Passion & the Future of Work – Part of Chapter VI of the upcoming book Find Your Passion

Passion & the Future of Work – Part of Chapter VI of the upcoming book “Find Your Passion”

From the beginning of our human existence until our extinction – if this ever occurs – we have and will always carry our passion with us. It’s fiercely fortified, right at the center of our heart, the core of our soul and being. It’s our spiritual oxygen. And as oxygen is necessary for us to survive, our passion is necessary for us to live.

Given its broad and dynamic nature, we have the privilege to express it in many ways. What if I told you that you can turn your passion expressions into multiple sources of income? Whether they are various roles and contracts, or passion-based businesses and passive income sources?

Why is this important to consider? According to McKinsey Global Institute’s 2017 report “Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions In A Time Of Automation”, up to one-third of work activities could be automated by 2030. Furthermore, it’s underlined that by 2030 “major transitions lie ahead that could match or even exceed the scale of historical shifts out of agriculture and manufacturing. Our scenarios suggest that by 2030, 75 million to 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories. Moreover, all workers will need to adapt, as their occupations evolve alongside increasingly capable machines. Some of that adaptation will require higher educational attainment, or spending more time on activities that require social and emotional skills, creativity, high-level cognitive capabilities, and other skills relatively hard to automate.”

Yes, you got it right. Being aware of your passion gives you the privilege and power to adapt to a world that changes faster than any time in human history. Your passion expressions will be your own unique ways to find a role where you’ll actually be more productive, creative, fulfilled, and successful!

Keep in mind that your ability to adapt in the workplace won’t be from now on a “nice-to-have”. It’s a requirement for us to both survive and thrive. Why? Not only because the automation of jobs by AI has already started; but because the pandemic has actually accelerated the automation in a disruptive way.

A recent survey of 800 executives in June 2020 by McKinsey (representing a full range of industries in eight countries – half of the respondents are based in the United States, and the rest work in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Spain, and the United Kingdom) found that 67% of companies have accelerated automation and AI because of the pandemic. This means that hundreds of millions of workers will need to pivot to different occupations a few years before 2030. This is less than a decade! My estimation is that the world, including the way we work and think about work, will radically change in the next 3-5 years because of the pandemic.

It’s like a big tsunami coming in to eliminate anything and anyone that happen to stand in its way. Do you have to worry? Of course not. Who told you that you have to “stand” against the tsunami? No one! Can you run away? I really doubt. It’s like a global chaos. Can you surf on it? Well, yes, but if you fall, you’re screwed.

But what if you were part of the tsunami itself? What if you were water? Water has no fixed form. It takes its form based on the surface or object that hosts it. It adapts. Anywhere. Anytime. Who said you can’t do the same? Be like water. This way, the current tsunami, and all the future ones, not only will they not be a threat to you, but they’ll be a powerful force that blasts you forward.

That’s the value of your passion. To give you enough creative flexibility and adaptability to both deal with and thrive during any disruption.

What’s even greater is that new unknown occupations are expected to come into life. But don’t be surprised. You know why? Because, as we’ve already underlined, the purpose of jobs is not to give you money to survive, but to do what? Yes! To cover at least one human need! That’s why there will always be jobs that will vanish and new jobs to take their place.

If you look at our recent history, this is not something new. The same fear of job loss was the same in the industrialization era. Then, the majority of manual jobs were also replaced by machines and automation. Today, you don’t see hundreds of workers working on an assembly line. Most jobs there became extinct because of automation. Why were they automated? “To reduce the cost and maximize the productivity of course”, you might think. Sure. On the other hand, it’s also wise for us to ask another question: “What are the new emerging opportunities?” Well, there are a few.

First, the extinction of a job opens the door to a new one. Remember: it’s all about covering human needs. This doesn’t mean that a new job is created automatically. But a new opportunity to cover a human need in a different way comes up. Here’s the best part: you can be the creator of a new job.

That’s right. You can leverage this opportunity to create a new job. How? By serving others and fulfilling their needs through your passion; even more precisely, by at least a passion expression of yours that adds more value to others than the old job. In other words, this pandemic is the best opportunity for you to find how your passion expressions can add value to others in areas where automation took or will take place.

“But, Jim. How can I create a role?”, you might wonder. If you want to start your own passion-based business, you can easily do that by testing your ideas of yours as passion expressions that solve your ideal clients’ problems. As an employee, you can still do this by suggesting the creation of a new role that could be a better fit for you to the person who’s responsible in the company for the creation of the role you have in your mind. Yes, you can actually do that! The only criterion is the role to make sense regarding the problem it solves, and generally the extra value that will bring to the employer that right now is not delivered by any existing role.

In fact, many executives cannot always see the need that you can see for a new role. They are too busy! That’s where you come in. Remember also that the subtitle of this book is “How to Create a Career With More Success & Fulfillment.”

This is one opportunity out of automation. Another one is that automation will actually create more time for humans to do work where they’ll be able to practice more their creativity and problem-solving skills. If you think about it, it makes absolute sense. Because your passion is a fundamental expression of your personal growth; and the fact that it can be expressed through manual work doesn’t mean that it should be limited to only this type of work. Quite the contrary.

Your passion needs to expand because it’s dynamic. Automation can complement the dynamic nature of passion, by creating for us more time to spend in expanding and following it! It’s a great tool that helps us spend more time doing what we love.

Last but not least, automation can be a way for you to reach financial freedom faster. How? By becoming the owner of any machine that can do the work for you. This means having the opportunity to buy a machine that will serve others, as an employee, and generate passive income for you. A typical example would be to own a self-drive car and use it as an Uber car. You won’t have to pay it a salary and it does the work for you!

As a result, you’ll be able to maximize your time available to focus even more on serving others through your passion! This is also exactly the reason why the majority of the wealthiest people in the world follow their passion for the sake of passion! Not for the money! Committed to working till the end of their life. Warren Buffett, the fourth wealthiest individual in the world, is 90 and still running one of the most successful hedge fund companies in the world. This brings me to my next point for the future of work.

Work is a unique way to fulfill our highest human needs: self-actualization and transcendence. Gone are the days where the purpose of work was to cover our need for safety, emotional and financial, and our need for self-worth (e.g. status, prestige, accomplishments). Because people have started realizing that there’s more; that work is a unique path to reach your personal, professional, and financial potential. That work is not labor. Work is passion. That in the future we will have a “Career Fulfillment International Day”, to celebrate the shift from “Happy Friday!” to “Happy Monday”. The shift from labor to purpose; from work to passion.

Feel free to pre-order the “Find Your Passion” book to transform your career and life by visiting my personal site here