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The Future Of Work (& The New High-Income Skill Stack)

Dan Koe33:11Added Aug 31, 2026

The future of work looks bright for creators.Research, write, and schedule content with your AI strategist (gives you daily ideas to run with): https://eden....

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. Why are you watching this? lol

  2. 00:00I want to ask you a question that may sound weird at first. And that question is, why are you watching this? Why are
  3. 00:07you watching this video specifically? Because you have access to chat GPT. You have access to Claude. You have access
  4. 00:13to all of these AI tools that are supposed to get rid of information, make creators obsolete, make writers
  5. 00:19obsolete, make everyone obsolete. But you are still watching this. And of
  6. 00:25course, you could ask AI for information on the topic that we're going to talk
  7. 00:30about, or you could just paste the YouTube link into AI and ask it for a
  8. 00:35quick summary, and it would do a pretty decent job and be able to give you the information. But I really want you to
  9. 00:40think about that, right, before you go all doomer on me and how AI is going to replace everyone because that question
  10. 00:47alone sets the foundation of this video. It shines a light on what the future of
  11. 00:52creative work could look like. That's exactly what we're going to break down very extensively. And the problem is
  12. 00:59that AI is coming for everyone's jobs, right? At least that's what people say. And it looks like it's going to actually
  13. 01:06become true. And the huge problem with that is that AI isn't only coming for
  14. 01:11the jobs, it's coming for the meaning. It's coming for the purpose in life. If you've been on social media, if you've
  15. 01:16been living in modern society, you understand that we have this mass scarcity of meaning and purpose. People
  16. 01:23just don't know what to do with their lives. And if people's work is a source of that purpose, especially creative
  17. 01:30work, then what happens when it's gone? What happens when work doesn't equal purpose? When work doesn't equal
  18. 01:36identity? when work doesn't equal how you mattered and how you acquired status in society which is a generator of
  19. 01:44meaning whether we like to virtue signal about not playing status games or not you play one every day most people think
  20. 01:50we are in a crisis but personally I think this is one of the greatest opportunities ever because when AI can
  21. 01:57do everything well then everything becomes a commodity it's not worth paying for so the second question that
  22. 02:06forms the foundation of of this video is how do you become a scarce resource that
  23. 02:11people want to pay for especially as a creative and that comes from your taste, your perspective, your story, every
  24. 02:18other skill that we're going to break down in this video step by step. This is going to be a mix of practical stuff and
  25. 02:26theories just to show where we're at in society. So, buckle in because we have a
  26. 02:31lot to talk about. To start, I'm just going to rapidfire context. I'm going to show you how we got into this situation

