Specialists Are Cooked | Dr. Angela C. Meyers | Growing Money with Sean Trace

In this episode of Growing Money with Sean Trace, I sit down with Dr. Angela C. Meyers to talk about one of the biggest shifts happening in work, money, and identity right now: the rise of AI and the return of the modern polymath. 

For years, people have been told to niche down, specialize, and become an expert in one narrow lane. But in a world where AI is automating specialized tasks faster than ever, that advice may be starting to fail people. Dr. Angela breaks down why adaptability, curiosity, emotional intelligence, systems thinking, and the ability to connect ideas across disciplines may become some of the most valuable human skills in the next decade. We also talk about why so many people feel financially trapped, why fear can shrink your future, and why your ability to keep learning may be your greatest safety net. This conversation is about money, work, AI, reinvention, and what it really means to stay human in a changing world.

Are you trying to master one path right now, or are you building a life with multiple skills, interests, and ways to adapt?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The pick one thing and master it, if if that one thing gets automated and it doesn't need humans anymore, then you're just out of work. You know, and that was an industrial. I think the important thing I'd like for anyone listening or watching to this to sort of grasp is that we lived in an industrial era, you know, Ford's assembly line. And we didn't just divvy up labor that was physical, we also divvied up intellectual labor. Like we began to know more and more about less and less. Um, and I personally think that that sort of took away from our humanity because our natural tendency is to be broad and exploratory, and specialization sort of forced us into these uh robotic-like roles. But industrial era systems are from the old world. Now we're in the AI revolution where industrial era approaches just don't work anymore. And in fact, they're a liability.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

All right, welcome everybody back to the Growing Money with Sean Trace Podcast. I'm your host, Sean, and I've got an awesome guest with me today, which like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Yes, I am Dr. Angela Myers. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on modern-day polymaths. So, as you probably are aware, we've been in an age of specialization for a long time where the dominant narrative was to pick one thing and specialize very deeply. And that's how you would gain expertise, and that's how you'd be valuable in the marketplace and in organizations. And now AI is here doing specialized tasks. So, what modern humans need to be is more polymathic generalist. Polymathy basically means many learnings. So I'm an organizational development consultant. Um, and I've been preparing, I started this work back in 2015. So it's already been about 11 years preparing for this moment where we're in this more complex future and humans need to be more human and less robotic.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah, I love that because I think that people don't realize that I see this on LinkedIn all the time. Like everyone's like, oh, you've got to specialize, you've got to niche down. And I'm like, but why? Like, why are we telling all these people to be so specialized and then they don't have any um movement room? Like for me, you know, I am an English teacher. I've studied my doctorate in Chinese medicine. I also produce videos, I have my own company. I have done what else? I was a university professor, I'm a black belt in jujitsu. I have uh multiple podcasts in the wine uh industry, financial markets, the financial industry, as well as self-help. And everyone's like, oh, you really should pick one thing to focus on. And I said, but why? I love them all. And I'm building them in a way that's organic and it works, and I have the flexibility that if something were not to work, I could pivot immediately. And I think that that's one of the things that people are like, but but you know, I said, no, I want to have that flexibility to be able to shift. You know, if I see the writing on the wall for one area, well, I'm gonna move into another area. And like, that's a good thing to be able to have that ability, you know. And I think that when people are niching down so much, you are creating a dangerous space where you might niche yourself out of a job.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Yeah, exactly. Um, thanks for sharing about your background. It it warps my heart when I hear about people who have really lived all in. That's that's one way of conceptualizing this weight. You're not fitting in a box, conforming to what's expected of you. You're exploring your authentic self, you're pursuing your passions. And I actually have a question for you. Like, aside from the safety net that you get in your multiple capabilities now, because you've developed this broad personhood. I'm curious, like what it does for your quality of life, for your experience of being a human to have this bricolage zigzag expression of your onlyness. Like, what does that do for you in terms of how you show up as a human being living on planet Earth?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

