This is some of the best advice I’ve read in ages:

“Get something going for you that works while you’re asleep.” - Michael Caine’s Dad (apparently)

It comes from this post, which is well worth the read:

Working while you are asleep

Another data point in the narrative that suggests that the Industrial Revolution concept of “employment” (at least as it is practiced in the Developed World) will cease to exist. And most likely in our lifetime.

As technology systematises more and more processes, the need for middle-level white collar jobs will decline. 

The only way to stay in front of this transition is to make stuff.

A while back I wrote a short piece titled “I’m almost certain that I’ll never be “employed” again”. Today I found this article by Douglas Rushkoff writing for CNN in September 2011 “Are jobs obsolete?” in which he says:

Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services. By the late Middle Ages, most of Europe was thriving under this arrangement.

If you think you’ve got a job today, it’s highly likely that you will not have one tomorrow, at least in the way that we have come to understand employment since the industrial revolution.

The only way out is to create and build something. Prior to the industrial revolution, that something was made from atoms. From now on, it’s very likely that something will be made from bits.

The following pair of links came through my Twitter timeline today almost simultaneously, and they make me believe that I will never be “employed” again:

In Praise of Cheap Labor - Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all. Paul Krugman, New York Times

Labor Efficiency: The Next Great Internet Disruption. Nick Cronin, TechCrunch

They also reinforce ideas that I first heard during my MBA eight or so years ago that employment of the future will be all about the “portfolio career”. 

I’m pretty sure the future is now.