Would an Ostrich be Familiar With Your Career Approach?

Get your head out of…the sand.

Throughout my life, I have been repeatedly surprised to find people in all fields who approach their careers with a head in the sand approach. If you aren’t familiar with this or think this doesn’t apply to you or your field, let me tell you what I am talking about.

Essentially, this is the career path where you graduate high school, college, technical school, or whatever form of education and go into an industry. That could be medicine, tech, computers; break it down however you want. The next twenty to forty years is spent getting up, going to work, putting in your eight or ten or twelve hours, and then coming home. The next day, it gets repeated all over again for forty-eight to fifty-two weeks a year. During that time, there is no thought about how your industry is changing, how your job is changing. You aren’t looking to get additional education outside of what may be required. And you haven’t thought once that — God forbid — your job could be outsourced or automated during your lifetime. You put in your time and expect to have that paycheck until you retire, get your gold watch, and head off to the beach.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon the way you look at it, I have seen several friends and acquaintances just over the past ten years lose their jobs…