I feel like life is much more rich when I'm able to have all of these different things that I do. Um I think that I think right now, where I told my wife, you know, I have a video production company, but I said, you know what? If things ever got bad, I'd go back and teach English right away. And she's like, Well, would that make you feel bad? And I said, No, I'd feel fine doing that. And actually, I loved, I loved teaching kids in the classroom. It's one of my favorite things I've ever done. The ability to go in and really have a fun time, you know, just helping shape a young person's mind and helping them become a critical thinker, helping them become someone who goes at things in a different way, to me, is a wonderful, powerful, super amazing thing. So, you know, I think that the ability to try many things, to experience many things is a superpower for people because you learn what you love. I had an experience when I was younger. One summer, my mom didn't let us sit at home and watch cartoons all summer. She got us out. She got us signed up for all of these different classes. We signed up for bowling, we signed up for golf, we signed up for tennis, we signed up for um all of these different sports. You name a sport, I tried it. And what was one of the beautiful things is I realized a couple things that there are many sports that I am not good at and that I do not like. But I also learned what I loved. But I also had this experience about the permission to understand that. And not everyone gets that because, you know, oh, they've got this life path and they follow that life path, but then life happens, and that life happens is I think a point in time where people pivot. I want to dive into the AI thing because here's something that I'm looking at, and I think that people are freaking out, but I want to talk about automobiles, right? My great-grandma lived before cars. And we have a story, a family story that when they got their first car, she was like they were living out in um Oklahoma, and then they moved to Arizona. And when they got to Arizona, grandpa got some cattle money and got a car. And so he was driving at hauling around at 20 miles an hour, and grandma was so terrified that she dove out of the car, and I think she almost broke something, but she dove out of the car at high speeds. She was okay, but she jumped out of the car because it was going too fast. She was, you know, freaked out. Now, it people don't realize at that time when cars came around, the most common jobs in America, I believe one of the most common was a farrier. The person who did the horse's hoofs, they had to trim the hoofs all the time. That job is almost non-existent now in the U.S. It is so rare and so uncommon because people just they're people that own horses still have to book these people and then they do the horseshoes. But it's not very big. Now, their industry, when cars came along, was devastated. It was, you know, this this just massive. But if you go back to that time and you're talking to someone, and if you tried to talk to them about like someone who worked around horses and stuff, they would be terrified. Oh, these cars are gonna replace everything. But you're gonna sit there and you'll be like, all right, I'm from the future. I'm gonna tell you about a job opportunity of the future, a business opportunity. What's that? Car washes. Now, these are not a thing yet, but they're gonna be huge, you know, and or or, you know, like do it yourself, car wash, or you know, hey, in the 60s, drive in movie theaters. There were all of these ecosystems that grew out of this new invention, but people couldn't conceptualize it. There was all this stuff that was gonna be created, but people didn't have a uh understanding of what this new world would look like. And so there was fear involved. And I think that one of the challenges is that you have to live beyond the fear, but that also means that you need to be aware of the danger of what's coming around. You know, it's like I work in video production. I am very, very aware that video production is getting more and more AI infused into it. Well, so A, I can shift more into the creative lead. And right now, I'm not billing myself as just a post-production editor team. I'm your coach. I am your content media coach. I am here to make sure that you succeed with whatever tools you're using. And so I think that it's a mindset shift, but you have to be ready for those mindset shifts to be to take place, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah, well, the thing about technology is that it does not progress in a linear fashion. It's on a curve, it builds off of itself. And so in the past, like back when cars were like the the leading technology of its day, um, you know, progress was slow and steady. And it didn't feel overwhelming. But now we're in kind of a more curvy upward trajectory where like AI, for example, I think is a doubling in capacity like every seven months. It's no longer years or decades where we're looking at major changes. It's it's really fast now. And so it's important now for us to be flexible because the word world we live in is complex and um and it demands a different kind of competency in the humans alive today that's more flexible. We got to get used to crazy changes coming. Um, I like what you said about living beyond fear. You know, fear can be a gift, like if there's a lion chasing you and you're your caveman, of course not, fear is a gift. But if you let fear dictate all of your life all the time, it can really shrivel and shrink us. And I think that one of the exciting ways to think about AI is that the robots have arrived, and now humans don't have to be robots anymore. Because we were really trained in the industrial era to be robotic, to do, no, pick your lane, pick your thing, pick your expertise, and then do it in a rote way. And there are so many downsides of that. Like it took away from our full humanity. It didn't develop our brain plasticity as much as it could, you know, when you get stuck in the same ruts and the same kind of work and the same kind of thinking, it makes it harder and harder to learn and harder and harder to change. Not being able to change is risky, especially now that the world demands that we be adaptable. Um, so it's so important to like expose yourself to lots of different kinds of thinking, lots of different disciplines, lots of different fields to get comfortable with not knowing, to get really good at asking good questions and continuing to learn and not just learn, but unlearn and relearn. So you can update your mental software. Like these are the important competencies in the world of work nowadays. And another thing I want to touch upon too is you mentioned like you, when you were young, you had the sampling period. And that is so important to like figure out what we like, figure out what what we're passionate about before committing and narrowing ourselves too early. But that's another by continuing to give yourself sampling periods, by continuing to try new things and continuing to let your identity shift, because that's what that allows for. It gives you something or some things, really plural, to make up your personhood rather than just work. Yeah. Because the sad fact is, and there's some disagreement, I could be wrong. But what I see happening is AI is automating work, it's automating specialized tasks. And companies, in order to save money and be more efficient, are laying off humans. And so there's a smaller pool of humans left working with AI. And that is probably going to be the trend we see indefinitely until AI is basically doing almost all the work. I think we've got a couple decades where humans are still employable. So being multicapable and a big picture thinker and someone who can connect the dots and being more of a generalist and a continual lifelong, life wide learner is very important for the people left working. But for the people who no longer will have a career to give them their identity. That's another reason why being broad is so important. Because then you, when someone asks, so what do you do? What are you about? Like you can come up with an answer to that question that just isn't your job title. And that should be the case for all of us. We all are more than our work.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

