Lessons from 100 Year Work Life

Authors of 100 Year Life, Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, offer three defining features of work in the 21st century.

1. People are likely to live much longer.

2. Lifespan of organizations will significantly reduce.

3. Concept of retirement will fade away, partly due to financial reasons and partly out of choice.

Combining all these factors, it is easy to visualize how one might have to learn to work in different industries, sectors and functions every few years.

Disruption of Traditional Education: Unbundling and More

One of the first things we will see is the disruption of the traditional study, work and retire model by the continual loops of work followed by study.

People will probably go to college multiple times in their lives or enroll in a specialized degree at 75. It is also possible that college degrees get split into smaller chunks or the whole notion of going to college gets replaced by alternate learning and apprenticeship models. Several venture capital backed companies in Silicon Valley are already tinkering with this. While it is difficult to predict whether colleges will survive or alternate learning models will prevail, it is abundantly clear that lifelong learning will be central to all our lives.

What Lifelong Learning Does Not Mean

Lifelong learning doesn’t mean chasing buzzwords, hashtags and latest media obsessions. If we do that, we will be on a perennial wild goose chase because there are way too many new things to catch up on. It we want to become effective lifelong learners, we must figure out ways to connect the dots between what we already know and what we aspire to know. What we aspire to know must follow our curiosity and factor our strengths, interests and time availability.

‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life’ Fellowship

This age-agnostic fellowship will help you learn new things, read charming content, meet interesting people and discover what piques your curiosity. No one else can tell you what you should do. The decision needs to come from you but there are some proven techniques that can help figure out the problem that needs you the most. Isn’t that what your work should be about?

Whether you are a high school student, college senior, young graduate, mid-career professional, you will need to learn to reinvent yourself multiple times. It isn’t easy and you can’t do it alone. That said, it can be heaps on fun if you do it with a cohort of people you resonate with.

Case Study

Vicky Bennison read Zoology in college and graduated with an MBA from University of Bath. Thereafter she worked in international development across Siberia, South Africa and Turkmenistan. Today, she is best known as the person behind Pasta Grannies, a YouTube channel that finds and films real Italian grannies - nonne - making traditional, handmade pasta.

These grannies make lip-smacking pasta and tell delightful stories. What amazes me even more is how grandmas have embraced social media, learned digital marketing and emerged as media entrepreneurs – all around the world.

Closer home, we have the example of Mastanamma, the world’s oldest celebrity chef who got her big break at 105 when her grandson filmed her cooking eggplant curry and put it online. She had cataract, wore dentures, cooked outside on an open fire and sometimes roasted chicken inside a steaming watermelon. As The New York Times put it, this was all part of the charm. Mastanamma was a natural on camera and got over 1 million subscribers in 2 years thereby emerging as a legitimate internet sensation.

The Italian grandmas and centenarians like Mastanamma were able to succeed because they leveraged their strengths and chose to work on things they truly cared about. They used technology to augment their potential and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of reinventing themselves as cutting edge digital content producers. In addition to income, starting up at 100 gave them something to look forward to and added more meaning to their lives. If you want to see how this manifests, check out Gina Petitti’s YouTube video thanking her fans on reaching the 100,000 subscriber milestone.

Questions for You:

1. In your 100 year life, what are your potential career options?

2. Do you feel the need to have a degree to pivot your career?

3. If not, what is/ was the biggest reason for your higher studies/higher study plans?

If you would like to go deeper on these questions and think about your 100 year life and ‘what next’, join the ‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life’ Fellowship.