Nowadays, the societal view of working a highly “Physical” job, such as working on your feet all day at a fast food restaurant, is that it is one of two things:

1. A temporary necessity to make ends meet–if it is for the short-term–, or
2. Some kind of failure in education or human effort–if this is a long-term solution.

My un-filtered, deep-down, prediction for the Future of “Work” is that, in the future, the societal view of working a highly “Time-Consuming” job, whether it is Physical or even if it is for a highly paid “Mental” job, will be the same as the previous view on working at fast food restaurants:

1. It is some kind of failure in (AI) education or human effort. (more on this later)

---

In a world that is transitioning to AI,
“Time” becomes the new most valuable currency to amass.

---

My View of The Progression of “Work”

Physical Labor (Blue Collar) =>

Mental Labor (White Collar) =>

Time-Free AI Automated Labor (No Collar)

---

As a human race, we spend way too much time “working”:

• Ridiculous Retirement Timelines:
  • In the US, you receive MAXIMUM social security benefit if you hold off on Retirement until you are 70 years old. Are we supposed to retire at 70? In 2023, the average global life expectancy is 73 years old (for US, it is 74 years for male and 79 years for female). 73-79…let that sink in for a second. And to make matters worse, most people start to experience a decline in overall energy levels by the time they reach their mid-30s. Are we supposed to work an entire lifetime to retire for a few measly years when we are at our lowest energy levels and we, and our significant others and closest friends, are about to die? No thank you!

• Perpetual Stress:
  • And don’t get me started on 40-60 hour work weeks and only 2 day weekends. Studies show that it takes at least 4 days of being completely off from work before someone can properly relax. A lifetime of almost never fully relaxing and constantly grinding? I am not a hamster, so I will also pass on this one.

Ok, I hope I’ve whipped you up until a frenzy now and you are smashing your digital Minecraft structures in outrage as to this lie the world has told you about the amount of “time” you should be spending working. Love your time, and defend your time, my dear friend! Work if you choose to or, temporarily, if you need to but know that there are other paths available.

Now let’s get to more practical, actionable advice.

---

I believe the two highest leverage skills you can improve right now to thrive during the transition towards the Future of Work are
AI Automation and Strategic Wealth Management.

---

AI Automation:

• We are reaching a turning point in Generative AI, where it is actually good enough to replace many of the routine time consuming tasks that you do. Everything from writing emails, creating presentations, writing performance reviews, exploring new information, to even programming and automating things for you. AI should be the little assistant you have in your back pocket that makes everything you do easier and faster.
• AI Assisted workers, in my opinion, will be the only types of workers highly resistant to company layoffs as work transitions to the future I envision.
• And once you feel comfortable making AI automation/assistance a regular part of your process, what do I believe you should do with all of that extra time you have?
  • In the near term, during this AI Transition/Revolution, do NOT give it back to your employer. You owe your employer RESULTS, not TIME! If you can work an hour a day with AI and outproduce other people working 8 hours a day, you have earned yourself 7 hours of “you” free time to grow in any way you want. Know your worth to a company. Value your time and your growth.
  • In the long term, at some point (which may not occur in our life times), you may be left competing only with other AI Assisted workers. At this point, there will be a new “race to the bottom” with the same old toxic culture of over-working and coming in on weekends, etc. Everyone will be killing themselves to do 100x the work that a company used to pay them for doing 1x. At this point, please retire.

Strategic Wealth Management:

• I don’t want to get into the weeds of financial planning and strategy right now (I will definitely get into this and the FIRE movement more in later blog posts), but for now, let’s just say that at some point in your career, you may be fortunate enough to find that your wealth can generate more wealth than you are actually spending each month. Your money will feel like an army of little workers that you send out to collect coins for you each day: coins from Companies you support and believe in long-term, coins from Industries and/or Technologies you are excited about, coins from Dividends, and coins from Rental Properties. At some point your army will compound and grow to be big enough to bring in money at an effort-to-reward ratio that is way better than what you get from your full-time day job. At this point, please retire.

---

Key Action Items for Preparing for The Future of “Work”:

• Privately track where all of your time is spent each day when working at your current job.
• Ask ChatGPT (or any other generative AI service) how it can automate each part of your current job.
• Spend your newly found free time in Personal/Professional Growth that does not need to do have anything to do with your current company.
• Start Saving Up For Your Strategic Wealth-Building Army (to be discussed in a future post).

---

Thanks for visiting my blog, Reader! As I started writing this, there were so many additional ideas I wanted to introduce and expand on, but I want to keep each of my blog posts tightly focused so I will hold off on them for now. See you next week for my next post!! And for those who missed my previous post on “The Secret to Happiness”, jump to this link here!

– CrouchingL