I've taken a different emerging route using fiction. Not as a genre, but as a thinking tool to help me see what's possible & reorient myself emotionally to what I care about.
I build the future using fiction as the method.
I got laid off 8 months ago. I spent 7 months applying to jobs but after 200 rejections, I got ansty. I realized I hadn't written for myself in months, so I decided to write a short story in 15 min. I wrote about me 10 years from now.
And that story laid the foundation of where I am today. I use it as a compass and I've been building my future since.
The story has been useful whenever I'm in the fog and don't know where to go. I can look at the story and be transported to that future in building towards not just mentally but also emotionally.
I've been living the story since Jan 2026. And one of the goals was talking more about fiction I'm this way.
I work a day job as an engineer and write fiction at night so I've always wondered about the bridge between the two. The story I wrote showed me the connection between the two, and I want to share it with others.
It's fascinating to see how "more prestigious" roles in tech - engineering, product design, etc. - are actually getting more heavily impacted by AI tools compared with "less prestigious" jobs like marketing, where culture, taste and emotion play a foundational part of doing the job well!
Also, I love that soft skills are going to have a bigger impact on our success! EQ, communication, resilience, and initiative will stand out so much more, which makes me excited. Imagine if we all prioritised being a good co-worker meaning success vs competing against each other on output.
Love this it's what my day job centres on - I'm not anti AI Im pro human using EQ and good ole fashioned skills that my gen grew up with before tech even became a thing
I’ve been steadily doing some of these things for a year now - since I was made redundant - but I’m realising that working with my leadership and people skills burns me out a lot faster than knowledge work. I need to find the introvert’s balance when it comes to future proofing, I think!
It's all data, though :) I work in fundraising and partnerships for a sector I'm not super passionate about - I think it's the right skills, perhaps the wrong fit. I also work a day a week at a consignment store which is super social, and it honestly energises me! So I'm learning what works and what doesn't as I go - but I feel like I need to hurry up, as a nearly-40-year-old entering the imminent AI Globe of Death, haha
What’s your feeling on AI generally? I use it as it’s convenient but it genuinely kind of hurts my soul thinking about trying to invest more time and energy there beyond basic usage. I definitely consider myself a generalist with human strengths that will continue to be valuable (and are strengthened by not outsourcing thinking to AI) but I do worry about falling behind in some sense if I resist it being a part of my daily work. Maybe it just hurts so bad now because I haven’t escaped corporate, and on my own could be a force multiplier. But when I think about a vision for a happy career, AI just isn’t a part of it.
I feel you. I personally are more pro-AI than anti-AI, because it has allowed me to 10x my capacity and capability, which is massive as a one woman show. But I have complicated feelings around its usage particularly for creative work.
What kind of tasks have you feeling like it has increased your capacity that much? I’ve found that in terms of learning the tools and techniques, providing the right context, checking for accuracy and quality, etc. there are very few things where it feels like I’m actually getting time back.
LOVE this. I've always said the one thing AI can't take from you is your personal brand. I, too, am leaning HARD into personal stories and experiments over the next year.
Happy to chat about community building and facilitation skills! I'm really diving into those two (I've been doing both for my whole career, but want to go from great to excellent/top notch) and find the resources online are sparse. Best resources I've found are peers who bounce ideas off of each other (ironically). Would love to hear about what you are finding.
Thanks for this post, really enjoyed reading and listening!
"Optimising for humanness"- absolutely. I train school teachers, and what I'm seeing in classrooms is the downstream version of exactly this. Students are on laptops all day responding to multiple choice prompts instead of discussing literature together, listening to each other, building knowledge through conversation. The speaking and listening skills that used to be foundational are quietly disappearing. The teachers know it. Their intuition tells them students learn best from each other. I've been getting the best feedback of my career by leaning into that truth and helping teachers rebuild classroom communities around student connection. The skills you're future-proofing for are the ones we're forgetting to teach. That feels urgent.
The honest framing matters here. Most career advice is written as if the future is knowable if you just pick the right course, and future-proofing as a posture rather than a checklist is the more useful starting point.
The bit I'd extend is the structural piece. Individual adaptability is necessary but not sufficient when the underlying labour market is shifting. If AI compresses the output of five people into one, the company doesn't suddenly need five times the output, it needs fewer people. The worker who masters the tool can still find themselves on the wrong side of a headcount decision.
The skills that genuinely survive automation, judgment, vision, the ability to navigate ambiguous human contexts, aren't picked up in a weekend course. They compound over years and can't be retrofitted at speed when the redundancy notice lands.
So future-proofing as mindset, yes. Future-proofing as protection against an aggregate decline in demand for certain kinds of labour, no. There is no upskilling pathway out of a market-level problem.
The "76.6% of my waking hours" line is real, no? I think a lot of us are running that calculation in the background whether we want to or not.
What strikes me reading this is how much of future-proofing is really about not needing to predict the future at all. The diversification piece, the craft piece, the failing-more piece, kinda all point to the same thing: building enough of a base that the prediction stops mattering. Which is FIRE-adjacent in a way I hadn't quite seen until now. Financial runway and skill runway are doing similar emotional work I think.
The cafe friends will probably be fine. Most of us probably will be. But the version of "fine" we're each negotiating with is wildly different, and that's the part nobody in those Slack threads is actually saying out loud.
I've taken a different emerging route using fiction. Not as a genre, but as a thinking tool to help me see what's possible & reorient myself emotionally to what I care about.
I build the future using fiction as the method.
I got laid off 8 months ago. I spent 7 months applying to jobs but after 200 rejections, I got ansty. I realized I hadn't written for myself in months, so I decided to write a short story in 15 min. I wrote about me 10 years from now.