  27. Meaning is becoming a scarce good

  28. 02:36of not having any meaning in our lives, what that means when jobs go away, and what the opportunities actually are. So,
  29. 02:43let's get into this. Hold tight. Try to pay attention. Here's the history of meaning in four acts. Act one, meaning
  30. 02:50came from up there. So, for most of human history, meaning was given to you by gods, kings, elders, and scriptures.
  31. 02:57You didn't have to find it because it was assigned to you. This is in very early foraging societies. In act two or
  32. 03:05during the industrial revolution, meaning was found from out there. So, science replaced religion as the
  33. 03:11dominant framework. Meaning shifted to productivity and progress. You earned meaning through your work and through
  34. 03:17contribution to the machine. Then in act three, where we are now, meaning was
  35. 03:22deconstructed into nothing. Meaning is found nowhere. This is postmodernism. We deconstruct everything because no single
  36. 03:29perspective is privileged. Nothing is objectively true. Meaning isn't given or earned. It's just gone. And that leads
  37. 03:36to act four where meaning will be found in here. Meaning has to be generated from within by you for you. So why does
  38. 03:44this matter for creatives or creators or people who don't want to give up their
  39. 03:50work? Because there's two types of work. There's the mundane busy work, the repetitive work, the mechanical work,
  40. 03:55the assembly line style industrial work. I don't care if that gets rid of. I'm I I mean that in the kindest way possible.
  41. 04:02I know that people's livelihoods are at stake, but we're going to talk about how things will look with that, too. But then there's creative work, right? the
  42. 04:08ability to see reality from your own lens, pull it into your mind, synthesize things together, create something, share
  43. 04:15it with another person, and then get feedback for your contribution in the form of money or currency or just
  44. 04:22another form of value. That's where humans find meaning. And so when meaning went from being handed to us to being
  45. 04:29earned through labor and then being found nowhere, it becomes our responsibility to create meaning.
  46. 04:37Creatives are the meaning architects of society. So if jobs form the foundation of meaning right now to an extent, how
  47. 04:44do those go away and what happens? So the traditional economic loop is that you work a job, you get a wage, you
  48. 04:51spend, the company profits and then that creates more jobs or the ability to pay. This is just a cycle, right? And AI
  49. 04:58breaks this loop because if AI does the jobs, wages collapse. And if wages collapse, spending collapses. And if
  50. 05:05spending collapses, the entire economic system falls apart. And this brings up the post- labor economics framework that
  51. 05:11David Shapiro created. He actually has a book called Labor Zero coming out about it soon. I would highly recommend going
  52. 05:17and watching his YouTube video playlist on post labor e on post labor economics because it's very enlightening. And
  53. 05:24while it's just a theory and it may not happen, I think theories are cool. And another thing about creatives is that
  54. 05:30the more attention you attract to a theory that leads society in a new direction and the more supporters you
  55. 05:36get for that thing that tends to create culture and society. The more attention that is invested into a creative idea is
  56. 05:43more likely to come true than not. Things just don't happen. Humans build what they want to see in the world and
  57. 05:49that could very much be a thing. So the very very brief version of post-labor economics is that household income comes
  58. 05:56from three sources. There's wages, so you get paid for your labor. This is what AI threatens. Then there's
  59. 06:02transfers like government payments, UBI, etc. But the problem with this becoming
  60. 06:07the dominant source, just everyone getting paid by the government, is that it becomes politically unstable and it
  61. 06:13distorts markets. And frankly, if we're here for meaning, I personally will not
  62. 06:19find a lot of meaning just sitting on the couch all day collecting money. I need to grow. I need to challenge myself. I have maybe 60 more years on
  63. 06:27this planet like I unless we solve immortality too, but I need to do something. And then the third way is
  64. 06:33capital income. So this is owning assets that generate money. And this is where things get interesting because the
  65. 06:39future probably requires broadening capital participation. regular people owning income generating assets, not
  66. 06:45just billionaires. But that's just the thing. I still want to do something. I still want to create. And people will
  67. 06:52still need meaning that is derived from just that. And that's where you and I come in. The people who value this way
  68. 06:59of life. So even though we talk about all jobs disappearing, all jobs are not going to disappear. There are still
  69. 07:05going to be jobs that require humans in the loop. So things like high liability roles because you want a human
  70. 07:10accountable for that thing. Statutory positions that have legal requirements. Then there's the experience economy. So
  71. 07:17bartenders, boutique shops, art galleries, live performances. This is going to see a huge boom coming into the
  72. 07:23future. And then the meaning makers or the meaning economy, which is people who help others navigate the human
  73. 07:28experience. And then there's relationship and trust jobs. So like sales, diplomacy, negotiation, etc. But
  74. 07:34the pattern here is that the jobs that survive are the ones where the human is the product. It's not what they produce,
  75. 07:41it's who they are. And personally, what comes to mind here is a quote from Naval that I read a long time ago. And that
  76. 07:48quote is, "There are almost 7 billion people on this planet someday. I hope there will be almost 7 billion
  77. 07:54companies." And if you've watched any of my oneperson business videos where I go on the more heavy philosophy side rather
  78. 08:00than the practical side, you can see what I'm getting at here is that every person has the chance to become their
  79. 08:06own enterprise. I mean, think of where we're at. I think this makes sense. You have AI, you can learn anything, you can
  80. 08:11build anything, you can do what people have been telling you, you've been able to do. Will everyone become their own
  81. 08:16company? Of course not. Is everyone watching this video? Of course not. Will everyone even register this as important? No. I'm just providing a
  82. 08:23potential opportunity for those who want to take it. And if you've read my book, Purpose and Profit, it's free to read on
  83. 08:28my Substack link in the description. Then you see where I'm getting at here. Because in that book, I go over the
  84. 08:34creative way of life where you identify problems, you solve them, that removes the limits on your potential. It forces
  85. 08:40you to learn, and then from the solution you create, you turn that into something that you can give someone else. And that
  86. 08:46is arguably the most meaningful way to live. So, not only is this a way to gain
  87. 08:51an advantage in the future, it's a very meaningful thing to do. And speaking of meaning, that leads to the second point

