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OPINION: As a child, one question always seemed to pop up in conversations with adults: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It was a question that could fill you with dread or excitement. But it’s also a question that is increasingly irrelevant in today’s rapidly changing world.
It carries with it the assumption that our identity and value are tied to our career choices. It suggests a linear life trajectory where we study, work, retire, and then, well, die. This model might be what we’ve grown up with, but it is bleak and restrictive, leaving no room for the fluidity and flexibility that are becoming essential in the modern world.
Michelle Obama, in a 2019 interview with Oprah Winfrey, aptly called this “the worst question in the world”. “As if growing up is finite. As if you become something and that is all there is.”
Mauro Guillén, author of The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society, also argues against this conventional thinking. He believes the question puts undue pressure on young people and limits their potential. In a world where technology and the economy are evolving at breakneck speed, many of the jobs today’s schoolchildren will eventually do haven’t even been created yet.
Guillén critiques the traditional sequential model of play, study, work, and retirement. He argues that it’s an unforgiving model that leaves behind those who don’t fit neatly into its timeline. It’s a conveyor-belt model designed for men spending their lives in the workforce, not accommodating the realities of others, such as mothers or early school leavers.
Guillén says that what we need now is to upskill constantly or take breaks to return to study to learn more skills. After all, we live in a world where AI is rapidly changing how we work and the skills we require to succeed in the modern workforce. In the new world order, constant upskilling and lifelong learning are the keys to success. Instead of pigeonholing ourselves into one career for life, we should be open to multiple career paths, learning new skills and adapting to change. Emotional intelligence, critical thinking and collaboration are becoming more important than technical knowledge.
Guillén challenges the age-old focus on generational differences. He believes that age is irrelevant; that the concept of “generations” is “baloney”. Instead, he proposes the concept of the “perennials”, a term coined by tech entrepreneur Gina Pell – an ever-blooming group of people of all ages, stripes or types who transcend stereotypes and make connections with each other and are not defined by their generation.
Identifying as a perennial is certainly a divergence from how we’re used to thinking about ourselves, particularly when the internet is rife with jokes about “the millennial pause” and opinion pieces on why Gen Z is the most difficult generation to work with.
However, there’s a lot to like about the idea of being a perennial: about having a professional life where you can reinvent yourself, try new things, and work at the very frontier of technological change. And it doesn’t necessarily mean we have to give up the quirks of millennial culture or take an interest in learning Gen Z slang, although the latter would probably go a long way to advance mutual understanding.
At the same time, the promise of being a perennial seems to only be open to a narrow band of financially secure workers in knowledge industries. For everyone else, the pace of automation and the growth of AI probably means having perennialism forced on you as your career gets swept away and you’re forced to retrain to make ends meet. And the jury is out on whether we millennials will want to retire (or can even afford to) if we’ve chosen to embark on a stimulating journey of life-long learning.
Still, the prospect of embarking on a new career at the age of 50 is genuinely frightening, as is the idea of being managed by a 25 year old. The question should also be whether millennials and Gen Z will be more likely to embrace the perennial mindset – we’re the most agile of our time, having grown up in a rapidly evolving digital age. But whether we’re looking forward to it or not, the fact is that technology will upend the way we work.
Perhaps the first step is to stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up, and replace it with something like: “What are you interested in?” In a world that’s perpetually changing, we are all perennials, forever evolving.
