The unexplainable gig

Today I was in a little talk circle among a few friends at the PauseFest event. We all made some introductions to each other and then proceeded to discuss what we did for a living. Then something weird happened. None of us had simple answers.

It turns out all of us are ‘projecteers‘. We do a number of small projects and tasks for a variety of customers. We create, think, write, speak, consult, write code and build strategy for people and companies who need it. The cool thing is that none of us could explain it because: all of us have so much variety in what we do. Of course, those who need to know get it. While this is a small audience, it’s also the only audience that matters.

It got me thinking about how much of an advantage it is that we can’t explain our ‘jobs’. You see, the more difficult it is to explain what you do to a person, the more difficult it will be to explain it to a Robot or an Artificial Intelligence that might replace us. The biggest advantage any of us can have in the future will become to have a gig, career, or job which is difficult to explain.

So here’s the next question it presents: How do we increase the complexity of what we do to make ourselves unexplainable? My answer is simple – make sure what you do involves the most complex thing the universe has ever created – humans. The more interactions with people and projects our gigs involve, the more complex it becomes. Breadth of interaction is the insurance policy of the future.

And if your gig is streamlined and simple, it might just be time to start adding some complexity and variety.