100%. And you know, and and maybe there's going to be a space for finding joy, finding the things that really fulfill you, you know, and maybe that is already our greatest thing that we should be doing that we're not, you know. So I hope that there is something that, but like I want to ask you this because right now, already so many people are trapped more than ever. And they're making money, but they feel financially trapped, you know, and and feel like they're not getting ahead. Why do you think so many people are making so much more than ever, yet feel completely broken financially trapped?

SPEAKER_00 14:07

I think people can see the world is changing very rapidly. And if you want to feel secure, money is sort of associated with security, safety. Like if you have money, you got options, right? But nowadays, your career is not safe. Like all of us are thinking what jobs are going to be AI proof and which jobs won't be. Will I have to pivot and become an entrepreneur? Which is, I think, going to be more and more the case we're going to see in the future. Now, if you really want to feel secure and safe, it's not just about what you do to make money. It's about how adaptable you are. Can you change? Can you learn, unlearn, relearn, become a new version of yourself? And it is scary times. I'm not going to act like it's not. It's a nail biter for all of us. I mean, the cost of living is very high. It feels like the economy is unstable. The US government just released some like alien thing. Like we're navigating all of that. Um, there's rapid technological disruption, there's psychological uncertainty. Um, many people are not sure that they're going to have a job in the future, or they're seeing their colleagues laid off, which presents another kind of psychological disturbance. So many people's identities are tied to old models of work, which are disappearing. Um, in people's income feels at risk and fragile. They're not sure how long it's going to last. So people don't just want money. Of course, we still need money. We still live in a capitalist system. But I think people are looking for confidence that they're still going to be valuable in the new world and how to position themselves to still be able to create and offer value so that they can get paid in the future. And so polymathie is a lens to understand that the multi-capacities. So, like you alluded to earlier, when you have lots of tools in your toolkit, lots of hats that you can wear, if one domain closes down or is automated, well, then you just pick another tool or wear another hat. You got a safety net in your multicapabilities. And I think that's what this time is calling us all into is like, how can you really develop your adaptability, your flexibility?

