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Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) – Coaching Lesson

Welcome to this month’s coaching lesson for Sci-Fi. I love this topic, sci-fi, because it’s about the future.

Where are we going? Essentially, that’s what science fiction is about. It’s imagining where we, human beings, are going into the future. What’s going to happen to our society? What’s going to happen with technology? None of us know for sure but it’s fun to imagine. And it can be useful to imagine, too. Let’s talk about that.

We can see right now, right now in our world, that technology is changing at a faster and faster rate. It’s accelerating. Every year the technology speeds up, faster computers, more memory. This leads to more devices, more apps, which also leads to changes in companies, in products, in services, in careers, in economies, and life in general. And this process of change, driven by technology and globalization, is getting faster and faster and faster.

It can be a little overwhelming as this change speeds up more and more. Because of this rapid change, careers can disappear just like that, careers that have been around for a long time, for decades, can suddenly be gone, no more. This can even happen with full companies or whole industries can fall and disappear in just a matter of years.

And, of course, all of this change can create a great deal of anxiety, y’know, because things change so fast we don’t quite know what to expect. Y’know, in past lessons I’ve talked about the balance of certainty and uncertainty, and how sometimes in our lives we tend to have too much certainty, too much planning, too much routine.

But what we’re seeing in the world, the world economy and with technology, is perhaps too much uncertainty. Change is happening so fast that it’s overwhelming for us. Y’know, our psychology, our minds weren’t really created or evolved to handle this level of change, this speed of change. So it’s quite overwhelming.

Let me give you an example from my own family. Now my father, back when he was young in his 20s, got a job at the company IBM. At the time he got that job, IBM was the number one computer company in the world. They dominated the world in that industry. And also at that time, they were famous for having a lifetime employment policy. Japan used to have this too in many different company.

But IBM had this policy where basically if you were hired by IBM and you did a fairly good job that you could expect to stay with that company during your whole career. Your whole working life you could stay within IBM. You’d be an IBM employee for life until you retired. That was the expectation when my dad joined the company.

Now, in fact, he did work for IBM for over 20 years. During that 20-year time he went from the bottom, just as some little assistant making very little money, and he rose up to be a leader in the company, an executive. He was dedicated and loyal to the company. But sometime around the late to mid-1980s, everything changed and it changed very quickly.

Now we all know what happened. It was the beginning of the tech revolution. First, personal computers came. I can remember this myself back when I was in high school, the first personal computers coming back in the 1980s. Now, at that time, IBM was making the most popular model of personal computers.

So they still were on top of the world. They were still number one. But, very quickly, in a matter of just a few years, they lost their dominance.

Companies like Microsoft and Apple rose up to dominate both computers and software. And then, of course, later we got the internet and Google. And now we have a whole flood of computer companies and tech companies. And IBM is not even close to being number one anymore. Now as IBM lost their dominance, as this whole technology industry changed so rapidly, so did their lifetime employment policy.

And the result for my dad was quite stressful and difficult because IBM started cutting jobs. In corporate language they called it downsizing. It basically means cutting jobs. And so my dad, after 20+ years of working for this company, having the expectation that he would be with them his whole life, suddenly he was forced to retire early, before he wanted to.

This was very hard for him. It was stressful for him. I mean suddenly he was out of a job. Suddenly this plan he had for his life…gone. In just a few years everything changed. What he thought was certain, IBM, this huge, massive, number one company, boom. All of it destroyed and he was out of a job, later in his career, later in his life.

You can imagine what that was like. Maybe you’ve had an experience like this or maybe not, but you can certainly imagine that you suddenly face having all of your security, all of your certainty, disappear.

That’s a big shock.

The hard thing is that we’re all facing this possibility in a way. It doesn’t matter if you’re working for other people or you have your own business because computers are changing faster and faster. New technology is coming quickly.

If you keep up, if you read the trends in technology, you’ll know that robotics is developing quite quickly.

Robots, right? That was science fiction. Y’know, we’ve all seen science fiction movies with robots.

They’re coming. Not just the little robots that make cars now, but more and more intelligent robots.

We know that nanotechnology, little, tiny robots, is also being developed right now. It’s already being used in some level but it’s getting more and more and more complex and more and more capable year after year. It’s speeding up, this development.

We know that apps, applications, computer apps, phone apps, all these things, they’re also developing so quickly and as phones and devices and tablets and laptops and all these things get faster and stronger and more powerful, so do the apps, the software. Computers can do more and more and more things better and better and better.

What this means for us is that more jobs will disappear in the future. More jobs will be done by a computer, an app, a robot, or somebody in a country that can be paid cheaper. This is coming. This is happening. We’re all in some way facing the situation that my dad did, potentially. Now hopefully if we’re lucky, we don’t have to face that. But if we’re not, big changes are ahead.

How do we handle this? I mean, y’know, I get worried about it, too, sometimes, as a business owner. So what do we do? Well, I think back to a metaphor, an experience I had back in my home of Georgia, Georgia, the state in the United States.

