Many people are changing jobs, quitting their job entirely, leaving their jobs, and evolving into a new lifestyle choice. This new ‘craze’ comes as everyone questions life after Covid and against the backdrop of reflecting on life during Covid.

What is it the pundits are calling it, the big resignation? Or is it the significant rebalancing as people take the chance to chase more money or a better life experience…

…I don’t know what to call it, maybe call it the giant awakening. Maybe call it the start of the revolution or the crushing of capitalism as we know it. Pick your extremity, but know that real change takes more of a smouldering ashtray route to burning down the house.

I personally think it is the start of the next evolution of work. A confluence of technological advances, people rising up for a better system, and the money makers’ desire to squeeze more profits from manufacturing and consumption. This is how you should frame it but keep it linked to a slow burn approach. We won’t suddenly wake up to find that tomorrow, five million truck drivers have been laid off or ten million retail till operator jobs have gone due to automation. Still, in ten years, someone will do a study and claim just that. It will be demonstrated on their PowerPoint presentation at the Ted Talk as a slow drip of the evolution of jobs and the occupations that were lost and the new and different ones introduced… 

All terribly exciting stuff. The audience will applaud.

It will not be a decimation on one side. The decline of the old and the growth of the new will balance themselves out, and then it will be a zero-sum game. Everyone gets to join in, and the merry go round of constant learning as your organisation evolves will prepare you for the adjustments over time that you have to make. It is a natural progression, and it has always happened to the workforce but with an added complexity through each upgrade cycle, and this one will be a super cycle.

This is the context of my latest father-son FaceTime chat. My immeasurable attempt to be a decent father with guiding principles. A father who is stuck on one side of the world while his son thrives and grows through the tail-end of his teenage years on the other side of the world.

You see, he, my son, is under pressure from the powers that be (his mother) to get a ‘summer job’ – because that’s what he is supposed to do. Get a summer job and then work weekends, while studying, to learn the principles of work, life and money and all that jazz!! That’s what teenagers during the summer months are supposed to do, right.

But why do the normal thing? He has a firm grasp of ‘all that Jazz’ because he has been brought up in that environment. Working parents that were hardly there while dealing with money and family pressures and trudging through the conflicts of family life. I think you can say that’s a fair old education on the facts of life. 

He has held strong through all that noise. Admittedly he has had his ups and downs and his monumental lazy days and weeks… but that is what teenagers are supposed to do. He has been pushed hard, and he has pressed himself hard at times. He is growing and maturing into an adult who asks all the right questions and challenges all the correct norms. He is curious and confused about what he should do in the future – but so we’re we at that age.

He doesn’t have a clue about what he wants to do. I am down with that. He doesn’t want to do a summer job as he has other interests. He has just come through a fecking pandemic, and of all the people in the world that I know, he is the only person that actually caught Covid! I think he deserves a break, and if he doesn’t want a summer job. I am down with that. The powers that be has a different view, and this is where the conflict comes into play for the choices that he can make. He is being coerced to make his choices to suit others… anyhow!!

He has options, and I agree with the powers that be, that none of the options involves being lazy. So no summer job it is, but he has to do something. He has dreams and aspirations, and he is in the middle of researching and exploring the exciting possibilities that the world has on offer. He is planning his next move, and meanwhile, he is regular at the gym, working on his diet and reading and learning online stuff.

This is great that he has the focus on developing the plan for the next steps. I am proud of him because he has that drive. Like many people who are seeing the future change coming. The evolution of the workplace. People are preparing upon getting ready. They are researching and working on something to get ahead of the change, but, I have to ask, I have to interject, are they really?

Is my son really?

There comes a time where you have to put down the book, get off the internet and away from researching and planning and move into action.

You have to just do it, son, push the button and go for it. (A very cheesy fatherly thing to say, I know)

Whether your first step is crap and your second is much the same, the idea is to keep moving forward. Life is a ten thousand step journey Son, and it is time to take your first significant steps. You might not know the direction but move forward anyway. Directions can be changed. You are a sports car, not a train… (more cheesy father talk)

Don’t worry about failure, son. As I say to many other people I talk with, forget being overly concerned with not getting it right the first time. You definitely won’t.

The point is you try.

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