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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Future Skills summary
Bernard Marr
The 20 Skills and Competencies Everyone Needs to Succeed in a Digital World
18 mins
Brief summary
Future Skills by Bernard Marr is a comprehensive guide to the skills needed in the ever-evolving world of work. It explores topics like adaptability, creativity, and emotional intelligence, offering practical advice to thrive in the future job market.
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Future Skills
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The new literacy
If 2030 seems far away, consider this: it’s estimated that by the year 2025, up to 85 million jobs could be replaced by machines, while 97 million new roles suited to human-AI collaboration will emerge. This transformation will impact all industries.
In order to ensure that you can thrive in this digital future, learning digital literacy – meaning comfort and capability with technologies – is essential.
To get started, individuals should assess their current digital skills and tap into resources to help them improve. Governments and employers should also begin to invest in digital literacy training. This is less about having all employees becoming tech experts, and more about gaining awareness of how technologies like AI are transforming work.
Data will power the Fourth Industrial Revolution, so organizations will need data-literate employees to extract value from it. That means being able to access, work with, analyze, and communicate insights from data.
To expand your own digital literacy, start by approaching new tech tools with curiosity. Keep reading, watching informational videos, taking online courses – whatever learning methods suit you best. Prioritize developing your soft skills, too. By embracing change with optimism and dedicating yourself to continual growth, you’ll be ready to flourish alongside these intelligent machines.
Terminology like dataset – as well as quantitative, qualitative, cross-sectional, and longitudinal data – is useful to know. It’s also useful to know how to identify good data – when it’s accurate, consistent, current, and complete. Data analysis uncovers patterns and trends that can inform decisions, so ask human-oriented questions to identify business challenges that data can solve. But don't gather data aimlessly – ensure it serves a purpose. This is especially important because ethics around privacy and security will be increasingly vital.
Many of today’s employees lack confidence in data skills. But online self-study courses in statistics, visualization, and industry-specific data literacy can help. With the right knowledge, mindset, and tools, digital and data literacy can unlock enormous potential. And as data proliferates, these skills will become even more essential for career success.
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What is Future Skills about?
Future Skills (2022) outlines 20 core skills that will be essential for success in an increasingly digital world. From digital literacy to social media awareness, these competencies can benefit anyone regardless of career focus or life goals.
Who should read Future Skills?
- Those worried about the AI revolution and its impact on the future of work
- Career optimizers seeking practical advice for the next digital age
- Anyone looking for a competitive edge in an increasingly automated world
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