Future Skills - Unlearning, Adapting, and Finding Meaning in the Age of AI

Source: Pavel Danilyuk via pexels.com

The future of work is rapidly evolving, with studies suggesting that a significant percentage of today's job skills will become obsolete within the next five years. In this episode we delve into the crucial future skills we'll all need to thrive. We explore the concept of cognitive flexibility and the often-overlooked ability to unlearn ingrained ways of thinking and behaving. We also tackle the growing importance of adaptability and emotional intelligence in a world increasingly shaped by AI and societal shifts. Join us, as we discuss how to balance the benefits of AI with the necessity of retaining our critical thinking and meaning-making capabilities in this dynamic future.

Selected Links:

• "Cognitive Flexibility: What Is It? Examples & How to Improve." CogniFit, 2025, www.cognifit.com/.

• "Why skills-based hiring is on the rise." World Economic Forum, 27 Mar. 2025, www.weforum.org/stories/2025/03/skills-based-hiring-jobs-future/.

• Gafni, Guy. "LinkedIn Skills on the Rise 2025: The 15 Fastest-Growing Skills in the U.S." LinkedIn, 17 Apr. 2025, www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-skills-rise-2025-15-fastest-growing-us-linkedin-news-hy0le/.

• Vincent, James. "Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills." Gizmodo, 7 May 2025, www.gizmodo.com/microsoft-study-finds-relying-on-ai-kills-your-critical-thinking-skills-2000561788.

• Bhaskara, Arun, et al. "Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative AI." SSRN, 24 Apr. 2025, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188231.

• Harari, Yuval Noah. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Spiegel & Grau, 2018.

Episode Transcript:

Lana: Welcome back to, Signal Shift. I'm Lana and I'm here with Raakhee. And today we have a pretty juicy topic in our Future of Work series. We are talking about future skills. So the World Economic Forum estimates that 40 % of the skills used in most jobs today will change over the next five years.

LinkedIn just put out a study very recently and they put that 40 % number at closer to 70%. So we've already seen the shift towards skills-based hiring. where employers are dropping degree requirements, they're dropping years of experience requirements in favor of demonstrated skills through testing. So today we want to explore:

What are these skills? What are the skills that are most likely to be relevant for the future and why? So let's get into it. Raakhee, what did you find? What's the skill that you think is gonna be a very relevant future skill?

Raakhee: Yeah, Lana, this was a tough one. I found it to be really hard. so eventually I did. ⁓ I went to the place we all go to now for help, I went to Chat GPT.

So I'll go into the first one, which is I think the most important skill we are all going to need for work and for life. And that is the whole concept of cognitive flexibility and adaptability, right? And I think we all think, hey, I'm good at a certain amount of change. I can flow with this, right? We all live in different countries and we change careers, but I also think about how "routinized" our lives are. So we actually not that adaptable. Can we jump out from ⁓ living totally off the grid tobeing very comfortable leading a CEO board meeting. No, I don't think any of us can say that. I don't think, you know, we are adaptable. I think we create environments that are familiar and routinized and, we live within them. So that was like my first like reality check moment of like, hey, you know, for someone who thinks they're okay with change, like none of us are that adaptable. But what is gonna be really important about this whole concept of cognitive flexibility is this first thing that I think, again, we miss so much, which is the ability to unlearn. And I feel like I hit this with people and myself all the time. We are so set in how we've seen things for so long that even that ability to imagine different, and then even if they can imagine, people are just like, I don't want, you know, I don't want to unlearn. I don't want to unlearn this way of being in the world or doing this. And I think that's... we are going to have to understand the whole concept of unlearning.

So that ability to unlearn what we know is the only thing that's going to open up the space to see things as new and learn new things. But we have to unlearn. So that was interesting, right? So we may not think about that, but cognitive flexibility, first thing, start working on your ability to unlearn things. And actually see this with food behaviors a lot. ⁓ You know, if people have grown up eating a certain something, it's always much easier to make excuses for why it's important to have that. And then you find it's the kind of bias where you find information to simply back up your claim rather than dispute it, though there's enough evidence for that as well. So I see it a lot with food behaviors, which is interesting. was like, if people could unlearn things, it could help their health so much more. But it's not easy. ⁓ I think the second thing was,

Just thinking about your daily life and cognitive sort of shifting in your daily life. And we'll hear neuroscientists talk about things like use the other hand to brush your teeth. Like if you're right handed, use your left hand. If you're left handed, use your right hand. And see how difficult it is and try to create that sort of dexterity in essence between both your hands. But it's simple things like the drive to work, like shift that up.

