24 Dec This Is Not the Life Our Parents Told Us About
So did you ever have that moment? That moment of this is not how they said it was going to be. I distinctly remember a moment my senior year of high school. I followed the rules that had been laid out for all of my high school class. “Excel academically, play sports, diversify your extra circulars, volunteer your time and stay out of trouble and you can go to a great school and do whatever you want” they said. The day that a foreign exchange student staying with my family started getting college offers from Duke and other great schools with a rock bottom GPA but a great athletic ability I knew the rules were different. You had to have something special you had to have more than just a great ability to follow the rules.
Seth Godin has reached the same conclusion. Fortunately for us he was able to verbalize it when I just knew I wasn’t playing by the same rules but I didn’t know what the new rules were. The following excerpt from Linchpin addresses this concept.
Here’s the deal our parents signed us up for:
“Our world is filled with factories. Factories that make widgets and insurance and Web sites, factories that make movies and take care of sick people and answer the telephone. These factories need workers.
If you learn how to be one of these workers, if you pay attention in school, follow instructions, show up on time and try hard, we will take care of you. You won’t have to be brilliant or creative or take big risks.
We will pay you a lot of money, give you health insurance, and offer you job security. We will cherish you, or at the very least, take care of you.”[1]
They also signed up for if you pay for you education you will make enough money that it was a good investment.
How many people do you know that showed up on time, did the job, receive a living wage, benefits, and pension anymore? I can’t think of a single industry where this will be perpetually true. Can you? Wages, particularly in the U.S. are a not keeping up with the cost of living. Retirement for most of us is so far off we dare not dream. When we get there we are going to pay our own way. So now what? Showing up on time and following directions isn’t enough anymore so what do we do?
Well we create and originate and invent. Not just as seen on t.v. products but ideas. Every industry needs ideas it is what keeps it from getting stagnate and disappearing. Even less than thrilling fields like accounting need creators and thinkers. Those are the people that will succeed and move forward. Those that hope to make it big by showing up on time just to collect a paycheck as Godin so often put it will not succeed.
But is this really a new idea. Didn’t those guys that pushed the envelope usually do better anyway? Haven’t they always? Well maybe sometimes, but know that has become the rule more than the exception. What do we do next? How do we better understand the new paradigm so we can succeed in it? This is not the life our parents and educators told us about.
[1] Seth Godin, Linchpin (New York:Penguin Group, 2010) p. 4.
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