Passion
Last summer I was listening to a podcast from Duke President Richard Brodhead. He was discussing a committee he was part of for what is called the "Research Triangle" in Raleigh, NC. The goal of Broadhead's committee was to help make the "Research Triangle" futureproof.
Is this not what all parents want for their children? How can we make you futureproof? How can we make it so our children will never have their work outsourced or automated? Maybe best of all, how can we help our children make themselves futureproof?
Consider this -- when these student will be my age, the year will be approximately 2030. Can we even begin to image what the world will be like then?
Consider this -- 12 years ago I began teaching. There was one phone for students to use. It is located right outside the old gym. Now we’d be hard pressed to find a person here without a phone. We’d be hard pressed to find anyone under 20 who really even talks on their phones. Or who recalls rotary phones. Or who actually even remembers a phone number.
How can we futureproof you? Or better yet, how can you futureproof yourself?
I think I've come up with some steps that will help you attain a level of futureproofness.
First, do what you love.
Confucius said, “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
This is why I asked the students to talk about their passions. When you do something that you love - when you do something that is engaging and worthy you give us the best version of you possible.
The best version of you possible is a good first step to futureproofing.
Even if you cannot do what you love for a living, it can at least be a hobby and keep you from leading what Thoreau called “lives of quiet desperation.”
Passions are vital - if not as occupations then as hobbies.
You can live a richer life. Passions - whether as jobs or hobbies - can make you the best version of you.
When I’m putting Legos together - it’s a pretty fine day in the Reynolds household.
My father loved to watch the Vikings . . . bad example. I only remember his heart ache and woe.
But when you do what you love, you are the best version of you. That's a great place to start.
Second step, it is even better, though, if what you love involves beings creative, collaborating, and imagining.
Several years ago congressman George Miller spoke to the National Press club about the report "A Democracy at Risk," which discussed the problem of the rising tide of mediocrity in public schools (of which there is absolutely none here tonight). Miller said something I'll never forget, "the only means of viable economic growth is through innovation and discovery."
We cannot manufacture our way out of this problem nor can we just rely on natural resources.
This generation has to be able to invent and collaborate to create the solutions to our current problems.
When I think of the future, I cannot help but think of Thomas Friedman’s golden rule of the flat world -- “What can be done will be done. Will it be done by you or to you?” If you have a great idea, please, please, please act upon it because if you don't, someone else in India, China, or England will.
Friedman gives a great example of the power of inventiveness in his book, The World is Flat. He was in Budapest giving a lecture on his book at a university. When it was complete, the chauffeur asked him on the way back to his hotel if he'd tell any of his friends about his chauffeur service.
Friedman said sure and asked for the driver's card.
"Just check out my website," he replied.
Friedman did just that when he returned to the states. Sure enough, the chauffeur had his own website . . . with pictures and video . . . in three languages . . . with music.
You are living in a flat world when your chauffeur has his own website . . . in three different languages.
Talk about taking a pretty average job - toting people around in a car - and totally innovating that idea.
Third, maybe you’ve heard this line before . . . “Oh, forget about being this that or the other thing because you’ll never get a job doing that.”
But in the flat, globalized world of the 21st century, you can get a job doing what you love.
We cannot begin to even predict what the world will be like in five years. How can we be so sure that you can't get a job doing what you love and are passionate about?
Look at how Facebook, Wikipedia, iTunes, Youtube, and Google have changed our lives. Where were those words - which now have become so vital to our lives - in the dictionary ten years ago?
Or how about these titles -
- search engine optimizer
- technology coach
- e business
- content managers
- network and data analyst
- self-enrichment education teacher
Don't be so sure that whatever it is you love doing or are passionate about might not be a wise career move.
Fourth, talent is often buried deep.
If you're sitting there thinking, oh man . . I'm not passionate about anything, don't worry.
There’s still time!
There were two students who grew up in Liverpool, England who graduated high school . . . the same high school, mind you . . . thinking they had zero musical talent.
Well, those two students turned out to be Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Half the Beatles.
That music teacher had half of the greatest band in the history of the world, and he missed it. He never tapped into those students' talents.
Maybe you haven't had your potential tapped yet.
I also think of a student named Simon from my home town. I ran into his father a few years ago and asked him how Simon was doing.
"He's going to be an art professor," he stated.
I was shocked. "Did he even take art in high school?"
"I don't know, but he fell in love with it in college."
Then on New Year's Eve when my wife and I were out on the town, I ran into Simon. So I asked him what happened.
"I never really cared for art in high school, but in college I had Leopold at NCTC and he totally turned me on to art. I enrolled at a four year university. In fact, I just got back from an internship in China. I'm going to a graduate school down south. Then I'll apply to work on my PhD."
Phenomenal.
I also like to think that Simon and I were the only guys in a five hundred mile radius on New Years Eve talking about how the works of the modernist painter, Mark Rothko, impacted our lives.