These are not just things that are good for your mental health. They're going to be critical for us to survive in this world. So it gets more more important. Then there's the emotional, sort of emotional resonance side of this,

Also something we're not great at as humans. So understanding those skills, right? As well as being able to emotionally process in different ways and emotionally unlearning as well. And then another simple example was, you know, if you're getting ready to have breakfast and open the fridge and there's no milk, what do you do? For most people, it's anger, it's frustration. And I get it, right? You might be going to work. But if you can show adaptability, and emotional balance, even in those simple moments, right? And you can adapt to be like, well, let me make up another recipe today, or let me try this diner I always want to do. But it's important for you to do that for yourself, like being able to do those things and shift how you love your life, right? So a lot of this sort of stuff, even in your daily routine.

Lana: Yeah, I have so much to say about this. And I really appreciate the framing of unlearning, because I think that's really, again, just really provocative. Because for me, it brings up all these questions like, well, how do I know what to unlearn? It's like, what do we keep? And what are we chucking out the window for something else? And I think this ties to you know, I think one of the big risks in AI adoption is like the outsourcing of our own critical thinking. Right. And so we've already seen this before. Like we don't know anyone's phone numbers, right. Because it's all in our phone. Like for me, I can barely get anywhere without like looking at my map on my phone, right? Like I just, I've outsourced that part of my brain that figures out how to get from point A to point B to like, to my device. So that like when I get in the car, I just like, don't think about it. Or, you know, even when I go for a walk, like I'm like checking where I am in the map instead of like looking for visual cues, right? So I think the next extension of this in terms of AI adoption is sort of, you know, letting the AI then think more and more for us. And then our skills, like what you're saying, like our brain skills, like our cognitive function gets atrophied

There's already a study that came out from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon that said that the more people rely on AI to complete tasks, the harder it is for them to do the tasks when they actually need to, right? Because they have figured out how not to do them anymore. And that the outcomes are usually maybe like less diverse outcomes for the same task. Compared to if humans worked hard on it and use your brains, you'd have a wider range of outcomes. And so the answer is not, oh, don't use AI, but it's more about how do you retain that ability, like you're saying, that cognitive flexibility and but using AI as your teammate. So this other study at Harvard Business School said, if you can use it thoughtfully more as a teammate as opposed to using it as your own tool, it can bridge those gaps in expertise. So you're still an expert and you're consulting another expert and you're amplifying your thinking. So it's like one plus one equals three instead of one minus your brain, you know, so like, I don't know. So it's also a little bit ironic because you're, got this answer from working with chat GPT . So just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Like, what do you think about, how do we maintain this balance of this technology, which is like exciting and fun and makes like things, you know, gives us access to all this different expertise without like losing our own brains.

Raakhee: Yeah, I know Lana, I was laughing about that internally. was like, yeah, man, and I use chat GPT for this exercise. So, ha ha. Right? Like that just proves the point. And anyway, when it comes down, was like, what made me? And I was like, laziness, because I could have just gone a little deeper, but I would have had to have spent more time. Right. And so, yeah, the perfect example of like why we have to. Building, stretching our minds to your point, like not rely on AI for everything. And you know, you think about social media and how we kind of just took it to the max and started using it all the time and everybody sitting on it for like four hours, five hours and everybody loving it and nobody talking about any of these downsides for the first couple of years, right? And then suddenly like, this is really bad for our dopamine. It's really bad for reward systems. And then suddenly we see the timers and the timers on the apps now and being able to shut down and more rules and countries outright banning it at certain ages, which my gosh, should have all been there from the get go. you think about it, right? Like, man, that was, you know, like that's how we're to look back in history. Like, man, okay, wow, they just went wild with that, right? And I think it's exactly the same thing with this is like, why are they parameters?

And that's something I think as people we need to just keep being vocal about, know, and saying we want to adopt the technology and we must, but you human first kind of is like the new thing, right? Like human first, what's right for us and our wellbeing has to, yeah, it has to be important.

