[2021 Begins] COVID Is Just the Prologue. The Forced, Sweeping Changes That Will Hit Us One After Another

It's now 2021.

Recently, I had been experimenting with my blog — embedding videos to guide readers, writing in a sales-letter style, and so on — but I am returning to a format of writing properly in text.

I will keep updating with high-value, flexible content, so I appreciate your continued support.

What kind of year was 2020?

The change brought by external factors was, needless to say, COVID.

Whether COVID had a bad or good effect on you probably varies from person to person.

But in essence, COVID simply forced "the changes we needed" on us and made them decisive.

Companies and business owners sensitive to the changing times are profiting thanks to COVID, and those who were indifferent are in exactly the opposite situation.

"Business has only two functions: marketing and innovation. All the rest are costs." (Peter Drucker)

In the end, isn't what separated the winners from the losers simply whether they had been pursuing "marketing and innovation" until now?

*Incidentally, my company's sales fell to one-third in April, but fortunately they have been rising steadily since then.

COVID is a gift from heaven

Human beings are creatures that resist change.

This is especially true of the Japanese, living on an island nation with few external pressures.

But before we are human, we are living organisms, and for organisms that cannot withstand change, there is only death.

COVID has shown us that it "makes clear what is unnecessary".

And considering the potential of the technology to come, COVID is nothing more than the prologue to sweeping change.

The real sweeping change is about to begin, and we cannot escape it.

In that sense, you could say COVID — which gave us the chance to take some action or think "while we still have room to spare" — is a gift from heaven.

Technology will begin taking jobs in earnest

Personally, in an era of such drastic change, I am actually skeptical about making all sorts of predictions, but there are some things whose outline is visible to some extent.

It is this:

That much I can see clearly.

To be precise, "apart from some business owners, humans will no longer be allowed to work" might be a better way to put it.

The ability gap will open between humans and technology

At one point, "jobs that will remain and jobs that will disappear in 10 years" was a hot topic, but frankly, you should assume that most jobs will disappear.

The reason is that having humans work (from a business owner's perspective, "buying labor") is simply far too poor in cost-performance.

Technology from here on, roughly in proportion to the passage of time, will achieve:

In other words, unfortunately, it won't even be a contest.

"Even so, there are things only humans can do!" Some will argue that, but that is merely an evaluation of whether someone has "rock-star value" (and even with rock-star value, you can be replaced just fine, lol); sooner or later, using technology will undoubtedly become the more attractive option.

And people and organizations who still cling to old ways of working and running a company will have to accept a pretty miserable future.

The arrival of an era when all 100 million of us are out of work

So I think we should start, right now, to accept that our own jobs may eventually disappear and there's nothing to be done about it.

Accepting this mindset is hard, but we can't look away from it.

Of course, I am no exception.

Supporting clients' business growth along the axis of "technology × business" is something I have done for many years, and I think it is very valuable.

Once a "template" for data-driven management is established, obtaining the information you truly need and planning and executing marketing measures will probably be automated.

Also, as for "What will we do for money if all 100 million of us become unemployed?", the basic income that keeps being debated looks likely to become a real prospect.

What is needed is a reform of how we live

It's about time to wrap up this article, and the message I want to leave you with is this: "You should have something you want to keep doing until your life ends, even if it doesn't earn you a single yen."

Especially if your work has become "rice work" (just to put food on the table), it seems wise to think carefully about your work and outlook on life for the next 10 years.

And if you want to live a life with a higher QOL than others, you need to secure, early on, a position on the side that masters technology and runs the business.

As for me, while thinking "it can't be helped if my own job eventually disappears," I want to live a high-QOL life, so in 2021 too I will pour all my energy into technology-related work.