  88. The anatomy of meaning

  89. 08:57where we're going to talk about the anatomy of meaning because I want to give you a framework for understanding
  90. 09:02how meaning is generated. That way you can engineer meaning. So, in order to understand how to generate meaning, we
  91. 09:09need to understand what leads to meaninglessness. And there's two killers of meaning here. There's stagnation, so
  92. 09:15no forward movement, no progress. You just feel stuck. And then there's isolation. So no connection to something
  93. 09:20greater. Feeling like you don't matter. And this is why modern life feels so empty. I mean just look at your phone.
  94. 09:26You're not progressing in any way. You're not contributing in any way. You're not connected to other people. You think you are because you're in this
  95. 09:32digital world and there is some form of connection that can come from that. But you're not globally connected to so many
  96. 09:37freaking people. And frankly these companies profit from you being addicted to this thing to this machine. So if
  97. 09:45stagnation and isolation lead to meaninglessness, what leads to meaning?
  98. 09:50And there are two pillars here. Pillar one is progress. So forward movement.
  99. 09:55Because humans need to feel like they're going somewhere, not arriving at a goal and just stopping and giving up like the
  100. 10:01person who built a $100 million company and then stopped and then found that their life lacked meaning. But progress
  101. 10:07is achieved through creative problem solving. It's through struggle, not through suffering, so to say. Through
  102. 10:13struggle. There's a distinction between the two and I would encourage you to remove any negative connotations you
  103. 10:18have with the word struggle. And then pillar two is contribution. So progress and contribution forward movement and a
  104. 10:25connection to something greater than yourself. There's a niche quote for this on happiness. If someone posts it post
  105. 10:30it in the comments because I can't recite it directly but it's something like happiness is the feeling of
  106. 10:35resistance being overcome of progress being made. So this insight isn't anything new. We just need to be
  107. 10:41reminded of it. But when it comes to contribution, humans need to feel like their progress matters to someone more
  108. 10:47than themselves. And this is why solo projects can start to feel hollow after a while because you need an audience, a
  109. 10:53community. You need a cause. And I'm not talking about a million followers like I have. There are plenty of people with
  110. 10:59just tiny followings or even a tiny community in their real life that are able to sustain some form of an income.
  111. 11:06And now when we talk about money, if jobs go away and money starts to transform and money moves away from being a productivity metric, what
  112. 11:13happens? Personally, I think money is going to continue to be a status symbol,
  113. 11:19but it's going to be a tool to express agency. It's going to be a tool for growth, just like it is now. We're just
  114. 11:26removing the shallower layer. We're transcending as to what money was in the first place and what it was meant to be,
  115. 11:32which is your ability to do things you weren't able to do before. And it's kind of a physical representation of your