Lana: Yeah, for sure. LinkedIn just released its like skills on the rise 2025 report. And so they highlighted like the top 15 skills that they think they see as the fastest growing. the ones professionals are prioritizing and that companies are hiring for. And so yeah, I think it's like, I mean, this was so obvious, but like number one is AI literacy, right? So like, but number three was what you were saying is, is adaptability. But I really like, I really appreciate that you questioned. well, you think you're adaptable. You have no idea. And so I really loved that question. That's like,

Okay, before you just go and say, check the box, I have that skill. What does that actually mean? Like how comfortable are you really with turning your whole life upside down and figuring it out? And so I loved this unlearning angle for that number three. And the number two you really addressing this in terms of like the emotional health, I think, because number two in the top three is conflict mitigation. Right. And so, so in their, like, LinkedIn study, they were like, Oh, it's because we have an intergenerational workforce now, or we have like the returned office mandates. And so like, conflict mitigation is a really important skill. But like, to me, I was like, I don't think that's really like that to me seems like it's skimming the surface, you know, because this is like a bigger cultural mirror, right? Like what's happening in society is happening in the workplace, right? So we have like the loneliness epidemic, we have political polarization, right? There's so much stuff people can't even bring up at work because it's going to bring up like lots of feelings, or divisiveness. We have huge societal stressors. It was like an understatement. Widescale layoffs, right? So our worlds feel very fragmented. And so like, even though there's like all the talk when we think about skills is, you we talk about AI and artificial intelligence, but there's a huge EI component, right? Emotional intelligence, which is like,

How do we handle stress, you know, and how do we manage like our inner worlds? like how do you like handle all these things and then how do you communicate and relate to other people who are also handling all those things? And then we do it in a way that's like productive or it's sort of

builds connection instead of breaks connection. even though they named it as conflict mitigation, think it just, it really speaks to, think, this larger, much larger skill set that I think you touched on, which is like, how do we navigate emotional and relational and structural tension in our lives? And then how do we do that as a group of people?

And so I don't know. wanted to kind of... So conflict mitigation, felt like, wasn't quite it. I think it manifests as conflict, right? And that's a problem that maybe leadership is like, we need to nip this in the bud. There's like too much conflict and it's like getting in the way of our productivity. But to me, I think it's something that's like a much deeper skill of... an awareness of like, are we, like, how are we navigating this world? And then how are we gonna do that work? So I wanted to kind of get your thoughts about that and your feedback on that.

Raakhee: Yeah, Lana, yeah, I so agree with you on the conflict management. OK, that's like, even as a term is such a like a 90s, like, you know, like we're so past that. It's such a different world, like you can't even that term means nothing anymore. It's it's a complex, a daily part of it's like saying emotional management, of course, like, yeah, that's obvious. The tensions are there all the time, right?

Yeah, think you hit something so important there on this emotional side of this and how do we balance that individually and then collectively, right? And how do we manage that? yeah, that's a really big question because I don't see, I don't think workplaces are designed for that. don't think they do that. think...

Even the idea, the concept of a leader, they talk about, there's no managers anymore, there's leaders. But I'm like, I don't even know if that concept of having a leader works anymore. You know what I mean? We all are so different. Everybody has really the same... once you have all the same information and the playing field, the same playing field, it changes everything. So that idea, I think it's called self-leadership.

And it's something we spoke about in another episode, but about choice. It's more about autonomy, right? And then with autonomy comes responsibility. And so I think that's the part of this, is saying we will live in a world where we will all just be more, have more autonomy. We won't need to have leaders. We don't need any kind of hierarchies. They're redundant. But with that always comes an individual responsibility. And that's where we... you know, sometimes maybe more times than not miss the mark, right?

Lana: Yeah, I think the whole organizational hierarchy is up for grabs. And so then what is a leadership skill, right? Like what, what, you know, do we even need to distinguish? And it sounds like from what you're saying,

We don't need to distinguish between what's a leadership skill and what's not, right? Like they're just, everyone's a leader, right? Or like we're either all leaders or none of us are leaders. Is that sort of like what you're saying?

Raakhee: Yeah, yeah, like the ship is sinking and it takes just one person. You know what I mean? So each and every person on that ship is going to have to either stay in that, you do what they need to and that's self leadership. So the ship doesn't sink for all of us. And unfortunately, if even one of us are not, then it doesn't matter that there's a leader on the other side. don't, we got to carry this together. I think that's a big lesson, you know? And I mean, I'm speaking in very broad terms, right? So, you know, don't take me at this for everything, but is it just a general lesson or a call out? But I think, yeah, that idea of I think any of us looking to anyone is leaders or that's, you know, it's really not what it was 20 years ago. you know, we all get that same question. Who is your role model? And you can you can speak to qualities in people that you want you want to bring into. And I think that's a much more powerful question like what do I value in the person? And can you articulate that?

And then how do you bring that into your life and use that?

Lana: I think that's right. I think that's right. I agree with you. It's very messy. And what I hear you saying is that we all have, because we all have some level of agency, we all have the responsibility. So we can't absolve that to being like, that's leadership's problem. Like that's management's problem to figure that out. I'm just cog in the wheel. And it's like, well, actually, we're all on the wheel.

