TogetherWith.Coffee

11.2.2024 | The Skills Leaders Will Need in the 2030s

This week, I attended a leadership training, and one part of our discussion centered around the skills that leaders will need in the 20230s. The vast majority of the people in the room were millennials, although there were a few members of Generation X. The discussion was faciliated by two Boomers. By itself, I find this fascinating, because I don't believe the generations talk to one another openly and honestly that often.

Three of the four groups (not mine) brought up the importance of remote work.

I spoke about the lack of a mono-culture.

9.14.2024 & 11.2.2024 | Third Spaces

Since I work from home, my first and second spaces overlap. I moved to a new town at the very beginning of the pandemic (January 2020), and I'm still discovering third spaces to spend time in. As I think about the societal changes that we're currently experiencing (and the changes that are probably coming), it occurs to me that third spaces will become more and more important.

9.3.2024 | Windows 98 SE Setup

Over the weekend, I used an old desktop computer to set up a ProxMox server. I created several virtual machines on the server, unintentionally tracing the Windows set up process. It was interesting to work backward from setting up Windows Server 2022, Windows 10, Windows 7, and Windows 98.

One part of the Windows set up process that particular stuck with me was where it asks if you want to enter your company's name. I'm not sure why this was asked -- Windows 98 was current before Active Directory exsted.

8.27.2024 | Working Like its 2019 or 2020 in 2029

As I write this, I'm sitting in a cafe; it's 2:32 p.m. on a Tuesday, and I took the day off of work. Around me, there are many people (mostly women) with open laptops, and presumably many of them are working remotely.

It's a large cafe, and there's plenty of room for everyone. It doesn't appear that anyone is cramped or uncomfortable. It makes me wonder, is this what work will look like in 2029? Will white collar professionals work like this every day? Or, will they communite to a company campus / office, similar to the way they did in 2019.

* I've stolen the title from the Daily Tech News Show from August 15, 2024.

8.26.2024 | Approaching my 40th Birthday

I aspire to be a lifelong learner.

As I approach my 40th birthday, I want to challenge myself to remain curious; to grow my knowledge and capabilities. I want to be open to new experiences, and I want to find ways to integrate new things into my everyday life.

One of my biggest fears is that I will try to solve every problem with the same tried and true strategies that have always worked. Until I wake up one day, and those strategies no longer work. If I let this happen, it may be too late to reverse course.

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” – Abraham Maslow.

There is a personal and a professional dimension to this aspiration, and I'd like to remain as capable and relevant in each of these dimensions as possible.

On a personal level, I don’t want to find myself standing in a grocery store unable to pay for my groceries because I’m using an outdated and slower payment method. I’d also prefer not to inconvenience everyone else at the store because they’re waiting for me to finish something simple in an inefficient manner.

At some point, I think that most of us in the United States have been behind someone in a checkout line who is writing a check. Or, a person awkwardly using a card that they can’t slide or scan. In the future, I’m not sure what the equivalent to this will be, but I hope I never find out.

On a professional level, I don’t want to be the old man in the office who can’t accomplish basic tasks because he doesn’t understand how to utilize the available tools. Although I’ve done very well in my career helping these exact sorts of people, I want to remain on this side of the *divide. If I cross that *divide, I may not find someone willing to help me. And, even if I do, it may (likely) be incredibly difficult to suddenly find myself incompetent.

Of course, purchasing items at a grocery store or working with the technology at work are only two specific examples of something that's much more encompassing. I aspire to not fall behind; to not become stuck in the past; to not become inflexible. I want to adapt, grow, and improve.

I’m afraid that I’m already failing at this aspiration. There’s a lot of things that I’ve already fallen behind on. There are a few things that come to mind that have been invented, matured, and may already be outdated that I don’t really understand: Discord. Slack. **GitHub. Google Pay.

Not all changes are positive, and not all new ways of doing things are superior to the previous ways. But, it almost doesn’t matter. If society or your employer widely adopts a new approach, a person can either adopt it themselves, or they can resist. As time goes on, the number of resistors and the resistors’ power inevitably decreases. The resistors become comedic, annoying, and ultimately, scorned and ignored.

Holding too tightly to the way things used to be is self-defeating. When the world changes, "it" changes. “It” doesn’t care about how hard it is for a person to catch up. “It” doesn’t care about the inconveniences and struggles a person may have. “It” doesn’t even care if it leaves a person behind. The world will go on, with or without any one, and it won’t miss a single moment of sleep.

A person doesn't fall behind or become inflexible at a single point in time. Everything is in flux all the time. New things are discovered, created, and adopted constantly. Becoming inflexible is a decision that's made over-and-over again, each time it's just a little easier to cling to the past. I’m counting upon my aspiration to be a lifelong learner backed up with an honest effort to try (and learn) new things to protect me from obsolesce.

* I’m not sure that divide is the correct word here. It implies two sides more strongly than I really mean.

** This website is hosted on GitHub, and I’ve been learning about it, both through GitHub Desktop and through Git via the Windows command line. I also utilized Ruby and Jekyll to generate a static site that was published on GitHub. This was abandoned because I was unable with the themes I experimented with, and wanted to code it from scratch.

Addendum:

Another, related thought I had while writing this post: does ageism exist because people are inflexible and unable to adapt to the changing world around them, or are people inflexible and unable to adapt to the changing world around them causing people discriminate against them? Is ageism the cause or the consequence?