  116. The 3 generators of meaning

  117. 11:38growth. So if those are the two pillars, progress and contribution for meaning, what are the generators? How do you
  118. 11:44actually generate meaning in your life? The generators are struggle, curiosity, and status. For struggle, that's the
  119. 11:51engine of progress. For curiosity, that's the direction of progress. And for status, that's the proof of
  120. 11:56contribution. Now, for struggle, I'm talking about what you choose to struggle for because that defines what
  121. 12:02your purpose is. It's not struggle that's imposed on you. It's not a goal that's assigned to you. It's what you
  122. 12:08consciously choose. So, it's like the creative who chooses to master their craft, to build an audience, to say
  123. 12:13something true. That struggle generates meaning. Now, curiosity is nonlinear
  124. 12:18attention. It's following threads that don't make sense yet. It's not something that AI can make sense of. AI can't be
  125. 12:25curious. And that's how you solve problems or discover ideas that nobody is even thinking about because nobody
  126. 12:30else is curious about them. Because curiosity works in a weird way in the brain. I talk about this example a lot,
  127. 12:37but it's just so simple yet so powerful. Is that if you were to take two people, me and you, reading the same book, would
  128. 12:43we highlight the same lines inside of that book, would the same things stick out to us? You may even think the book
  129. 12:48is just trash and it may be the best book I've ever read because at my situated point in my life from my
  130. 12:55perspective, from the experience that's culminated over time in my head to create this very unique way of viewing
  131. 13:01the world that we don't think is unique because we live in our heads. That's where curiosity comes from. That's your
  132. 13:07unique edge to an extent. You just need to learn how to channel it because like follow your curiosity. How is that
  133. 13:12practical? What does that lead to? We'll get into it. But now with the third generator, status. Status gets a bad rap. So let's just call status
  134. 13:18recognition. Recognition for your work or your contribution. It's the signal that your struggle mattered to someone.
  135. 13:25It's it's the signal that you're not here alone in this void on earth. So
  136. 13:30what are these three generators? Struggle, curiosity, status. It's a story. It's quite literally the
  137. 13:38foundation of a story. Now why do stories matter, especially going to the future? Because your brain is a story
  138. 13:45engine. That's what we find meaningful. We crave novelty, drama, myth, and
  139. 13:51meaning. And this is especially true when we're not in survival mode, when we're in leisure, and when jobs are
  140. 13:57replaced and we have our base necessities met across the board. This
  141. 14:02becomes even more important. This is what people are going to be looking for and paying for mostly because they're
  142. 14:08not worried about paying the bills for their house. They're kind of just lost. And a big portion of the population that
  143. 14:14doesn't understand what I'm saying in this video is going to end up like that Wall-E character in the hover chair who
  144. 14:20just has like the the soda hat and the screen in front of his face at all times and he's like the 300 lb overweight and
  145. 14:26can't move. The question here is what is the main purpose of machines going into the future and what is the main purpose
  146. 14:32of humans? This is the question that everyone's trying to answer and this leads to a two-part insight. First is
  147. 14:38that people pay for speed and efficiency when they want to escape an experience. So this could be long wait times at the
  148. 14:44DMV, a fast food worker getting your order wrong, or bureaucracy at a company. But on the other hand, people
  149. 14:50pay a premium for experiences that they want to savor. So a five-star restaurant, a live theater, handcrafted
  150. 14:57goods. And I think this quote from Chris Pake illustrates this quite well, which says, "The elegance of the future is not
  151. 15:04in man versus machine, but in their division of labor, silicon sanding the rough edges of necessity so carbon can
  152. 15:10ascend to meaning. We will abolish baristas and canonize chefs. Silence agents and encore actors. AI handles the
  153. 15:18friction and humans handle the narrative. So that leads into the third idea here, which is that the creator

