A Future Thinker Looks at Mid-Life Career Change, #01: Introduction

It was a thrill to be asked by Wesley and Greg to write a column on career change from my point of view as a professional future thinker (people often call me a futurist, but I don’t talk about or write about colonizing Mars or other scifi subjects; rather, I look at the large dynamics and trends that are and will shape our world).

As a middle age man I have long thought that LifeTwo is a wonderful web site for those of us matriculating through this difficult and exhilarating stage of life.

As a form of personal introduction, let me state my credentials upfront.

First, I have long been interested in trends, in what is around the corner, in what the next big thing(s) might be. In both my professional and personal lives I have always seemed to be slightly ahead of the curve, living and working in the place where the future meets the present. I give speeches about the future, write a blog with the tag line "A Future Look at Today" – www.evolutionshift.com – and advise companies and organizations on how to adjust to both the dynamics that are currently reshaping the world and on the trends and forces ahead to which they must adjust. I am currently writing two books, and in this process I have gone back and reread the influential books on the future of the past 50 years as any clear view of the future must incorporate both the wisdom of great future thinkers and a clear view on present day dynamics that are shaping the present and foreseeable future. This will allow me to suggest the landscape we will be living in as it relates to the types of careers and the changing economic values that will be in ascendancy in the years ahead. Why go down a career path that may be obsolete or increasingly devalued in this new age?

Second, I have had multiple careers in my life. Six careers if tightly defined, four if loosely defined. I have wrestled with the issues about new career directions all my life. Until recently I had not put these changes into the career bucket, rather, I could never see myself doing the same thing for my entire work life. Life is both ‘too short’ and too long for that! I enjoy having a steep learning curve. To quote the poet laureate of our generation: “Those not busy being born are busy dying”. I have now landed in the current and last career, that of being a future thinker. There are several reasons for choosing this ‘career’, moments of sudden insight, that I will share in future columns when pertinent, but the key reason is that I looked back on my life and found that through my life career path, there was one constant: I was always ahead of the curve in whatever I did, I was always ‘selling’ -- usually successfully -- the ‘next big thing’, so why not make that my career” Help others to see and prepare for what is coming. That is my highest value proposition to society.

I write this column then as someone who has made several career changes, can speak from experience and of course from compassion and understanding about the difficulties and opportunities you face. Hopefully I can offer up views of the future that might be helpful as you contemplate starting a new career. What lies ahead and how might that effect the workplace? What will become of greater value and what will lessen in value? What are the forces that are reorganizing the world and what will the world look like in ten years? Is there a historical perspective that might help in making a career change in this year of 2007?

This is what I hope to offer you in these columns. There is already much great practical advice –a lot on this web site – about looking inside, about listing what is important to you, about the psychological aspects of career change, about how long it might take to make the choice successful, about how to evaluate the possibilities, so I leave that to others. I will share a view of both history and the future that might be helpful. In the future, starting next week.

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Noted futurist David Houle blogs at Evolution Shift.