I think of going whitewater rafting. Whitewater rafting is when you get in a raft, y’know, like a rubber boat with a group of people and you go down a river. It’s called whitewater rafting because you go down a really fast river, and especially you go over some little waterfalls and it can be very fast and going over rocks. It’s very exciting, a little bit dangerous sometimes, but mostly just exciting.

And I remember that during my experiences of whitewater rafting, we usually had a guide, a professional who really knew what he was doing. And the guide always said that when you come to the dangerous part of the river, where the water’s moving very fast, it’s very important that you paddle and that you make the boat go faster than the water.

He said that when the boat goes faster than the water, then you can control your movement. You control where you’re going. But if you go slower, then the river will just take you where it wants to. You’re not in control anymore. The river’s in control. And I think that’s a great metaphor for life, for anytime we face rapid changes. The same idea is true.

If you’re facing, for example, y’know, technology changing and maybe changing your industry, changing your career. If you personally go slow, meaning you try to resist it, you pretend it’s not happening, then what happens? Now you’re a victim of the situation. You’re not in control. The only way to be in control when things are changing is that you, personally, must change even faster.

It means changing your skills, changing your knowledge, changing your experiences, changing your thinking, changing your beliefs. The only way to survive a period of time with fast change is to change even faster than the environment. Then you are in control. I’ve used this in my own life successfully to manage many very difficult changes in my life.

Let’s talk about how to do it in a practical way. Number one, you need to stay up to date on trends and technology. Y’know, there’s sort of Job, this sort of stereotype we see on TV sometimes of some older person who’s 60 or 70 and oh, they don’t understand technology. And, oh, how do I do e-mail. That’s not a true portrayal in my opinion. I’ve met plenty of people in their 60s or 70s or older who are very good with technology.

But it’s a nice image to keep in your mind. Don’t become that person, right? Don’t resist the change because you will be crushed by it because there’s no resisting it. So the only thing to do is to stay up to date. So as new technology comes, stay up to date, learn about it, y’know? Read books about computers. Read books about technology. Even read books about, y’know, the global economy. Be aware of what’s happening in the world. Be aware of what changes are occurring in your own country, in your own career and your own field. Stay on top of it, we say, meaning stay focused on it.

Number two, once you know the trends, once you know what’s happening now, look ahead. What’s coming? What’s coming in your field? What’s coming in your career? What’s coming in your business?

What’s coming in your country? Try to look. Y’know, this is the advantage of sci-fi. Imagine you’re a little bit of a science fiction writer and you’re trying to imagine what’s coming next. I do this myself because, y’know, I have to imagine, well, I know that translation software is getting better and better.

Maybe someday you can just use your smart phone and have an app and you can speak your own language and then it will translate it and speak English and you won’t need English lessons anymore.

Won’t you be happy? You might be happy, but I’ll be out of a job. So I need to think ahead and if I see that coming I have to find something else I can do. You need to do the same. Constantly be looking ahead. Where are things going? Try to read the future a little bit.

And then finally, do some planning. This is where planning is effective and important. So as you start looking ahead, start planning for the possible futures. If you see something coming, plan for it. You need to look for two things in the future. Number one, threats, dangers, dangers to your job, dangers to your finances, dangers to your family, your career. Identify what those are and prepare for them a little bit.

Y’know, if you think that you’re particular job might disappear, that’s a threat, but you can deal with it.

Start planning now for what you’re going to change to. What will you do next? If your job disappears, what could you do instead? Start getting those skills now.

The other thing you want to look for, not just threats, but opportunities, because this is the positive side of change. When things change, new opportunities pop up. Now this is what happened with me with Effortless English. I saw the opportunity of teaching online, that I didn’t have to be an employee at a school, that I could teach the way I wanted to and I could reach the whole world on the internet. That was an opportunity that I saw.

So there are opportunities, too. Don’t just see it as something scary. See it also as something positive that you could benefit from changes. But you need to kind of have an idea of what’s coming. So think about what are the threats? How can I prepare? And then also think about what opportunities are coming and how can I take advantage of it? Try to look two, three, five years into the future and plan for both of those.

What are the benefits of doing this? Number one, less fear, less anxiety. You’ll worry less when you are up to date on what’s happening now and when you’re looking forward all the time and seeing what’s coming, you won’t be so afraid. It won’t seem so scary anymore. You’ll be ready.

Number two, you’ll be ahead of most other people. Most other people won’t do this. Most other people, they’re just scared and they just look at right now and they just feel fear for the future. They’re not looking ahead. They’re not planning for the threats and the opportunities. Just by doing that, you’ll stay ahead of most other people, which can be a big advantage.

And number three, you’ll be ready for those opportunities so that when a new opportunity comes, you’ll recognize it. You will have known that it’s coming and so you can take advantage and do something.

So that’s it for science fiction. This month look to the future. Stay on top of things. Start looking ahead.

What’s coming in your field, in your area of life and the things you’re interested in. And think about the threats and the opportunities and plan for them. That’s all for this month. Live long and prosper. See you next time. Bye for now.