  154. The creator economy = The meaning economy

  155. 15:24economy equals the meaning economy. Because now we need to start making things practical, right? Struggle,
  156. 15:30status, curiosity, story, narrative, all of this stuff. Okay, cool. But what do
  157. 15:36you actually do with that? What does it actually mean for you on a daily basis? What are you actually focused on? The
  158. 15:42first thing here is just understanding the shift in how money is going to flow. So the old way is that you get paid for
  159. 15:47your labor. You get paid for your output. And then the new model is that you get paid by the people who believe
  160. 15:53in what you're doing and who want to see more of that in the world. In other words, you do something that you deeply
  161. 16:00care about and you attract other people to care about that thing, which is two
  162. 16:05distinct types of skills, right? That's business and art. That's doing what you care about with love, but also creating
  163. 16:11it in such a way and persuading other people to see the value in it so that you don't become a starving artist who
  164. 16:17can't sell any of their work. So for the creator economy in specific, when you follow someone, when you follow someone
  165. 16:23meaningful, right? Not just searching for information, not just looking to get a quick tip, not when you know what you
  166. 16:29want to ask for because now you can ask that to chat GPT. What are you're listening to someone's perspective,
  167. 16:35you're buying their perspective, you're supporting their perspective, their opinion, you're supporting their curation, right? whether they use AI or
  168. 16:43not, you follow a specific person because they are pulling the right ideas and making sense of them. So the scarce
  169. 16:50resource here is attention, right? Because there it's scarce. There's only so much attention. There's only so many
  170. 16:56people on this planet and there's only so much attention that can go around. So, if you learn the mechanics of
  171. 17:03capturing and delivering value on attention, like everyone's been saying in the marketing space for the past
  172. 17:08however long, then you can demand a premium on what you do. And so, when it comes to AI flooding the space with a
  173. 17:15bunch of mediocre content, it doesn't matter because there's not enough attention to pay attention to all of
  174. 17:22that. And if it's mediocre, then it's mediocre and people don't want it. And they're going to shift their attention to what matters. So, that's the game
  175. 17:28now. It's not only production but it's distribution. It's not only creation because anyone can create anything. It's
  176. 17:35curation. So attention is the ultimate leverage. And if you want to understand this just look at Elon Musk or Mr.
  177. 17:42Beast, right? Elon Musk has millions upon millions of followers and he attracts capital, talent and resources
  178. 17:49through that thing. His tweets quite literally shift the markets. Then you have Mr. beast who reinvests what he
  179. 17:55gets from the attention back into the production and he is slowly becoming a very powerful individual. But those are
  180. 18:02the extreme examples because personally I don't want to be the next Elon Musk. It seems pretty risky. It seems pretty
  181. 18:08stressful. Maybe I could handle it. I don't know. Right now in my life I don't want to be there. I don't want to be the next Mr. Beast either. I want to talk
  182. 18:14about something different. I have other things that I find more meaningful than that. I don't even watch Mr. Beast. I
  183. 18:20watch what I care about. So you have to understand that this isn't a winner takes all market. Almost nothing is. But
  184. 18:25especially in the creator economy, attention shifts. If you actually think about it, you understand that it's not
  185. 18:31very saturated at all. Anyone can go viral today. And what they do with that
  186. 18:36virality determines whether or not they see some form of success. And then there's, of course, the people who build
  187. 18:41very slowly over time and attract a small audience and charge premium prices and they make more than people with
  188. 18:47millions of followers. Not everyone is selling a $10 ebook. Not everyone is selling a $5,000 coaching program. Not
  189. 18:53everyone is selling this, selling that. There's so many different ways to go about this. And you take Justin Welsh as
  190. 18:58an example. He has a pretty large following, but he's not on YouTube. He's not on other things. He just writes. He's focused on like LinkedIn, his
  191. 19:05newsletter, and Twitter. And his entire focus is working on something meaningful
  192. 19:10for as little time as possible so he can enjoy the most time with his family as he can. And the other thing here that
  193. 19:16removes saturation even more is that some people aren't even going to find meaning through work. They're going to start to find meaning through family,
  194. 19:22through other things that allow them to grow in different ways. Now, if you're anything like me, I want as much growth
  195. 19:28as possible. I don't want to just focus on family because I understand that all domains of life interconnect and kind of
  196. 19:34unlock each other in certain ways once you become developed in those domains. So, I I don't want to just focus on
  197. 19:41vocation or career or family or health, etc. I want to focus on them all. And
  198. 19:46that creates this infinite game where you can just experience this growth and progression and meaning forever. The
  199. 19:52other signal here is that social media creators or just people posting on social media, whether you identify as a
  200. 19:58personal brand or a content creator or not, anyone who posts on social media, let's just call them a creator for ease
  201. 20:04of access, they're starting to become the primary sources of information for something like news or education. people
  202. 20:10trust creators more than they trust centralized institutions and that's a very important thing because it's
  203. 20:16shifting more towards that. So this is a massive opportunity for people who have some kind of genuine expertise or some
  204. 20:23unique way of viewing the world and the ability to articulate and communicate it which are all skills that can be
  205. 20:28learned. Now to hit on the dead internet theory objection one more time where if AI just floods the internet with a bunch
  206. 20:34of content doesn't content become worthless? Yes, it becomes a commodity once you can do everything instantly.
  207. 20:41Everything becomes worthless. So what does that do? It increases the value in
  208. 20:46how much can be paid for something human. And not necessarily just something human. Everyone's going to be
  209. 20:52working in some AI assisted way, but a human perspective, a human point of view, the curation, the taste. You can
  210. 20:59have this. You can have AI spit out 5 billion words that are amazing, super
  211. 21:05beautiful pros, but which ones are you going to select to stick around? And the last thing here is that skills are being
  212. 21:11abstracted up a layer as they always are, how they went from human labor to more animal labor to more machine labor,
  213. 21:17and now they're more to AI labor. So, you don't need to focus on the technical or the manual. You don't need to set up a typewriter anymore. You don't even
  214. 21:24need to know how to write anymore. I'm I personally like to do my writing manually still. I do research with AI,
  215. 21:30but I see no problem with someone using AI to write, right? As long as they're
  216. 21:36in control of the ideas and what's being put out there. Just because someone wrote it with AI doesn't mean that it's
  217. 21:41bad if it accurately represents what they're trying to say down to the word. The thing that does get on my nerves,
  218. 21:48though, is that I see like these AI patterns everywhere, like, oh, it's not this, it's this. especially on reals
  219. 21:54like if you know you know and you can instantly spot it but at the same time is that just because we're noticing
  220. 21:59those patterns more and those were already a thing but now that they are coming more from AI they're more
  221. 22:04apparent are we adopting the language of AI or is AI adopting the language of us so there's a lot of stuff here so now