Fifth Mash it up.
Be eclectic. History proves that in times of insularity and orthodoxy - where individuals freedoms are limited and creativity is stamped out - that cultures are stagnant (which worries me about NCLB or RTTT or national standards).
Find a passion and develop it. Then pick another interest that is its polar opposite and develop it as well. Then mash them up and see what results. That is where true innovation happens.
Friedman shared an example of how Steven Jobs dropped out of Reed college (ever notice how three of our biggest entrepreneur's, Jobs, Dell, and Gates all dropped out of college after one semester? Don't get any ideas!). But he hung around and eventually took a class in calligraphy. He studied the beauty of fonts and typeface.
Ten years later when he was working on the first Apple computer, he poured all of that knowledge into Apple's keyboard, which was totally user friendly and unlike anything else on the market. All because of that calligraphy class.
Friedman also offered another example when he spoke to academics at MIT. He said that his employer, the New York Times, asked him to make an appeal to the engineering students at MIT that the NY Times needs engineers in the worst way . . . but not to bother applying if they don't read the NY Times. In fact, they need not apply if they don't read at least three newspapers a day.
The reason? The NY Times can get engineers to design and write code. That's not hard. They can outsource that to India. What is difficult, though, is to bring in engineers with journalism or English backgrounds. When that happens, they can mash their two opposite expertise's together to see what new things result.
The NY Times wants engineers to mash up their engineering ideas with their journalism ideas to create something that no one can yet imagine.
Doing that will help ensure that you are futureproof.
Finally, find your element.
This comes from Sir Ken Robinson's book The Element. Robinson works with many Fortune 500 companies to help them maximize the creative capabilities of their employees. In short, to make their employees the best versions of themselves that they can possible be. And maximize their potential.
You are in your element when you have a job you love and challenges and engages you. Now, you don’t just improve but the entire system around you also benefits because you are the best version of yourself and that makes everyone else around you more productive.
You ever meet someone like that? Someone you naturally gravitate toward and they just make you feel better? That’s a person in their element.
Here is an example from right next door: Fred Jones. He embodied all of the steps I've talked about for being futureproof.
He was an African American who spent 18 years of his life right next door in Hallock.
He loved to build and fix things. So he heard that Henry J. Hill's son had a large farm - replete with all kinds of modern vehicles and engines - that also needed a lead mechanic.
Jones got the job and flourished in his element. However, Hill died and his son sold the farm and moved to the cities to look after his father's estate.
Jones decided to stay behind in Hallock. His good friend happened to own the theater in Hallock (as hard as that is to imagine. Yes, Hallock had a theater). This was the time of the silent films, but soon theaters began having a record player play the film's soundtrack.
The Hallock theater owner didn't have the money for this, so he asked Jones to see what he could do.
Jones tinkered and finally used a farmer's disc from a plow to create his own turn table. It worked perfectly.
However, soon the sound was put right into the film. This meant that theaters needed a specific - and expensive - projector to activate the sound strip in the film.
There was no way the theater owner could afford this, so he turned to Jones again. This time Jones created his own projector, with a special lens he ground down from a towel rod, and the machine worked perfectly. In fact, businessmen from around the state began to plan their trips through Hallock so they could take in a movie.
Well, Joe Numero who owned a sound system company in the cities got wind of Jones' skill and offered him a job.
Jones moved to the cities and as soon as he saw Numero's company, he was again in his element. Finally, a place where he could tinker, create, and collaborate . . . and get paid for it.
One day Numero and the CEO of a transportation company and the president of an airconditioning company were playing golf. The transportation CEO got word that one of his trucks had broken down and an entire load of chickens had spoiled.
The CEO turned to the air conditioning president and said, "Okay, you can keep an entire office building cool or a movie theater, but you can't keep a truck load of chickens from spoiling."
Numero piped up and said, "I know just the guy who can do it."
Of course, he meant Jones.
Sure enough, after some hard work and testing, Jones did create a cooling unit to keep trucks and box cars cool. It became the company Thermo King.
This seemingly small invention really changed all of our lives. Suddenly, you didn't need to eat food in season. People could eat food from all over the country, all over the world. Think of all the jobs and money generated from this.
On a personal level, every time I heard the Thermo King unit running outside in the middle of the night, I knew Dad was home.
But it didn't stop there. Jones presented an idea for refrigerating supplies during the second world war. His idea was accepted and helped save lives and preserve food.
Ultimately, he helped work on the prototype cooling system that Jon Glenn would use in the space program.
So one man who most of us have never heard from who spent a good chunk of his life just a few miles away from here not only revolutionized how and what we eat, but also helped us win the second world war, and helped usher in the space age.
Not bad for someone who most of us have never heard of and who only had six years of formal schooling.
Futureproofing indeed.
Is there any question this man would not be just as vital and relevant if he were alive and working today?
Given the education you've received and the education you are about to get in college, think of what you'll be able to do.
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