Required for the future: A Mindshift, not just a Skill shift

We call our children’s generation, digital natives. We have observed that they have taken to digital devices, namely the mobile phone, almost intuitively. Have you paused to think why?

We, the parents have seen the way the telephone instrument has changed over the years. And the mobile phone itself has evolved so much, from the expensive instruments and call charges to the current mobile phones which work as mini-computers. Subconsciously we carry the bias with us. We are often looking to the future through the filter of the past; hence we are wired to react in that way. Today’s children carry no such past, no such baggage. For them, life must have been always like this – they operate from a different paradigm, and their reactions match that mindset.

This gets reflected in the way children start working towards their future. In grades 4-8 all students are supposed to write an essay on “their ambition” in life. The signs of dissent can be seen from here. Many of us have grown up understanding that there are 3 basic career paths to success – a doctor, an engineer, or even a civil servant (i.e., the IAS). Since then, we have seen the emergence of many career options like music, art, and writing, among many others. Yet, we are amazed at the diversity of options that children have in front of them today. One can sense that the skills of the 3Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) are not enough. This gap has been identified.

As parents, unless we create a shift in the way we are looking at the world, we will be seen as dinosaurs. And if we don’t arm our children to look at the future without the filter of “their” past, they may find it difficult to navigate through their future.

So, while teaching them skills of the future like critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, and communication, there is a need to start seeding the young minds with the knowledge and awareness of the world around us now and in the future. Hence, triggering a “mindshift” while taking care of “skillshift”.

The job market is constantly evolving, with new jobs emerging every year. In the olden times, there were jobs that are extinct today and, in the future, we may have jobs we cannot even fathom. For example, in the olden times, waking people up in the morning by knocking a stick against their windows was a viable career option! This was before the invention of the alarm clock. Similarly, up until a few decades ago, the most technologically advanced job you could pick would be to repair TVs and Radios, but today we possess far more advanced technologies in the palm of our hands, i.e., mobile phones. The current job market demands tech-savvy professionals, with security programming professionals being in high demand. However, with the trend of automation, machine learning and computer vision scientists along with cloud computing professionals are also expected to rise. The job market is rapidly changing and we must change in order to keep up with it.

What and how: Speak to us at NimbleQ and wait for a follow-up blog. But that’s a story for another day.