  222. The last defensible moat is you

  223. 22:11for idea four the last defensible moat is you this is the core insight this is
  224. 22:18the thing that if you come away from this video this is the most important thing not even the skill skills that you
  225. 22:23have to learn that we're going to talk about next. This is it. And we'll try to make this point by understanding the
  226. 22:29swap test. I'm calling this the swap test. And this swap test is for knowing whether or not AI can replace you
  227. 22:35specifically. If you can swap the creator and the creation without it losing value, AI can replace it. If the
  228. 22:42value is tied to who made it, that's your moat. So, some examples is like a generic stock photo. Obviously, that's
  229. 22:48swappable. AI can do it. What about a photograph from a famous photographer? That's not really swappable because the
  230. 22:54value is in her eye, her choices, her reputation, everything else that influences how you perceive the photo or
  231. 23:02image. What about a generic blog post about productivity? Obviously, that's swappable. What about an essay by
  232. 23:08someone whose journey you followed for years? That's not really swappable because you haven't followed a specific
  233. 23:14trajectory or story from AI for years. It doesn't hit the same if that essay is
  234. 23:20just given to you one day randomly by AI. So what can AI not replicate? The
  235. 23:25first thing is perspective because AI can think about your perspective but it cannot think from it. It can analyze
  236. 23:32what it means to be a first generation immigrant building a creative career but it cannot be one. Your perspective is
  237. 23:38shaped by your beliefs, your experiences, your wounds, your wins. AI has none of these because it has no
  238. 23:44stakes. The second thing is your energy signature. And speaking of energy signature, I actually posted an article
  239. 23:50to my Substack about it's a prompt for how to find your intellectual signature. And what I mean by intellectual
  240. 23:56signature is just this. It's what ideas are the most important to you that you can pull together, connect, synthesize
  241. 24:02to create this unique style of content. If you want to do the content creator route or kind of thought leadership,
  242. 24:09even though I hate that word, you like deep ideas and you find meaning in those and you want to share them. That's who that's for. So check that out if you
  243. 24:15want. Link in description. But the energy signature is the human ability to select what to focus on and why it
  244. 24:21matters to you. So two people can cover the same topic or write about the same topic and it will feel completely
  245. 24:27different when you read it. AI can mimic the style but it cannot mimic care. Now
  246. 24:33the third thing is sensemaking because AI can process information but it cannot decide what information means. It cannot
  247. 24:40frame. It cannot prioritize. It cannot say this matters and this doesn't. Sensemaking is inherently human because
  248. 24:46it requires stakes. AI has no stakes. AI does not die. And that's just it. That's
  249. 24:52number four, which is trajectory. Because you have a life, you have a past, you have a present, you have a
  250. 24:57future, you have a story arc. AI doesn't have a trajectory. It doesn't have any mortality. It doesn't have any temporal
  251. 25:03compression. So if we solve immortality one day, it's still not the same. If we live forever, this moment still passes
  252. 25:11right now. This thing that we're living in right now, what I just said is gone.
  253. 25:18I can't redo it. I can't reimulate it. I can't try over again. People think immortality will make life meaningless,
  254. 25:24but I don't think it will for that reason. So when you create, you're
  255. 25:29creating from right now and then it's gone. And the fifth thing is just evolving taste. And the best way I can
  256. 25:36put this is if I tell AI to write like me and I read it, I don't want to write
  257. 25:41about that anymore. My taste instantly changed and I'm going to write something different. If AI did that, it would just
  258. 25:46get stuck in this infinite loop and then it'd explode. And that's just it. You grow. You change. You look back on your
  259. 25:53work and you think it sucks. Now, the point you've been waiting for, the post labor skill stack or the post AI skill

