Vishen Lakhiani argues that asking kids "What do you want to be?" is outdated. Instead ask "How do you want to contribute to the world?" This shift moves them away from bullshit jobs toward meaningful work that matters, like his son's focus on clean air.
Chapters
How can we prepare our teenagers for the future when our education systems aren't keeping up with a fast paced world? Ooh, I love this question. Thank you to whoever asked this. The big problem today in our world, right, is that exponential technological change is rendering so many things in terms of what our kids are learning obsolete. 45% of jobs today will not exist 10 years from now. And it's crazier. According to Singularity University, between 2016 and 22, we're going to see as much technological change in the world as the entire 100 years between 1900 and 2000. Think about that. So the idea is this. Stop asking your teenager, what do you want to be when you grow up? Or what do you want to study? Those are dangerous questions. They are wrong questions. They get a teenager stuck on an idea of their future for a world that will no longer exist. When you ask that to a kid, they're going to say, well, I want to be a lawyer. Maybe I'm thinking about becoming a doctor. Maybe I want to be an engineer. Maybe I want to go into marketing. All of these careers, all of these jobs are changing because of robotics, because of artificial intelligence, because of advanced algorithms and emerging new technologies. These are changing at a rapid pace. Peter Diamander said, ten years from now, you will not want a doctor operating on you. You're going to be operated on by robots. But it's not just technological change. It's also that so many jobs today are utter bullshit. They do not produce anything that's actually valuable or progressing the human race. There are jobs in large multinational food companies where your entire career is about thinking up ways to come up with fancier names for sugar so you can put garbage into people's bodies, or to come up with ways to brand high fructose corn syrup as happiness in a red can. And America's MBA graduates take these jobs, seduced by the high salaries and the perks of these companies, and then forget that, that they are spending the rest of their lives putting out what is essentially a craptastic product to the human race. You do not want that happening to your teenager. So here's what you do want to ask your kid. Ask them, not what do you want to be when you grow up, but how do you want to contribute to the world when you grow up? That question changes everything. When you ask a kid, how do you want to contribute to the world? You're not putting them down a narrow path. You're having them open up their mind to a whole field of possibilities and to A life that's about meaning and contribution. They're less likely to be seduced into a bullshit job selling more crap that we don't need now. I asked this question to my son Hayden, when he was seven years old. Back then in our city, there was an air pollution problem. And Hayden said, well, I want to contribute to clean air. And immediately this opens up a field of possibilities. I asked him, well, how would you like to do that? And he came up with ideas such as, well, I could go work for Tesla and work for an electric vehicle company. I could open a car dealership selling electronic cars. I could become an engineer and work on clean air technology. All of these possibilities open up. But no, it's not about becoming an electric car dealer or becoming an engineer. It's about solving the problem of clean air. When you ask these questions to your teenager, not the question of what do you want to be when you grow up, but how do you want to contribute to humanity? You help them get on the right path. You help them emerge into a life, into a career that's actually giving back to the human species. And those are the careers that give us the greatest amount of fulfillment. These are the people we need in the world today. So remember, you want to prepare your kids for the future, Ask them this one question. How are you planning on contributing to the human race?
