(The following is an excerpt from the Introduction of my newest book, You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love)
If there’s anything constant in life, it’s change.
Just consider how commonplace cauliflower, podcasting, and Amazon Prime have become—and how quickly it’s happened.
Growing up, no one ever talked about cauliflower, let alone wanted to eat the tasteless and smelly thing.
Yet recently, you’ve probably tried (or heard of) cauliflower rice, cauliflower pizza crust, cauliflower buffalo wings, or cauliflower tots. And if you haven’t, your friends have. Now just to give you a sense of its meteoric rise, in a short span of three years, Green Giant has gone from harvesting five to thirty acres of cauliflower each week. That’s 100,000 heads of cauliflower every single day! And they are just one of the many companies that have hopped on the cauliflower bandwagon.
A similar thing has happened with podcasting.
When I started listening to podcasts in 2008, it was a multistep process that required a computer. Today, however, with the ubiquity of smartphones, listening to podcasts has become so commonplace and normal that the question has shifted from “Have you heard of podcasts?” to “Which podcasts do you listen to?” In fact, in the last five years, close to half of all Americans and Canadians tuned into their first podcast episode.
And let’s not forget the explosive growth of Amazon Prime.
Now that more than half of all American households are subscribing members, isn’t it odd to meet someone who doesn’t have it? It’s definitely become the exception, rather than the norm.
Imagine going to the grocery store and half of the produce was rotten.
Would you notice? If you were driving home from work, would you notice if half of the cars were off the road? And what if you ordered a burger from your favorite restaurant and half of it was missing?
By the time something reaches the 50 percent mark, wouldn’t you have to be living in a hole to miss it? Unfortunately though, noticing doesn’t necessarily lead to action.
Noticing the negative grade around your house doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll fix it right away. Seeing the check engine light go off doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll drop everything and take your car into the shop. And realizing that your pants are fitting tighter than before doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately go on a diet.
Moments of change happen when things shift from being a problem to being my problem. These are the moments we transform into action mode—moments when we find water in our basement, are stuck on the side of the road, or realize that nothing we have fits anymore.
While this might be true for the things that are happening to you, what about all the change that is happening around you—around us in society today?
With trends like the ones mentioned above, rising and falling so rapidly, is there a way to tell the difference between fads and fundamentals? Between the passing and permanent? Between fidget spinners and artificial intelligence?
Things Have Changed
When I moved to Nashville in 2014, I noticed something. I didn’t realize how critical of a trend it was going to become, the extent that it was going to impact everyday life, the rapid rate at which it was growing, or how it was going to become the new normal, but it seemed like everyone had a side hustle or a gig.
Okay, maybe not everyone, but close to half of the people I met. And for the majority of them, these gigs weren’t their main source of income—a lot of them were hustling, contracting, and moonlighting on the side to earn some extra cash, pay down debt, or save up for a vacation.
It was kind of like cauliflower, podcasting, and Amazon Prime—no matter where you went, it was hard to miss. Heck, even I was a part of this trend with all the writing, podcasting, consulting, and speaking I was doing on the side.
At first, I thought this was an American thing, since I had just moved to the States, but after talking to friends in Canada, reflecting back on the time my wife and I lived in Korea, and doing some research, I quickly realized how much of a global trend this was becoming—and how rapidly it was growing.
While there’s no consensus on what to call this new normal—gigging, freelancing, contracting, side hustling, moonlighting—the important thing is to know what it is and how it’s affecting you because it’s here to stay. Some experts refer to it as the gig economy, but don’t let that scare you. It’s just a label. This isn’t a book on finances, economics, blockchain, or getting rich off of cryptocurrency—it’s actually quite the opposite.
As long as you haven’t cloistered yourself off from the rest of the world in an isolated “off-the-grid” commune where you’re stuck in time and nothing ever changes, you will find this book helpful. Just think of it as a pair of glasses that will bring this new normal into focus, so that you can see all the subversive ways that it’s trying to change the way you approach work, life, and love.
To continue reading, click here to download the rest of the Introduction and Chapter 1 of my new book, You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love.