  260. The post-labor skill stack

  261. 25:59stack, let's talk about it because I've talked about this multiple times in the past. I've said things like marketing, sales, writing, speaking, all of these
  262. 26:06other things. But I want to go higher level because we have to abstract out a bit. So this is more of a skill hierarchy than it is just a list of
  263. 26:13skills that you need to learn. And the thing here is that these aren't career specific skills because you aren't going
  264. 26:18into a specific career. These are human skills. So this is just uncovering what
  265. 26:23your nature is and how to lean more into it. So the skill stack or hierarchy is
  266. 26:28first agency, the meta-kill, then taste, perspective, persuasion, and then
  267. 26:34technical knowhow. So knowing how to use a software or use AI. And these are ordered in a very specific way because
  268. 26:40they're a hierarchy. They're umbrelled under one another, and one comes before the other. So agency or the meta-kill is
  269. 26:47the ability to act without permission or prompting. It's creating your own story. It's setting your own trajectory. It's
  270. 26:54not waiting for someone to tell you what to do or who to be. Now, why is it the meta- skill? Because agency is what
  271. 27:00allows you to develop all other skills. Without agency, you're just following someone else's path. And that path is
  272. 27:05being automated. So, how do you actually practice agency? That's through leaning in to the three generators of meaning.
  273. 27:13Struggle, status, curiosity. For struggle, you make deliberate choices. You reject conformity. You choose your
  274. 27:20own problems to solve. For status, money becomes a tool for agency, not just a metric of productivity. You're choosing
  275. 27:26to do what you want with money as the fuel. Then through curiosity, you're filtering signal from noise. You're
  276. 27:33following threads that interest you. And this is especially important when everyone's just chasing the trends. You log on social media and that's all you
  277. 27:40see is one thing after another. There's no uniqueness. And it's okay if you chase the trends and try to hop on to
  278. 27:45them, but just doing exactly what the last person did related to that trend. And how do you think you create trends?
  279. 27:52So, a good place to start here with developing agency. Even though I've talked about it in a video called the most important skill to learn in the
  280. 27:58next 10 years is you just have to reject the default path. Go to school, get a job, retire at 65. That's over. Reject
  281. 28:06it. Do something else. Try something new. Figure out what to do. Take one step. Even though if you don't even
  282. 28:12though you don't think that's the right step to take, just take it. Make a mistake. Correct the mistake. That's it. Now the next skill is taste or the skill
  283. 28:19of discernment and the best way to understand the importance of taste because everyone tells you oh you need
  284. 28:24taste you need taste you need agency you need this why does taste actually matter for that we look at the infinite library
  285. 28:31problem which some of you may have heard before but in essence if there's a library and that library has every
  286. 28:37possible permutation of any word ever written ever it just has everything then
  287. 28:43it's meaningless it's worthless there's no opinion worth looking at. And then there's the infinite monkey problem
  288. 28:49where if you take infinite monkeys and have them just type for a billion years, eventually one will produce Shakespeare.
  289. 28:56But again, what worth is that? You're just going to look at it and you're going to be like, "Oh, well, yeah, it's
  290. 29:01good, but it took a monkey a billion years and they have no idea what they're writing about. Like, it doesn't it
  291. 29:08doesn't mean anything." So, the insight here is that curation matters more than creation. You have to select what
  292. 29:15matters and share it with another person. So how do you actually develop taste? You develop taste by building
  293. 29:22things by creating or curating or putting things out there and seeing if it actually works. You build your own
  294. 29:29thing. You make decisions. Agency. You see what works. You see what doesn't. You iterate. Now the third skill here is
  295. 29:36just perspective. It's expanding your human capacity. Now, we've talked about the levels of ego development, or that
