Welcome to The Elevator. Every week I’m in conversation with dozens of entrepreneurs seeking to answer the big questions about their business & lifestyle. My intent with this letter is to curate the trends, opportunities, products, and services that will help you grow.
Cafe:
I just got back from India which was an incredible experience. I documented some of my learnings here.
This week I wanted to share some trends for how work is changing. As I see it, this is the way things already are. Two futures can exist simultaneously.
For example, Mr. Beast has already disrupted legacy media, regularly pulling 10-100x the views of traditional outlets. We just don’t consider or collectively value this divergent future fully yet.
Here are some changes at the edges, coming for the mainstream…
1. We work for algorithms.
Think of the algorithm like an employer. The incentives of the algorithm change, and you change in response. To be a good employee of Instagram, we tailor what we publish and are rewarded in viewership. Be a bad employee of Instagram, and get punished by its rules.
In the future, work looks more like leisure time. Instead of farming as a career, we create gardens and publish videos about it. We farm as a hobby.
We plant gardens and publish videos about them instead of farming. So, our employment may be creating value through spending our time and attention on work that looks more like leisure.
Blockchains are algorithms we get paid to work for, they have a payment mechanism and value accrual baked into them.
We work for Ethereum, Bitcoin, etc. We market them. We provide billions of dollars worth of equipment to run their computing.
We drive with a Hivemapper device. We get airdrops from hardware devices we use.
2. Your weirdness creates your agency.
Unfortunately, social media algorithms are corrupted, political battlegrounds. This distorts our attempts at being good employees of the algorithm. That’s because rather than seeing social media just as a business, you have people seeing it as a function for power as well. You will have actors (Elon and others) who buy the company not just for "profit” but for political interests.
For example, polarization is rewarded by the algorithm. You are paid for certainty rather than uncertainty, definiteness rather than humility. Do you have to be polarizing and political?
Rather than being polarizing, you can instead be unconventional, and weird.
The stranger, nerdier, and more depth you pursue a particular area the more you stand out, so the irony is that the less you do, as long as it’s unconventional, the more you stand out.
Today’s work equation is to do less, and do what is unconventional.
3. Title Fluidity
Our school system created credentials and lanes that class us into a particular title. These credentials are losing meaning and weight. The fluidity of the title is becoming more natural. Doctors are becoming YouTubers. Writers are becoming app developers. Comedians become politicians. Doctors become AI operators, etc.
4. Today’s Workers are Global, Remote, and In Motion.
Your audiences are now global. Your work, or at least some of it, can happen from anywhere. It will pay to be in motion and to be fluent in how to be globally minded or in motion while you work.
Remote work was the biggest lesson the world embraced from COVID.
This will be further embraced due to a few reinforcing reasons…
The tools that help us with remote work are the worst they will ever be, today. We’re still in inning one for how we collaborate digitally. This is true even for physical infrastructure where we will produce digital twins and simulations.
Corporate profits rise by cutting the cost of office space. Why not remove a large expense virtually overnight?
Talent competition is global, so it makes no sense to only seek employees locally. Top talent wants to be mobile.
In-person meetups, events, and even team gatherings IRL will of course continue to be important. We have flipped physicality and now live in a remote-work first world.
Beyond that, work will be highly mobile.
We’re inventing new cities, new collectives, and mobile working styles where location, time zones, and “home” spaces can change frequently. Airbnb helps this trend. As do self-driving cars.
5. Shared Upside and Collective Growth
I can’t grow my income to the degree that a network can grow and compound my income.
Income inequality will grow, and you can maintain income parity through investment and shared upside in networks, collectives, and companies. I think we’ll see all types of new arrangements tried for how we can grow our incomes through shared upside over traditional salaries.
If businesses become more like artists in that they are “hits” driven you want to have diversified opportunities for growing your income. If businesses become more at risk for disruption, you want to have diversified opportunities for growing your income.
“I want our users to be shareholders, and I want our shareholders to be users,” Huffman reportedly said.”
Report: 75K loyal Redditors can snag shares before Reddit goes public
6. Longevity is here to stay
Longevity and personal ownership over our health are massive trends that are just beginning.
They will be self-reinforcing because they will be mimetic (you will see others doing it and want what they have). Your career and life are long and you will seek to make it long(er).
This doesn’t mean living forever but rather having a longer arc of your career. I expect to see more stories about working later in life. When you think of it that way, you consider your career and how you spend your time and money differently. You have more time to compound your investments, relationships, and skillsets.
“And at age 57, I was not even halfway through my adult years if I lived to 98. This realization opened up doors and possibilities that have reenergized my life.
today, if you make it to 65 in the United States, there’s at least a 50 percent chance you’ll make it past 85; that’s a whole other act, or 8,000 more days.”
if we live a healthy life at 50, we may get another 50 years.”
Chip Conley ― Learning to Love Midlife
Also see: Field Report: Vitalia, The City of Life
7. Consciousness Revolution
Information overwhelm, disinformation, and disruption all have us seeking solutions in tools, ideas, and technologies that help us shift our consciousness. Technology and change always help humanity upgrade our perceptions about who we are in the world.
We are “waking up” to new ideas, and ways of being and experiencing the world around us. This is accelerating through science, psychedelics, media, and distrust of current systems.
Our inner revolution mirrors the outer revolution. When what we spend our time at work changes, our leisure also changes. When we trust our institutions less we need to learn to trust ourselves more.
“At present the dominant story, collectively speaking, is scientific, and one aspect of the mind is given credit for advancing human evolution: rational thought. If we pity our forebears for their difficulty in getting past superstition and myth, the future may pity us for glorifying the rational mind and neglecting the whole mind.”
― Deepak Chopra, Metahuman: Unleashing your infinite potential
What changes are you noticing in how you work? Where do you see changes happening at the edges that will become mainstream?
As always lmk what you think or how else I can help.
xx David
Hey, I’m David. Previously I founded Death to Stock. Now I partner with founders & entrepreneurs navigating growing companies. You can book a strategy call or read my book on delegation for Founders.