Can Do #29: The jobs of the future

Alina Okun

Nov 30, 2022

(Max Ernst, Pietà or Revolution by Night, 1923)

Welcome to edition #29 of Can Do, a newsletter where I share my professional journey.

You can also read my previous editions and follow me on Twitter.

Newsletter at a Glance

News & Reflections: The Jobs of the Future
Article: Work Shift: Everyone Is Career Cushioning. Should You?
Twitter: School vs. Life

News & Reflections

23 years is how long I spent in school obtaining formal education. Between K-12, undergrad, grad, and doctorate, I’ve spent more than half of my life, even at this point, going to school.

I loved education so much that I used to dream of making a living by going to school. Since that was not a viable option at the time, I went on to pursue a career that was very different from my dream.

It took me years to realize that education and learning are two different things, and what I loved was learning, not the standardized education that’s imposed on us. Ironically, I’ve recently realized that education was what prevented me from achieving my full potential. An even bigger irony is formal education does not teach us how to learn. We spend years taking exams but retaining very little of what we studied.

Shortly after I quit my corporate job in 2019, I came across the teachings of Michael Simmons. He had built a $500K a year business teaching people how to learn. He spends most of his time learning and some of the time teaching others the frameworks for learning. Making a career of learning is possible, after all.

In February of this year, I took Michael’s Month to Master challenge, in which you spend a month learning a new skill or topic. That was the time when I went deep into web3, and I used that month to learn about web3 and DAOs.

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that Michael was doing another Month to Master challenge. I couldn’t help myself, and I signed up, even though my plate was already extremely full.

The challenge started this week, and I’m loving it even more than the first time. Now, I’m considering going deep into the jobs of the future. I’ve always been fascinated by the statistics that up to 85% of the jobs that today's college students will have in 11 years haven't been invented yet (source: the Institute for the Future).

This means that traditional educational institutions are not preparing students for the jobs of the future. Worse, they are preparing them for jobs that will most likely go away soon.

I’m curious to explore this topic more over the next 30 days.