  296. 29:42could also be synonymous with perspective development many times in the past. But as you develop your perspective, what you're doing is you're
  297. 29:49opening it up. You become less conformist, less ideological, and less dogmatic. You're you're less stuck in
  298. 29:55this bubble. You gain the ability to hold complexity in your mind, to hold contradiction, to see systems, and to
  299. 30:02understand nuance. And so, this is what allows for genuine agency and sophisticated curation. Because if your
  300. 30:08mind is so small and narrow though that contains the only opportunities and
  301. 30:14ideas available to you, you can't create something unique if you're extremely dogmatic. Now the next video is going to
  302. 30:20be specifically on this to make it more practical. It's going to be called something like how to think like a genius. It's about how to tap into
  303. 30:28five-dimensional thinking so to say, but it teaches you how to think and why that's so important because many people
  304. 30:34don't think at all. Now, the fourth skill is persuasion, which is the ability to make people care about what
  305. 30:40you do. And that's a huge problem for creatives is that they put so much time and effort into something. You have an
  306. 30:46author that works for 10 years on this insane book and then nobody sees it.
  307. 30:51It's worthless. So to learn how to persuade, I would just recommend learning about marketing, sales,
  308. 30:57probably copywriting, and just building on social media because the more you actually do the things that require you
  309. 31:03to persuade and the more you make mistakes and realize, hey, this isn't working, and then you learn new
  310. 31:08techniques to try and then you try it and then you get better, that's just how you learn. Now, the fifth skill is technical knowhow or just using the
  311. 31:15tools available to you to do all of this stuff. So this is like the practical thing that you can start trying to do
  312. 31:21from the ground up. This is like the vessel for how you're doing what you're doing. But it it's mostly just AI tools
  313. 31:27right now. Just learn new tools. Try Claude, try ChatGBT, try Claude Code, try Manis, try all of these different
  314. 31:33things or try Eden because when this video goes out, Eden should be open to
  315. 31:38the public. We're removing the wait list for a few days. So join if you want to try it, but we just introduced projects
  316. 31:44and the Eden agent. And what Eden is is it's a drive that handles your busy work
  317. 31:50so that you can focus on the creative work. So think of a drive where you can put all of your files, your footage, your videos. You can even paste social
  318. 31:56media links like YouTube videos, have those transcribed and then you can ask the agent to do things with that
  319. 32:02information. Like I could tell it to pull all of my YouTube videos and create a research document in this folder so
  320. 32:07that I can go and use that to write. And then the projects feature is where I can let's say write a newsletter. I can pull
  321. 32:14all of my sources in. It's like notebook LM, but this is all in one place. Why is this different from other tools? Because
  322. 32:19other tools don't have the foundation. They don't have the drive. You can access your local files on your computer
  323. 32:24with Claude, and you can connect to Google Drive, which sucks. But how do you actually share it with a team? How do you share it with other people?
  324. 32:30You're stuck dragging, dropping, copying, pasting. You can have Claude create a 7-day email sequence, and you
  325. 32:36can paste a bunch of your context into there. Or you can already have all of the knowledge about your company in your
  326. 32:41drive and then ask the agent to build out an email sequence for a new project and that's also in the drive and then your team member can log in, go in
  327. 32:48there, see it, boom. So try that out as well. Link in the description. That's pretty much it for this video. I hope it
  328. 32:53was helpful. I hope it gave you some insight. I hope it opened your mind to the potential of the future, especially
  329. 33:00for creatives. I'm pretty excited and bullish on creative work. So, until the next video on how to practice thinking
  330. 33:07and how to think better, like, subscribe. I'll see you in the next one.