If indeed “life begins at forty”, how do we describe events of the preceding period?

I like working with people of all age groups: young and old. Each group has unique qualities and shortcomings. Accepting that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, I am compelled to turn my attention to the supposedly teachable, yet ignorant younglings unwilling to learn those new tricks.

Life can be cruel sometimes: to older people, it has given them the benefit of hindsight. But such wisdom is limited by their physical strength preventing them from correcting lifelong mistakes made; to youngsters it has given them good, strong and healthy bodies, but also the illusion of a sense of invincibility and know-it-all. The illusion remains for many a youth that living without a plan is more rewarding.

Such contradiction is there by design and is meant to ensure there is continuous dialogue and dependence among the different age groups. We’d be foolish to ignore our diverse inherent strengths and benefits of collaboration.

This article is my contribution to helping the youth improve their investment in their future. By Nimroth Gwetsa, 20 August 2015.

Advantages of Youthfulness

Youngsters need to “strike while the iron is hot”. Their age enables them to do much earlier for later benefit. Youngsters should not be deceived into “taking it a little easy” when presented with opportunities.

Life is precious and can be likened to an investment bank, where:

• Every hour of life spent is the amount of currency given to us.
  • “Time is (indeed) money”. Fortunately, we all earn the same amount in the same currency and simultaneously. No one has more hours in a day than another person does.
• Events in life are opportunities or challenges requiring our responses.
• Actions taken in reaction to those events could be our investment in or expenses against our lives.
• Different age-related stages of our lives represent a period to present and reflect on performance results achieved up to the occurrence of that stage.
• Our legacy is defined by the collective results achieved throughout our lives.
• Ultimately, everyone reaching adulthood would be forced by life’s circumstances to account for the time given.

Every effort should be made to systematically develop our intellectual maturity and contribution just as our bodies physically and orderly develop through life stages. Exceptions put aside, I am concerned about issues affecting ordinary people – the rest of us, who must sweat it out before anything good happens.

Leverage Insights of the Elderly

Without fear of contradiction, I would say that all adults, with the benefit of hindsight, would change some aspects of their past if given a chance to live their lives again. Furthermore, I would state that anyone claiming to have nothing to change despite being given another chance in life, has learnt nothing.

Prolonged life coupled with hindsight results in more valuable lessons learned. Youngsters could therefore greatly benefit from such wisdom. What better ways for the youth to live purposefully by firming up their plans with insights and understanding gained from interactions with the elderly!

The elderly’s ineptitude at using technology should not be the reason for the youth’s reluctance to work with and learn from them. Technology simply accelerates traditional methods of completing activities and does not change the essence of underlying issues.

I have interacted with many youngsters throughout my professional life and do so even more currently. Some, coming from good backgrounds and with good values, are well-grounded. Others, well, are clueless about life and have resorted “to go with the flow”. The latter group, unfortunately, is left to wonder why the former gets lucrative opportunities in the workplace and have blossoming careers, yet they seem to be failing.

To those feeling left out, or employers of such people not knowing what to do, not all is lost.

Let us now consider some important issues to help us improve our performance and career prospects.

Importance of Technical Skills

If you want a long lasting successful career and rewards founded on good strongholds, do not look further than investing in getting deep rooted technical skills. Do not give in to consumerism pressure of buying luxury materials at a young age and disregarding the importance of building your background knowledge. Materialism is a trap that could lead to sudden impoverishment and a career bubble.

I know that many youngsters want to rise rapidly to management roles. Their desire for the rapid rise is motivated by higher pay and false perception that managerial role is easier than technical, as subordinates do most of the work.

Such managers often fail. The youth should not aspire to be that kind of manager knowing nothing about what they are managing and relying on knowledgeable subordinates advising them every step of the way. Not only would such people be insecure in their positions, their management effectiveness would also be undermined.

Youth should rather invest in developing tangible skills and gaining solid experience in applying those skills. Only then would they find it suitable to increase their management skills and understanding to increase their capacity. Those managerial skills would enable them to coach subordinates performing those detailed technical activities.

The value of this advice would become more apparent later in life when corporate career starts becoming tiring to continue pursuing. Then, the longing for tangible technical skills would be apparent. Wisdom does indeed come with age.

Lacking skills stifles creativity and increases dependence on others to materialise ideas. (Read “You Snooze You Lose” article found here to understand more about risks associated with dependence on others to material ideas).

