It is time to slowly say good-bye to the “job” as it has been known in our lifetime and the lifetime of our parents.  The parents of baby boomers were the first full generation that lived with the general concept of “life-long employment.” Baby boomers left college and stepped on lower rungs of a “career path.” Now, after three consecutive “jobless recoveries,” it should be clear that jobs as we had defined them are disappearing.

Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers almost three years ago, a number of people who had recently lost jobs due to downsizing, bankruptcy and lack of funding, have asked me where they should look for jobs.  My answer has been consistent: become your own job.

What is it that you love?  What is it that you are good at? What are your most marketable skills? What is your greatest value to the marketplace? If you stop and think about it, there should be a lot of overlap in the answers to these questions.

It is time to become the job you are.  It is time to embrace being a free agent.  It is time to be a one-person company.  It is time to let go of the concept that there is a job out there that provides security.

As early as late 2008, I forecasted that the unemployment rate in the U.S. would push through nine percent and perhaps reach 10 percent.  I further suggested that the country would stay close to these historically high levels of unemployment for …

As many of you who subscribe to my Shift Age Newsletter know, I co-authored a book with Jeff Cobb on transforming education. Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education was published in April by Corwin Press.

Now, three months later, I am happy to report that the response from the education community has been strong and extremely positive. Two conferences that had me as the keynote speaker purchased copies of the book for all attendees, and the feedback from these educators has been so positive that I am humbled. In addition, several school superintendents have purchased copies for the principals in their districts. I am currently scheduled to present to three large education conferences this summer and fall, as word of mouth on the book is spreading across the country. As I am a futurist and not a professional educator, it is truly gratifying to hear such positive reactions from K-12 educators.

Why did a futurist write a book on transforming education? Here are some of the reasons:

-There is so much noise, finger-pointing and argument about K-12 education today that it became clear to me that there’s a lack of vision. Many people have points of view, but they are relative to practices they either criticize or support, all based on the present landscape. The present system doesn’t work, so we have to completely start over with a new vision.

-The current system is from the Agricultural Age for its school year, the Industrial Age for most of …

In the last column here, I pointed out that a number of my Shift Age forecasts have come true. I wrote about several of them and how I get an odd sense of déjà vu when these forecasts become reality. In this and coming columns, I will revisit them – not to gloat, but to provide explanation, because people read and hear forecasts differently from explanations of the actual events they become.

In 2007, I forecast that humanity, and particularly the developed countries of the world, would enter the “reorganizational recession of 2007-2010.” Considering that this is a blog that looks into the future, it might seem contradictory to be looking back at this event, but by doing so, I can explain why it was accurate and why understanding it will help us better navigate and understand what lies just ahead.

The reason for the length, breadth and depth of the 2007-2010 recession was that it was a reorganizational recession between the Information Age and the Shift Age. Most economists look at recessions through the eyes of history, measuring whatever recession we are currently in against past recessions. Phrases such as “this looks to be another jobless recovery similar to the recessions of the 1990’s” or “the recovery will be on the back of the consumer – when the consumer starts spending, we will emerge from this recession” (both paraphrases) are common and represent economists looking at economic downturns purely through economic filters. That is why they have had to keep revising …

In the past I have written that as a futurist, it sometimes feels like I live in a state of déjà vu. I spend a lot of time researching and looking into the future to develop the forecasts and trends that I write and speak about. I experience them, see them, and have varying degrees of certainty when I publish or present them.

Since 2011 began, so many of the forecasts and trends I predicted over the last four years are coming true, I feel as if I’m in an almost constant state of déjà vu. Now, as I spend some 22 hours traveling from Chicago to Singapore, scanning stacks of periodicals from around the world, this feeling is amplified.

I will write a lot in the coming weeks and months about all these forecasts and trends. As a futurist, I should be judged in part on how accurate I am, so it is indeed gratifying that many of the events/trends I predicted have become reality in 2011. The purpose of all these upcoming columns is to be able to point to actual events as the manifestations of what I have been speaking and writing about since 2006, when this blog began, and 2007, when I wrote The Shift Age. This will help explain the truly transformative time we are now entering. In a few years, the world will look quite different from what it did in 2010. The early evidence is everywhere in 2011.

Here are some of the trends and forecasts …

01/01/11 is the second digital New Year’s Day in a row.  A year ago it was 01/01/10, also zeros and ones, the two digits of the Information Age of computers.  That column, called “The Transformation Decade” seemed to resonate immediately as it was widely sourced in the blogosphere and retweeted globally on Twitter.  I created a presentation, “The Transformation Decade: 2010-2020” that was widely requested and delivered around the world this past year.

The definition of ‘transformation’ is ‘a change in nature, shape, character and form’.  The Transformation Decade therefore will be the ten years when most of humanity and its’ institutions will change nature, shape, character and form. This transformative force will sweep most along with a palpable sense of acceleration and change.  In advising companies for example, I have said that old management theories that applied in the 20^th century are no longer sufficient, that only leading from a place of transformation will keep companies current with the world around them.  To not operate with a dynamic sense of the definition of the word transformation will risk decline and obsolescence.

In the past four years, and in the three years since my book “The Shift Age” was published, I have said two things.  First, that the Great Recession of 2007-2010 is a reorganizational recession as it is the economic transition between two ages, the Information Age and the Shift Age.  Second, that we are already in the Shift Age but that the perception and acceptance of a new …