One of the principles of exercising to develop muscle is time under tension. How much time are you working the muscle for?
Learning is similar. For how long are we challenging ourselves before giving up?
Resilience is similar. We cannot strengthen our resilience unless we face things that are challenging us for longer than we could previously tolerate.
I think sometimes we focus too much on making experiences easier, when what we really need is to create greater time under tension.
I can’t imagine that resumes and cover letters are going to look the same in the next few years. Basically, with everyone using AI to enhance or even completely write these documents, they aren’t going to stand out all that easily. And furthermore, the jobs people will be applying for will not be the same either. And so I think two things are going to become far more used to hire, both of which go far beyond a resume and cover letter.
Both of these hiring approaches involve ‘Showing me’ what you can do. First, show me that you have credentials pertaining to the skills we want to see in our employee. Secondly, show us what this looks like on a temporary contract, so that we know hiring you is going to work out.
What credentials do you have? What specific training can you show us in a job interview test? And now let’s have you try the job out for a few months and then do a hiring assessment. So no more resumes and cover letters, just fill out this smart form with hierarchy tree’d questions that dig deeper when you show credentials that we are looking for, and skips those questions when you don’t have evidence of certifications or experience. Some questions require skills in a particular field that need to be answered, and the questions get progressively harder.
Bye-bye resumes and cover letters, hello to showing me what you can do in an interview. The resume is replaced by a form. Credentials get you an interview. The cover letter changes to uncovering your skills in an interview. If you don’t have experience, you better have credentials or micro credentials. While a university degree will still be an asset, it’s just one of many credentials that will matter. And even with all this, you will still need to show, to demonstrate, that you are right for the job before a long term agreement to hire will be made.
Ever notice how many jobs say, “Experience required”? Who are all these experienced workers looking for new jobs?
How many jobs want you to have a degree first? I understand a doctor, nurse, lawyer, architect, or engineer needing a degree, but how many corporate jobs really need a prospective employee to have a degree?
I love the quote, “Experience is something you get right after you need it.”
At some point in your life you are going to learn something on the job. You are going to figure it out either just when you need to… or just after you’ve messed up the first attempt.
Hiring is going to change. You aren’t going to see companies focusing on degrees and academic accolades. Instead, you’ll see people with micro credentials or niche skills being hired because they have learned skills that directly relate to the job expectations. Or you’ll see jobs being offered on a trial basis and companies willing to hire based on characteristics like flexibility, ingenuity, and creativity. ‘Come try this out for a 3 month contract, and we’ll see if you’ve a) Got a good head on your shoulders, and b) Fit with our community and values.’
Don’t worry about experience, you’ll get on the job. Just come with the right attitude and an affinity for the job. The first time you try something, that’s when you’ll get the experience. Before that, it’s not schooling or past experience, it’s evidence that you are a learner and you are willing to put in an honest effort. That’s what will get you hired.
Well, today is my first day going back to work after the summer break. While the first day of school isn’t here yet, I will restart my regular morning routines and get myself ready for the craziness of September. This time of year always comes with excitement and a touch of nervousness. What will the new year bring? What’s in store for the next year?
Preparation starts in the mind, it begins as a seed of promise waiting to blossom. It will be a great year.
Then the actual planning begins. But the reality is that preparation only takes you so far, then it’s up to you and your team to execute; to hit the ground running; to make the students feel welcome… and to help your students see the potential for the great year ahead that you see.
And it all starts today.
It’s also time for something else. Tonight my youngest daughter returns from a 100 day trip to Europe. This is the longest she has been away from home, and after a fabulous adventure she is on her first of two flights back to us. It has been amazing to follow along on her Instagram travel account, and also get occasional early morning video calls of her sharing her location and what she’s doing. Seeing tiny snippets of her day.
As my new school year begins, my daughter’s European adventure comes to an end. It’s a reminder of the cycles we go through, the starts and finishes. We often focus on the beginnings and endings, the big calendar events….
What’s important to remember is that the adventure is what happens in between.
I got away with a buddy to go fishing for a couple hours on Wednesday. It was part of a bigger day together, and we didn’t fish for long, or catch anything. But we connected and had an adventurous day. Good food, good company, and good scouting for a future fishing trip.
It’s one of the things he and I talk about, which is the idea of connecting for experiences. When you don’t see a good friend regularly, it might be easy to ‘pick back up where you left off’ and feel connected. But it can also feel like that’s all you do… Reconnect, reminisce, and repeat.
We didn’t plan a whole day of fishing, we took advantage of the resources and time available to us and made the most of it with a new experience. We didn’t just talk about the things we’ve done or hope to do, we had an excursion. Too often we think planing and organizing needs to be a drawn out part of connecting, with an event planned on some distant future date.
Last night another buddy texted to see what I was up to and just over an hour later I was sitting on his balcony. Then we walked to a delicious dinner. This was so refreshing compared to, “What are you doing next week Friday?”