Indeed, youngsters might not know what they would miss until it is over. As a more insightful person now, and having been “lucky” to still possess core technical skills despite many years spent successfully in leadership and managerial roles, this advice has never been more important (than now). Youngsters should consider my advice and develop those core skills. We live in the era of customer-centricity. Unless youngsters can meet the needs of customers and solve their problems, their roles would be irrelevant.

Youngsters should therefore not wait until they are older to discover the importance of this advice. Since no one knows what the future beholds and how one would deal with life after forty, one should consider it one’s insurance policy against future career disaster by acquiring and maintaining relevant tangible technical skills.

Consider the following benefits of having technical skills:

• You could become the expert and the authority in your technical field. And that could increase demand for your expertise especially if you keep them relevant in line with new developments.
• You could run your own business offering your specialised skills, thereby increasing opportunities to earn more by employing others to increase the capacity of your offerings.
• If all else fails, you would have a fallback plan (something to rely on) in applying your skills to start from the beginning.
• You could write books or be a contributor of knowledge earning extra income.

The list of benefits is endless. If you could manage to live long enough, you would appreciate the abundance of choices available later in life for possessing core technical skills.

Importance of Prioritisation and Patience

While keeping up with technological developments and their impact on your skills, learn to prioritise. Prioritisation allows you to recognise what is important and critical for your success. Not everything is important and neither is everything urgent and in need of your attention.

Important things are usually those good things difficult to achieve and require more effort to be accomplished. “Easy come, easy go”. All things equal, life is a marathon. You need to be patient. Do not peak too early, lest you lose or do not finish the race.

Our impediments to success are influenced by our natural inclination to want the easy way in life. No wonder obesity and other ills afflict many of us today, not because we do not know what needs to be done, but because we naturally aggravate towards what comes easier to us. Our impatience and sometimes laziness to endure the boring slog work needed to achieve sustainable success are also to blame.

Importance of Discernment

As we live in an imperfect world, we would face some demons in our lifetime. Notable ones we need to watch against include:

• The pride trap. This trap is the desire to want to prove you are not a failure (but a success) and therefore want to prove it to doubters and naysayers.
  • Do not let your life be dictated by your doubters. Be driven by your innermost desire to be the best you can be despite the performance of others. To achieve this outcome, your benchmark for performance improvement should be your current or previous performance. Striving for excellence would fill you with joy and contentment. In that state, you would not be easily swayed by nonentities.
• The vanity trap. This trap is the desire to want to be acknowledged and/ or praised. Its roots could be based on feelings of insecurity.
  • Even the best are criticised. No one is immune to criticism. Be aware you would be unable to please everyone. The best approach would be to focus on yourself and your needs, and not be too concerned about opinions others have of you.
• The herd mentality trap. This trap is the desire to also do or follow what others are doing.
  • You won’t distinguish yourself if you follow the herd. In fact, you’ll be subjugating yourself to bullies and possibly imbeciles in that herd. Worst still, you risk devaluing your image by associating with the wrong crowd. Be yourself and establish your mark.
• The denial trap. This trap is the act of ignoring or hiding weaknesses instead of developing them to improve competency.
  • The denialist might aggressively attack those daring to question their performance. They might even see themselves as victims, wrongly thinking their aggression in rejecting criticism would result in their critics changing their minds. Bullying can only harden hearts. The incompetence may soon resurface. Better for denialists to learn to humble themselves, know their strengths and weaknesses and improve them.
• The factionalism trap. This trap manifests when it appears all has been lost, and the factionalist feels obliged to rely on brute force to seek blind loyalty and patronage from others to ensure continued success.
  • Not everyone can develop a thick skin to fob off Rather earn the respect of friends and foe alike by being principled and integrous.

Reminders

Understand your area of interest. Be patient in developing core skills in that regard. Be focused and determined to see implementation through. Things obtained easily or quickly tend to be unsustainable and cause problems later in life.

Be more discerning in the decisions you make.  Be aware that we need more than knowledge, but understanding also. This understanding goes deeper than mere understanding of words, but a profound understanding of what those words reveal about the nature of the issues concerned.

Limit the extent of procrastination. The opportunity cost of changing course later could be high. Procrastination is truly a devious thief of time. Invest in valuable relationships and maintain them. Enjoy your freedom and try not to skip stages in your progression.

Have faith, knowledge and understanding to avoid experiencing frequent failures through diffidence.

You are already the author of your legacy. Predetermine its outcome.

God bless.