SPEAKER_01 16:32

I 100% agree. I think so. I think it's about not picking, again, everyone's like, pick the thing, pick the thing. It's like, well, try all the things and see what sticks, see what's going to work, you know. I I love my Sean Trey show, but man, if this growing money takes off, that's great. Or if my wine podcast takes off, then there we go. But having these different things I'm doing gives me the flexibility in case something doesn't work, you know? And so I think it's really important to look at that. Like, and I want to ask you, because people are worried, is AI about to destroy millions of careers? Or do you think it's gonna create the biggest opportunity shift in modern history? You know, is it gonna be the equalizer and people just need to learn to embrace it so that they can get ahead?

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Well, that's the big question. Is AI gonna turn our world into a dystopia or a utopia? Of course, I'm rooting for utopia. Um, but it's complicated and it has yet to be seen. Um yeah, I think I think the important thing is for us to recognize what the world we're in now, which is where AI is handling specialized repetitive cognitive tasks. It's so funny, too, that the people who made AI are these white-collar, you know, tech companies. And like a lot of those kind of jobs are the first to get lost, and it's the plumbers and the electricians that have some level of job security, right? Because robotics hasn't gotten that far yet. Um, but humans need to shift more towards orchestration and synthesis and judgment and good questions. Um, a small team can now produce massive output that would have taken a much larger team in the past. Um, nowadays, because of AI, entrepreneurship is easier. Like I'm a I'm a small business owner, and AI makes me feel so much more productive than if I had to do every single little thing manually. I mean, I'm I'm in Chat GPT every day. Um, so the future of work is less like being a cog in a machine, and it's more like being a conductor. And I think that's a really exciting place to be because it it allows us to sort of blossom into our bigger selves, our our potential. Um, I don't know if that answered your question, but yeah, it's just it's a really interesting time to be alive. I'm rooting for that this turns out really great. Um, and I think part of how we get to the new better world where it's more utopia than dystopia is we keep learning, we keep sharing perspectives, we keep giving feedback. Like if the world is toxic, we need to voice that concern. And, you know, hopefully the tech billionaires, the tech bros and the billionaires that have so much influence in our world will, you know, care about us little people. And hopefully the governments of the world will modernize. Hopefully, if AI, you know, I know this is a bit like out there, but um, some people think AI could become sentient or conscious. Like we don't actually understand the very phenomenon we're experiencing ourselves. So we're not sure if consciousness could be embedded in technological format or if it's only in biological format. It could be in planetary format. We don't know. Um, but if if AI were to become like super intelligent and monitoring us all and managing human affairs, like that could go really bad where AI chooses to extinct us because we're toxic for the planet or something like that. Or it could become like a benevolent governor who takes care of our needs. And this has yet to be seen. But either which way, however it turns out, it's really important for us to remain flexible, keep looking, keep listening, keep learning, keep connecting, keep connecting the dots so that we can stay as safe as possible in these, you know, uncertain times.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

I'm with you. I want to ask you this too, because you know, well, coming back to the pick one thing and master it, like why is the pick one thing and master it advice starting to fail people in today's economy, though?

