Standardised, homogenised, bland and average create huge opportunities for people with rare skills.
The industrialised machine over the past 100 years has become so sophisticated at standardising everything for maximum efficiency that it has created not just standardised products and services but standardised people too with their education system, workplace and society.
The working life for vast numbers of the human race on the planet has become a series of dull, shallow and repetitive tasks. We sort data like human routers and servers.
Those who do not follow the rules, those who are brave enough to do something different, to create ‘art’, to do deep and meaningful work are increasingly going to be at an advantage.
Most people have lost the cognitive skills to do deep work. Many simply have had too much time glued to email, social media, and ‘click porn’ on the internet, to be able to spend any meaningful periods of time engaged in deep, thoughtful, creative and substantial work. The art and skill of deeper work have died in a glut of swiping from one piece of content popcorn to another.
Those who can do deep work are becoming a rare commodity and as the standard model human gets replaced by AI that can do their shallow work, then the people who can work deeply will be highly sought after.
The woman who can work deeply will become queen, the man who can work deeply will become king. In the land of the blind shallow knowledge worker, the one-eyed deep worker will be the one who matters.
Philip Dodson 