Plans don’t need to be big, and novelty and newness make for great experiences. Also, last minute plans can be so much more fun than the bigger, much more planned events can be. Novelty keeps the experiences new enough that they become the things we talk about years from now.
A friend was talking about an upcoming trip and the enthusiasm and excitement he shared was contagious. It got me thinking about how differently I think of trip planning. For him it is literally part of the adventure. For me, it often feels like work.
This was insightful. I’ve got it all backwards. For me the excitement comes when I arrive at the destination. For him the adventure begins long before that. I’m missing out, a simple shift in perspective would give me far more joy. The journey begins with planning.
I heard a quote on a podcast today and I really felt it: The podcast is Jimmy Carr on Chris Willamson’s Modern Wisdom:
“The answers you’re looking for is in the silence you’re avoiding. You need fewer inputs, not more.”
How often do we seek answers externally when what we should be doing is looking inward?
Sometimes I spend too much time in my head. To anyone that knows me, this is not a surprise. It started young. I could spend hours with my imagination and not get bored. In some ways it’s a superpower and in others my Kryptonite.
One of the positive byproducts is that in high stress situations I can keep my calm. I can sit ‘in my head’ and assess things without really raising my anxiety. This has been something that has proven quite useful.
One of the negative byproducts is that sometimes I miss things, I lack awareness or even emotion. I can be distant and unaware. Sometimes that unawareness extends to my own body. I don’t feel a mind-body connection. This can be challenging in a couple ways. Emotionally it can mean that I feel my emotions in my head, more like a thought than a feeling. Physically it can mean that I don’t know how to focus my strength in a workout, and I don’t necessarily feel the muscle I’m trying to work on.
I think these are things I can improve, and I do, but change is slow, and I don’t always want to put the effort in. I more often than not just prefer to live in my head. This can make it challenging for me in new social environments. It’s also what helps me not worry about what others think and allows me to be myself.
Still, if there are a couple places that I could definitely improve, they would be a better connection to my body, and to others… basically better engagement beyond my head.
I don’t know how traditional schools survive in an era of Artificial Intelligence? There are some key elements of school that are completely undermined by tools that do the work faster and more effectively than students. Here are three examples:
So what do we want students to do at school? Ultimately it’s about creating experiences. Give them a task that doesn’t involve taking the project home. Give them a task where they need to problem solve in teams. Engage in content with them then have them debate perspectives… even provide them with opportunities to deepen their perspectives with AI before the debate.
Class time is about engaging in and with the content, with each other, and with tools that help students understand and make meaning.. Class isn’t consumption of content, it’s engaging with content, it’s engaging in collaborative challenges, it’s time to be creative problem-solvers.
Don’t mistake the classroom experience with entertaining students, it’s not about replacing the content or the learning with Bill Nye the Science Guy sound bites of content… it’s about creating experiences where students are challenged, while in the class, to solve problems that engage them. And this doesn’t mean avoiding AI, it does mean that it is used or not used with intentionality and purpose.
We need to examine what the school experience looks like in an era when technology makes traditional schooling obsolete. We didn’t keep scribing books after the printing press. Blacksmiths didn’t keep making hand-forged nails after we could mass produce them. Yet AI can efficiently and effectively produce the traditional work we ask for in schools and somehow we want students to mass produce the work the old way?
How do we transform the school experience so that it is meaningful and engaging for students… not AI?
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*I used AI (Copilot) to suggest the production of nails as being a redundant item no longer created by blacksmiths. I also use AI to create most of the images on my blog, including the one with this post, with a prompt that took a couple attempts until Copilot offered, “Here comes a fresh take! A Rube Goldberg-style school, where the entire structure itself is a fantastical machine, churning out students like a whimsical knowledge factory.”
In a way, we are all time travellers. None of us experience time in the same way. We can be engaged in the same activity but for one of us time flies by and for another time seems to slow down. Have you ever been in the company of someone having way more or less fun than you? Do you think your perspectives of time were the same?
What’s the difference between time well spent and time poorly wasted? What is the experience of time for someone bored versus someone excited? What’s the experience of time for someone with a severe tooth ache waiting for a root canal versus someone terrifyingly waiting in line for a scary roller coaster ride?
Ask a 90 year old where the time has gone and compare that to a school-aged child wishing they were older and more independent.
Are we spending our time well or wasting it away? Ask a person at the end of a shift, a person at the end of a holiday, and a person at the end of a life. No answer will be the same.
Are we experiencing time or are we just letting time lapse? Either way we distort time, we alter how we perceive it, we quite literally time travel. We don’t just travel through time, and we don’t just live in the present. We worry about the past, and fret about the future. We also let the past hold us back, and let fear of the future restrict us. Or inversely we let the past inspire us, and the possibilities of the future motivate us.
We are constantly time traveling, so much so that we can’t really define the present, for we are so seldom actually living in the moment. For ever single person this moment in time is a completely different experience of time.
We are all time travellers experiencing time in our own unique way.