You're not just a cog, you're actively part of the direction this wheel is headed. And so to not like absolve that responsibility.

Raakhee: Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Lana: Yeah. And so I guess, I don't know, is there anything that, Raakhee, that you're thinking about, like for yourself, maybe some skills and capacities that you want to build that you're, you know, since we do this work all the time, and we're always like looking ahead, you know, what are things that are on your own radar that are like, I should invest a little bit of time to develop these skills.

Raakhee: Yeah, think what has become and has been so useful, Lana, as you know this about me as well, it's like having a meditation practice. And for me, it's kind of, have meditation, yoga, all of that. And it only has to be that for somebody. It can be your 20 minute walk, which is meditative. I don't know what it is, but it's a certain kind of groundedness. That it's actually very purposeful. We talk a lot about purpose and meaning and like, oh, what's the purpose of my life? And after this job or this title or achieve something. when you strip, and I'm going a little bit maybe spiritual here, but you strip all of that away, because I think that's what the next few years are going to bring up the question of like, who am I? What am I? Right? Outside all of that.

We don't need degrees anymore. We don't need to necessarily be doing the work anymore. What's going to do it? You know what I mean?

You know, it will be a different answer maybe for everybody. It might be a very practical one for some people, you know? And that's okay. But something that I think grounds you in that understanding every day, whatever that's gonna be for each individual, you know?

Because I think if you don't have that, think it's tough.

And I think if we don't build those sorts of things, like being grounded and being connected to our own hearts, these things we've never, we don't speak about leadership. But if we don't have that and this unlearning and flexibility, I think it's going to be tough. think it is if you're really attached to your job title and the work you do.

You're really attached to where you love and certain material things. I think this may be a tough time then. It may be harder. I'm not saying you shouldn't be that way. It's impossible. But I think it can make the journey a lot harder. yeah, I think that. it ties into the second one that Chat GPT had brought up, which was the second skill, the second unique, really important thing that we don't talk about is the meaning making and this more human-centric interpretation. AI robots are never going to have that. They're never going to understand that. And it's not stuff you can even teach or train a large language model.

But this whole concept of what it is to be human and human making and our stories and that emotional resonance we keep talking about, know, and it's really interesting. even thinking and so understanding psychology becomes really important to all of us as a society now. Right. And before it was like, OK, you got to know math and you got to know all of that. And you got to know a bit of that. you really got to know humans. You got to know each other. Right.

And so I think something beautiful there in that human capacity and who we are. And it was really in so you've all in that book 21 lessons that I keep talking about. It was interesting. He ended his last chapter with meditation, which I thought was really interesting, right, because he uses that himself. And then he also spoke about some way in the book about, you you never thought we're going to come right back on the circle and be like, oh, maybe studying philosophy is the best degree to do next.

But that's sort of where we are, right? Where it's like, I'm like, good degree might be philosophy because we're to be sitting asking a whole lot of questions in the next few coming years. So, yeah, I don't know, all very esoteric, very metaphorical stuff, very pie in the sky. But yeah, I think that's where we are.

Lana: I think that's amazing. do you think, so are you saying that meaning making is a skill that we should hold onto and develop?

Raakhee: I think so. What do you think?

Lana: Yeah, think that's a super, I mean, I was thinking that when you were talking about the meditation, because, well, I know in my experience with you that you are very grounded. That is very true. Like, it's amazing, actually. I'm in awe of it. And I think you're right that because so many people attach their purpose and the meaning of their life to their work, that that's something that has to be unlearned because like if your whole identity and your whole reason for being alive is the work that you do, I agree that it's going to be a big reckoning of when those things become uncoupled and that you have to find a meaning and a purpose outside of that or that's going to change.

And so I guess I'm wondering, is that part of the unlearning of meaning making to say like, meanings themselves can change?

Raakhee: Yeah, and I didn't think of it, but yeah, this yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.

Lana:Yeah, yeah, think that's a really, I mean, I would put that like up there at the top. I think that's pretty fundamental, meaning making. Yeah, for sure.

So, but yeah, I think this has been a really fun and super interesting and philosophical and psychological conversation. Yeah, so thank you everyone for...continuing to follow us in this, Future of Work series, which we're really excited about and we have more to come because there's really so much to talk about here in the Future of Work. And so we hope that you'll stay tuned to our podcast and also to our channel on YouTube, which is at Horizon Shift Lab. so until next week, bye for now.