The Cloud will make the world your stage, but anyone can learn almost anything about you. Your actions will define you and where you stand while you are very young. You will live with that definition for a lifetime. Do you project your true character into the world or something less authentic? Are you prepared for Cloud transparency?
10
new world realities will redefine life and careers in the next thirty years
Principle #1
When everyone can see you, who will you be?
Principle #2
Your legacy as a superhuman
You will be among the first generations to become superhuman by escaping mind and body limitations. You will be among the first generations to become superhuman by historical standards. You will be the first to escape the inherited limitations of your mind and body at birth. You can live longer and better than people have ever lived. How will you use these superpowers to maximize your potential and wisdom to make the world better?
Principle #3
You as a collaborative creator
In the next three decades, technology will enable shared thought, experiences, and collaboration. You will work and play with others as if sharing a single mind, unrestricted by the number of participants or distance, turbo-charging creative work and problem-solving. Effectiveness in collaboration and teamwork will become an essential career and life skill. How well do you collaborate today? Are you prepared to become a team and collaboration specialist in the New Reality using advanced communications and automation technology?
Principle #4
More, better, and previously unimaginable relationships
Human relationships will increase in importance as more time will be spent interacting with automation and as distance will no longer be a limitation. New relationships will develop with human-like automation. Are your relationship skills where they need to be to take advantage of these opportunities?
Principle #5
Making a better world through more meaningful work
Work will become more meaningful and enjoyable. Physically demanding, risky, and repetitious work will be automated over time. Human work will become more entrepreneurial, collaborative, creative, and involve more problem-solving and dealing with complex human relationships. Your career could involve innovations that address fundamental historical problems. How will you align your career and skills to take advantage of opportunities offered by the new work of the twenty-first century?
Principle #6
More, faster decisions of more significant consequence
Increasing innovation and pace of change and vastly expanded consequential choices will make life. Increasing innovation and pace of change will vastly expand the consequential choices you will make. Life will become busier, and time will become more precious even as longer life expectancy increases your time on earth. Clear priorities will be essential. How well do you manage your time today? Are you prepared for a faster pace, more significant decisions, and less time to consider them?
Principle #7
New lifestyle options
More jobs will allow work from home (WFH) or work from anywhere (WFA), allowing you to better integrate your work with family life. Distance will diminish as a deciding factor in where you work and where and how you choose to live. Retirement will be delayed, or you may never decide to retire. You may not feel the same allegiance to communities or your country as your parents and grandparents did. New lifestyles will build off these changes. They will integrate family, work, and dreams as never before. How will you choose to live if present-day lifestyle limitations are removed?
Principle #8
A life and career in the Cloud
Most of your time in the future will be spent living and working in the Cloud, redefining life as we know it. Cloud dependency will be equal to electricity today. If much of your life is spent working in the Cloud or with automation, how will you remain connected to nature and the physical world and preserve your humanness?
Principle #9
Proactive wins; reactive loses
The world and your life will become more volatile as the pace of change accelerates. Success will depend upon maintaining a cool head, perspective, preparation, resilience, and adaptability to seize emerging opportunities. Relying on trial and error and reaction will become impractical. How well prepared are you to prosper financially, physically, emotionally, and professionally in a more volatile world?
Principle #10
A stable you in an unstable world
Sweeping societal changes will alter daily life and belief systems in the next three decades. Democratization will undermine elitism. A more level playing field will be democratization’s gift to the world as it makes everything available to everyone, including knowledge, information, and entrepreneurial opportunity. Institutions, such as employers, government, education, religion, and media, are being disrupted and remade into new versions that you will help create. Are you excited or fearful of this change and the new world it will produce? A little of both? Given a choice, how will you define versions 2.0 of democracy, education, religion, and media?
Become a Potentialist
What happens when the institutions that have guided us—government, education, religion, media, and corporations—are completely disrupted or become irrelevant overnight? Ben’s new book The Potentialist I: Your Future in the New Reality of the Next Thirty Years summarizes the changes ahead, why those changes are coming, and what you can do to be ready.