Asteeeg! Beyond traditional careers and conventional lifestyle

I’ll assume you are between 27 and 33 years old, my specific target reader for this post. Then, I’ll correctly assume your parents are baby-boomers and were in professions such as architects, teachers, doctors, lawyers, corporate managers and such. In your earliest years, they told you that you can be anything you want and the most important thing is to be happy. In your grade school and high school years, they told you to study hard, get good grades and it will all pay off.

In college, they encouraged you to get into computer, engineering or management courses. They might have nervously smiled if you took history, writing or art related courses. Now that you are working, they ask if you have your insurances covered and they tell you they have saved up for your MBA. Sometimes they ask you to check their email. Particularly your father, once in awhile, gives you “jewels of wisdom” when you ask for career advice but it seems he is on autopilot and resumes to read the newspaper.

You have to understand that your parents’ world and the times they grew up in are very, very, very different from ours. They grew up with the themes of security, simplicity, hope and progress. On the other hand, we started our careers in the world of Internet, Google, Friendster, outsourcing and call centers, DVDs, MP3s, and cellphones all of which were non-existent in their time.

I was blown away when Anthony Robbins in one of his lectures, succinctly characterizes our time - the 21st century - as the age of “fast and discontinuous change.” Of course there has always been change, but not as fast now and it was not discontinuous for change then did not eliminate and create jobs, processes, industries, and products overnight. Discontinuous means you cannot logically predict what will come next.

What’s more is that this fast and discontinuous change is not temporary or an adjustment that will soon plateau; it will be the norm.

The source for this discontinuous change is mainly, of course, new technology and the intertwined factors are the competitive world economy, media, migration, and new mindsets.

So why not listen to your parents, especially when they talk about work and career? Despite their best intentions, a lot of their opinions, experiences, “truths” and logic are most likely to be based 0n certain assumptions that may no longer hold solidly today:

• Good education, especially a post graduate degree assures a good position in a company.
• Better known and large companies are the best places for a long term career.
• Focus on your job and stick to your company and after some years you will be its CEO.
• Creating a business or becoming an entrepreneur is expensive and risky.
• Study programming since computers are in.
• Work abroad to save and come back here to invest.
• Work hard, multi-task and be efficient… and many more.

On the other hand, most (not all) of our parents will find it hard to accept certain new trends that will become norms and patterns that are happening in most developed countries and will soon catch up here:

• Telecommuting.
• Work-at-home or online jobs that are actually not scams.
• Freelancing and part-time jobs.
• Jumping from one company to another in less than a year.
• Entrepreneurship and small businesses by very young people.
• Online transactions and E-commerce.
• The need for multiple specializations and skills of an individual.
• Products and services may only be sellable for a few months.
• Constant reevaluation if your position and job can be replaced by technology tomorrow
• Having more than a month of vacation and frequent traveling.
• Multiple investments and trading locally and abroad.
• Streamlining your work process, becoming more effective rather than just efficient… and many more.

It’s not my place to say how we should deal with this discontinuous change but I’m very sure we all have to start dealing with it somehow as the new working environment will and is affecting all of us and all aspects of our lives beyond work. It affects how we spend our free time with our loved ones. It affects how we order our Frapuccinos and perhaps consider eliminating dairy from our diet. It affects our decision to take up Pilates and study Chinese business. It affects why we bought marketing and lifehacking books to read.

So what happened from the time our parents said we can be anything we want and the important thing is to be happy? It was certainly their ideal and hope for us but their actual experiences in their work life in their time proved to them that they must be practical and first be secure to follow their dreams may it be too late eventually.

Mainly, our parents grew up with the psychology that dreams may be possible if we follow the rules first. On the other hand we are currently experiencing the world as having changing rules, too many options and that each of us must create his or her own directions. Often this environment influences us to think there is no purpose and meaning. For the few courageous and perhaps arrogant ones, they see this new ambiguous and formless world as clay to be molded to their liking. They think like Richard Branson.

We all just have to ready ourselves for change, use our existing resources, especially our creativity in new ways to be able to adapt to fast, frequent and unpredictable changes. Tony Robbins says the solution is “regeneration” that is companies and individuals must reinvent themselves, decide and act on the changes, assure themselves adapting the change is the key, train themselves and continuously revitalize their energy and creativity.

For our world now, despite the perceived or real chaos, superficiality, and consumerism, it is truly more possible than ever to do what you really want and still survive. You can be a writer, musician, artist, traveler, photographer, pre-school teacher, businessperson, video gamer, athlete and sometimes still work for a company if those roles don’t pay the bills.