skill improvement all this time, what were you doing?
The skills economy
We now play in a new economy of skills, and digital technology has only advanced this shift.
Era-defining tech innovations often bring this shift. We saw it in the eras of modern computing and the internet. We’re experiencing it now with the rise of generative AI technology.
New tech always enhances the way we do tasks. I think the word ‘job’ is where people get stuck. For so long, people moved through company tiers based on a job title.
We should step back to deconstruct what we mean by the term “job.”
Jobs basically consist of a collection of tasks for which you’re responsible. In exchange for financial compensation, you provide skills to complete these tasks. Today, we talk more about skills than titles. This makes sense because when tasks change, roles change.
For example, 20 years ago, the role of Social Media Manager didn’t exist.
Although commonplace today, the technology required to create the demand for this role had not yet exploded. We hadn’t become glued to our screens in a hypnotic state of doom-scrolling. These roles eventually came along to amplify that.
This role emerged due to the demand for new tasks.
Thus, the ‘job’ of social media manager was born. Over many years, it replicated into a family of roles to manage social media platform-related tasks. This family of roles is now evolving with the introduction of generative AI tools. The way people perform these tasks is changing, so the nature of these roles changes too.
Here we have the circle of life or the circle of work…something like that.
AI exposes the need for diverse skills
That sounds like a ‘captain obvious’ thing to say, but hey, it’s written now.
Each new digital tech innovation brings job destruction and creation. Again, a natural cycle in the shifting demands of life and work. I believe that in the long term, we’ll use generative AI, and other models, to manage boring tasks. This gives us the space, energy, and focus to do more human stuff.
I see Gen AI enabling more builders.
Not everyone can or will want to be a builder. However, the choice will be more accessible than before. This will offer a host of new skills, tasks, and jobs.
For L&D, we could enable more of us to design better solutions across the spectrum of our industry effectively. Finally, leaving behind L&D teams as a dumping site to take care of all the bits and bobs. Let AI do that.
In some ways, I hope Gen AI can enhance our skills and tasks, so we can be more strategic and meaningful in where we put our effort.
My last three years of exploring and experimenting have made one thing clear: The need for diverse human and tech skills is growing at a pace I’ve not experienced in my lifetime.
Skills, not job titles = opportunity
Outside of Gen AI’s potential to enhance learning, the value of your skills has been (and always will be) a big focus of my work.
I positioned the idea of skills being the currency in the career marketplace in my book.
I’ve seen many examples of this in my nearly 20-year (shit, I’m getting old) career. Those who do well and create the career they want all crafted a diverse set of skills. They didn’t rely on being so and so at x company.
To thrive in the modern era, we must leave behind what we know about the career economy.
“What got you here won’t get you there”
Technology will continue to change how we complete tasks. Focusing on our skills will yield better opportunities than aiming for a title.
Skills killed the job title and that’s not a bad thing.
Will x take my job?
The most popular question at the time I write this is, “Will AI take my job?”
As we’ve discussed, it’s not the jobs that are shifting, but rather the tasks that form that job. So, the job will likely change. You can take out the word AI and replace it with all these innovations from our history:
- Will the Printing Press take my job?
- Will the Calculator take my job?
- Will the Internet take my job?
- Will PowerPoint take my job?
- Will Excel take my job?
We know what happened here.
For some, it did, but then they had new tasks which formed new roles. Those who did well were the ones who had diverse skills and adapted. In the early ’90s, accountants feared Excel. Now they wield it like some dark magic which has greatly enhanced how they work.
To ride the wave of inevitable change, craft the best skills for the era you work in.
The skills you should focus on
The answer to this is incredibly subjective based on your industry.
From a broader perspective, we can look at high-value skills that will serve us well in the future across any industry. I spent 12 months reviewing over 20 global skills reports to answer the ultimate question: “What are the 5 skills that matter for the future of work?”
Here they are:
I’d strongly recommend reading the full article (of course I do, I wrote it so I’m biased), plus the accompanying piece I wrote on the power of unlocking the right connective skills to build out your capabilities.
Final Thoughts
- Being future-fit = crafting a diverse skill set.– Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Skills are your most valuable currency in the career economy.
- Adapt to your era of work with the right skills for the right time.
- Don’t place your bets on a job title protecting your future career prospects.
Before you go… 👋
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
One of the most asked questions I have from people that read my blog and articles across other platforms has been around what do I consume to develop my own mindset, my skills and support in my continued evolution.