And that story laid the foundation of where I am today. I use it as a compass and I've been building my future since.
This is brilliant!
Intriguing! Tell us more, where are you now?
In my story? Definitely start of Act 2 I'd say 😅
The story has been useful whenever I'm in the fog and don't know where to go. I can look at the story and be transported to that future in building towards not just mentally but also emotionally.
I've been living the story since Jan 2026. And one of the goals was talking more about fiction I'm this way.
I work a day job as an engineer and write fiction at night so I've always wondered about the bridge between the two. The story I wrote showed me the connection between the two, and I want to share it with others.
Using fiction as a way to build my future.
I call it fictioneering.
It's fascinating to see how "more prestigious" roles in tech - engineering, product design, etc. - are actually getting more heavily impacted by AI tools compared with "less prestigious" jobs like marketing, where culture, taste and emotion play a foundational part of doing the job well!
Also, I love that soft skills are going to have a bigger impact on our success! EQ, communication, resilience, and initiative will stand out so much more, which makes me excited. Imagine if we all prioritised being a good co-worker meaning success vs competing against each other on output.
Love this it's what my day job centres on - I'm not anti AI Im pro human using EQ and good ole fashioned skills that my gen grew up with before tech even became a thing
Wouldn't that be fantastic !
Imagine!!!
I’ve been steadily doing some of these things for a year now - since I was made redundant - but I’m realising that working with my leadership and people skills burns me out a lot faster than knowledge work. I need to find the introvert’s balance when it comes to future proofing, I think!
That's a very good point!
It's all data, though :) I work in fundraising and partnerships for a sector I'm not super passionate about - I think it's the right skills, perhaps the wrong fit. I also work a day a week at a consignment store which is super social, and it honestly energises me! So I'm learning what works and what doesn't as I go - but I feel like I need to hurry up, as a nearly-40-year-old entering the imminent AI Globe of Death, haha
Love this... 'I’m optimising for humanness, not speed. ' how sensible.
I think so!
What’s your feeling on AI generally? I use it as it’s convenient but it genuinely kind of hurts my soul thinking about trying to invest more time and energy there beyond basic usage. I definitely consider myself a generalist with human strengths that will continue to be valuable (and are strengthened by not outsourcing thinking to AI) but I do worry about falling behind in some sense if I resist it being a part of my daily work. Maybe it just hurts so bad now because I haven’t escaped corporate, and on my own could be a force multiplier. But when I think about a vision for a happy career, AI just isn’t a part of it.
That's a healthy approach, Alex. Embrace your gut feel. Protect what you love doing and give some of the other stuff to AI.
I feel you. I personally are more pro-AI than anti-AI, because it has allowed me to 10x my capacity and capability, which is massive as a one woman show. But I have complicated feelings around its usage particularly for creative work.
What kind of tasks have you feeling like it has increased your capacity that much? I’ve found that in terms of learning the tools and techniques, providing the right context, checking for accuracy and quality, etc. there are very few things where it feels like I’m actually getting time back.
LOVE this. I've always said the one thing AI can't take from you is your personal brand. I, too, am leaning HARD into personal stories and experiments over the next year.
Happy to chat about community building and facilitation skills! I'm really diving into those two (I've been doing both for my whole career, but want to go from great to excellent/top notch) and find the resources online are sparse. Best resources I've found are peers who bounce ideas off of each other (ironically). Would love to hear about what you are finding.
Thanks for this post, really enjoyed reading and listening!
"Optimising for humanness"- absolutely. I train school teachers, and what I'm seeing in classrooms is the downstream version of exactly this. Students are on laptops all day responding to multiple choice prompts instead of discussing literature together, listening to each other, building knowledge through conversation. The speaking and listening skills that used to be foundational are quietly disappearing. The teachers know it. Their intuition tells them students learn best from each other. I've been getting the best feedback of my career by leaning into that truth and helping teachers rebuild classroom communities around student connection. The skills you're future-proofing for are the ones we're forgetting to teach. That feels urgent.
Such a fascinating example, thank you for sharing
“Gary from finance has a thing for Linda in sales.” Genuinely laughed out loud. Another great piece. Thank you 🙏
Hahahahaha thanks ☺️
This was the most important part of the conversation.
The honest framing matters here. Most career advice is written as if the future is knowable if you just pick the right course, and future-proofing as a posture rather than a checklist is the more useful starting point.
The bit I'd extend is the structural piece. Individual adaptability is necessary but not sufficient when the underlying labour market is shifting. If AI compresses the output of five people into one, the company doesn't suddenly need five times the output, it needs fewer people. The worker who masters the tool can still find themselves on the wrong side of a headcount decision.
The skills that genuinely survive automation, judgment, vision, the ability to navigate ambiguous human contexts, aren't picked up in a weekend course. They compound over years and can't be retrofitted at speed when the redundancy notice lands.
So future-proofing as mindset, yes. Future-proofing as protection against an aggregate decline in demand for certain kinds of labour, no. There is no upskilling pathway out of a market-level problem.
The "76.6% of my waking hours" line is real, no? I think a lot of us are running that calculation in the background whether we want to or not.
What strikes me reading this is how much of future-proofing is really about not needing to predict the future at all. The diversification piece, the craft piece, the failing-more piece, kinda all point to the same thing: building enough of a base that the prediction stops mattering. Which is FIRE-adjacent in a way I hadn't quite seen until now. Financial runway and skill runway are doing similar emotional work I think.
The cafe friends will probably be fine. Most of us probably will be. But the version of "fine" we're each negotiating with is wildly different, and that's the part nobody in those Slack threads is actually saying out loud.