The average person born in the later years of the baby boom held 10.8 jobs from age 18 to age 42, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. These baby boomers held an average of 4.4 jobs while ages 18 to 22.  The average fell to 3.3 jobs while ages 23 to 27 and to 1.9 jobs from ages 38 to 42.

As you can see, the baby boomers could not figure out who they were for about 27 years. Today, individuals will have spent time in 15 different job descriptions by age 38, which may mean knowing who you are is far less likely to happen at all. Trying out different jobs has now been reduced to the brain energy equal to trying on different pairs of shoes. The average American will change careers 3 times and will ultimately end up in a career that may not reflect any original intension, let alone their college education.

This means that although you may be going to school to become an information specialist, you may ultimately end up deboning fish with an electro-mendon for an outfit that does not yet exist. The fact is this; times are changing faster than we can educate ourselves to meet them. It appears that we have been reduced to pinball’s blindly bouncing off the edges of inconvenient happenstance. Where is the focus? The direction? I ask people all the time, “What would you do if you could do it for free…” and about 90% answer with a glazed over “I don’t know;” we are only reacting to the circumstances around us, as opposed to causing them.

Buckshot and bullets

Get this; among those who started jobs at age 38 to 42, 31% ended in less than a year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. What?!! I am 42 years old and I don’t know what to do? I am 42 years old and I’m not good enough at it to out rank everyone else? I’m 42 years old and the basket I put all of my eggs into just “got broked?” Part of the problem is not only our lack of excellence, but our lack of determination and ingenuity. We should be so excellent at what we do, so good at it that when the company folds for lack of foresight, we walk off with the remaining customer base working out of our garage.

Today’s workforce are more like buckshot; they can only hope that one of those little bb’s hit’s a vital organ out there somewhere. We are more dependent upon the animal mistakenly getting in the way of our ammunition, as opposed to locking on the target with expert marksmanship knowing that senseless beast will have no chance in hell of survival. Only the marksmen are winning this game now. It’s an all out free-for-all. Companies are exchanging people like underwear because they are a dime a dozen.

When I first started college in 1981, I worked at a local Burger King for minimum wage. By the end of the first year, my brother and  I had invented a scheme known as “pre-closing.” I had learned the buying habits of each ethnic group within our city and determined the odds of how many would purchase in the final hour and a half. I would make the sandwiches and shakes to reflect my notions and then break down the machines one by one, clean them, and line them with sandwich wrappings. When it came time to close, it was a matter of throwing away the paper linings and cleaning the floors. We reduced the closing time from 2 hours to seven minutes when we all did things in order. Needless to say, other BK’s were negotiating with my manager, trying to trade multiple workers in order to get my brother or me in their store. The only way out of that job was for me to quit. My manager would send me and a friend to the movies – on the clock – to show his appreciation! I could make a Whopper in less than 4 seconds – my friend Lucy and I could hold off an entire bus of students all by ourselves. I loved my job at Burger King. I made it fun. I had pet names for everyone, I decorated the bulletin board for Halloween, I would do tricks for sandwiches, I entertained the customers, I was irreplaceable, I went fishing after midnight with the store manager. I even entertained the idea of attending BK University and becoming the best Burger King executive in the world. I was a bullet.

Go be great at something… anything… just be great at it.