But he had seen the potential in a business that was serving the increasingly aged of Singapore, serving their mobility needs.
It had been hard to run, but it might pay off in the longer run.
This idea might seem inapplicable, but just take it to
your work now. There’s been a lot of distress around how we’re going to be displaced by AI.
So the question we must ask ourselves is,
Are you in a sunset, or sunrise industry?
How do you circumvent that?
1 month before I
graduated, I went to my careers office in university, and
recall having a long chat with the careers advisor, trying to ask him if I should change my career as a social worker.
He told me that the communication and counseling skills would not be dead, and I promptly went on my way.
I agree that some of
these human skills of listening, conversing, reframing, would find it difficult to go extinct. But whatever career you’re in, I think it’s always vital to evolve.
1 talk
If you don’t evolve, you’re dead.
1 tip
Our natural human instinct is to hope things blow over, and hope for the best. Or we might think: it’s so difficult! We have to retrain, reskill, and we might not even get a job!
Just look at Singapore’s noble SkillsFuture initiative. Despite their best efforts at promoting, and despite it being the first in the world in its $500 credits for upgrading courses, the uptake remains stubbornly low at 7%.
7!
You’d imagine that with the government sponsoring courses, more people would go for them.
Some blame Singapore’s early education systems for ingraining a fear of learning, rather than a desire to learn more.
When I did a deep dive into this a while ago, I realised the biggest problem
was still our culture towards change.
Many fear change. And even when solutions are brought to us, there’s a fatalism that grips us, and we stop short of taking deep efforts to change.
So today, the question we must ask ourselves is:
- How are we systematically, habitually, moving towards better versions of
ourselves?
And if you want something practical, take it from me. I used to hate learning. In Primary 1, the first day of school, I ran out of class and played on the monkey bars. I was promptly paraded in front of school and shown as an example.
In junior college, I would fall asleep in class for the first hour, and wake up in the second hour, and really
struggle to catch up.
But somehow, I had the luck to study in a U.K. university, and ended up with so much more time to study. One of my favourite times was afternoon tea with the professors, where they strangely answered my stupid questions, even though they probably wanted to do other things.
One line that stuck with me,
In life, don’t find better answers.
Ask better questions.
So if you’re wondering what next in your career, take some time to ask better questions. Here’s some:
- Don’t ask “What’s my passion?” Ask “What have I been praised for over the years, and comes to
me naturally as a strength?”
- Don’t ask “what’s the next hottest field? AI? Data?” Ask “what’s complementary to my skillset now, that plays into a sunrise industry?”
John
Live Young, Live
Well - Work Your Love
