Work in 2031: workbots and octopuses.
Research shows that while mindfulness can help us to deal with information overload, it’s curiosity that can really help us to thrive in the future.
If we fast forward 10 years to the year 2031 what will our working lives be like? Will we be competing with machines for work? Will vast swathes of the world need to retrain? How do we survive in a future shared by artificial intelligence (AI)? According to a recent PWC survey 60% of the global workforce are worried that automation is putting jobs at risk and 39% think it’s likely that their current jobs will be obsolete in 5 years. These are pretty major shifts in a relatively short space of time so understanding the uniquely human skills we can hone now to thrive in the future seems imperative for both individuals and organisations.
Upskilling digitally is one route that many employees and organisations are currently following. 40% of workers globally focused on improving their digital skills during the pandemic and 77% are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain. But can we really outskill robots with our digital prowess? Or should we be looking elsewhere in our battle to thrive alongside artificial intelligence? What are the truly unique human skills that we should perfect to prosper in the future?
Curiosity is an area rapidly gaining interest in academic and business circles. A multi-dimensional concept combining both interest and engagement in any chosen stimulus. It encourages us to pay attention to what’s happening in the world around us, make connections and then to take action to explore it further. Whilst the vast potential of AI is yet to be fully realised, it’s generally agreed that curiosity is more challenging for machines, suggesting this will remain a domain where humans rule for the foreseeable future. A multitude of benefits are also emerging in relation to curiosity with links to greater creativity and innovation as well as employee wellbeing, engagement and job satisfaction. Some recent studies, including my own research with UEL, demonstrates that curiosity has a stronger impact on workplace engagement and wellbeing than mindfulness, fascinating given the amount of focus and investment in mindfulness in recent years.
What’s true about both mindfulness and curiosity is that they require intentional focus and are unlikely to happen by accident. We need to train our brains to be curious or to be mindful and this takes time and effort. In many ways it really is very similar to going to the gym. We wouldn’t expect a six pack or to run a marathon without any training. In the same way we can’t expect to have high levels of mindfulness or curiosity without intentionally practicing this. As the old neuroscience adage goes ‘neurons that fire together wire together’, meaning that the more we do something the stronger that circuit becomes in the brain. What we practice really does grow stronger.
So how do we train our brains to be more curious? The field of applied curiosity remains in its infancy, so in many ways we’re intrepid explorers journeying together on this one. Through my research with UEL we tested a 7 day curiosity challenge programme with 3 different components. The first was a ‘3 Curious Things’ exercise whereby participants ‘tuned in’ and noted down what they were curious about each day. The second exercise ‘The Curiosity Stretch’ was designed to move people from interest to exploration whereby they were encouraged to take action towards whatever had sparked their curiosity. And the final exercise ‘Curiosity Bingo’ encouraged people to take a different random action each day, with suggestions like changing a normal routine by starting the end and ending with the start, or approaching a colleague who thinks differently and expressing curiosity about their perspective. Results from this challenge showed that participants experienced an uplift in both wellbeing and creativity metrics but no significant increase in curiosity scores. Sample size, challenge length or the task approach itself would need to be explored in future research.
Like any good experiment though there was one additional finding that really sparked my curiosity. The people who were most likely to participate in the 7 day challenge had higher levels of wellbeing at the outset than those who chose not to participate. This makes sense I guess, as you’re unlikely to be able to commit to something if you’re already experiencing mental overload or distress. The other interesting element here is that whilst there’s evidence that curiosity has a stronger link to workplace thriving than mindfulness, it’s mindfulness that has the most significant impact in terms of addressing burnout or mental ill health. We know that mindfulness has extensive benefits in terms of stress reduction and anxiety, as well as increased attention, focus and productivity, so again in many ways this makes sense. But here’s what really got me thinking. Are we experiencing a collective tension between efficiency and curiosity at both an individual level and in our organisations? When we’re under pressure to ‘ship work’, deliver results and hit deadlines, does dedicating time and space to curiosity feel like an unnecessary indulgence? As leaders do we place more emphasis on execution and delivery in the short term than on applied curiosity and creativity over the long term? We seem to have cracked productivity over the pandemic but is this really the main measure of success? Workplace mindfulness based interventions (MBI’s) may well have contributed to an increased ability to focus but are we also missing programmes which build our individual and collective curiosity?
For me the dilemma is that to thrive in the future it’s skills like curiosity and creativity that are likely to give us a competitive edge, but to survive in the here and now it’s an ability to stay focused, disciplined and productive that’s going to really count. How we can learn both the focus and efficiency skills of a robot and the curiosity and exploration skills of an octopus to truly thrive both today and in the future? How can we be more Octobot?