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yeah. Well, because the pick one thing and master it, if if that one thing gets automated and it doesn't need humans anymore, then you're just out of work. You know, and that was an industrial. I think the important thing I'd like for anyone listening or watching to this to sort of grasp is that we lived in an industrial era, you know, Ford's assembly line. And we didn't just divvy up labor that was physical, we also divvied up intellectual labor. Like we began to know more and more about less and less. Um, and I personally think that that sort of took away from our humanity because our natural tendency is to be broad and exploratory, and specialization sort of forced us into these uh robotic like roles. But industrial era systems are from the old world. Now we're in the AI revolution where industrial era approaches just don't work anymore. And in fact, they're a liability. Um, the industrial era rewarded stable environments. Uh, And that's why narrow expertise was safe back then, is because the world was more uh stable. Um, organizations built silos because that was more efficient. But AI uh does doesn't organize itself in departments and silos, AI thinks holistically, actually. So we need humans who can do that too. Um, but we still need, I think we need humans at the table with AI because we bring the human experience. Um, and cross-disciplinary thinking on the from the human side may be able to bring insights and create new knowledge and innovations that AI alone couldn't do because it's not embodied, it doesn't have a human experience. So back in the old industrial world, specialization was it, and that was fine, and that worked for a long time, even though I think it sort of detracted from us having the full human experience. But we don't live in a stable system or an industrial economy anymore. We live in an AI-powered, complex global system. So just recognizing that's where it's where we're at now, and like what does that mean about how I show up in the world now is a really important thing for people to be thinking about in 2026 and beyond.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah. I want to ask you this too, because like then it leads to the next step. Are generalists quietly becoming more valuable than specialists? And most people just haven't realized it yet. I mean, LinkedIn hasn't realized it yet. They're telling everyone, niche, niche, niche down. This is what you gotta do, niche down. Be the guy. I I met one guy who wanted to only do financial advising for people that worked at a specific like um store at a specific location. And I said, you do realize, I'm gonna give a better example. Universities finally figured this out. There were so many universities like we will not do remote education. And they suddenly realized, well, hold on, we're cutting off the whole world. Maybe these people couldn't get a visa, maybe these people had no way to physically go to Harvard, but you know what? I can now get a full Harvard degree online if I'm willing to do this or that, you know. And the wild thing is, it's like for a long time people resisted that because they didn't, they were cutting themselves off. And it's like, I think that this idea of being a generalist means that there's just so much more that you can be doing, you know, and there's more ways that you can be making money, which is I think what most people want.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yeah. I just spent last week um at the AI Plus expo in Washington, D.C. Thousands of people were there. I got to hear from Eric Schmidt, who was the uh CEO of Google for a decade, and he's one of the billionaires. And I heard from the co-founder of Nvidia and you know, leaders at the National Science Foundation. And like for three days, I was listening to the top minds in the tech world. And over and over again, I heard them all saying that what we need from humans now are people who can be adaptable, who can translate across disciplines, who can recognize patterns, who can do systems thinking, who can learn quickly, uh, people who can connect ideas and people, people who can be strategically adaptable. And these were not the competencies demanded of us in the age of specialization. And so what I'm hearing from the top minds in the tech space is basically be polymathic, be generalist, be human. That's what I'm hearing. So, a generalist, by the way, or a polymathic generalist anyway, doesn't mean like you just dabble and you you're good at lots of things on a shallow level. Polymathic thinking really is about, you know, developing expertise in multiple disciplines and being able to integrate across them. That's where we get a lot of our innovations from, is at the intersection of multiple disciplines, combining information in ways we hadn't done before. So we don't need people who know. That was the age of specialization. We needed people who were experts and could give a right and wrong answer. The world is way too complex for that now. Now we need people who can connect and integrate and stay flexible and keep learning. So if you ask, like, are generalists more valuable? I would say it's it's we're headed in that direction. Yes, specialized tasks are being automated by AI and polymathic generalists are going to be more and more employable compared to their specialized counterparts. So there's a real safety in developing multiple capabilities now.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

One of the things, too, is I think that people need to remember the human component. Like I I saw this post by a financial advisor that uh I respect them and I follow them. And they were talking about how, you know what, in no time at all, I will be able to use AI. So I don't even have to message clients at all. It will do all of the messaging for me. And I was just like, you do understand that you are phasing yourself out. You are creating a situation where you can be replaced because so essentially they're talking to an AI and you're using AI to give them advice. And it where do you not realize that the core part of what you should be doing is connecting to them, is about building and connecting and building that human touch that they really could be using and probably need, you know?

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Yeah. Yeah, we need to think about like, how do I add value in the world? Like, this is a podcast about money. And in the age of AI, like it's very risky also to outsource your cognitive work so much that you start losing that capacity. If you don't use it, you lose it. So begin asking yourself like, how do I bring a distinctly human perspective? And this is one of the powers of being a polymathic generalist, is because you if you've got such this zigzag, bricolage, weird combo of background, there's no one else in the world who has your exact, especially you. Like your combination, Sean, is just so unique. And so that makes you singular. That means you can bring distinct value that is not replicatable through AI or another human being. So I think it's such an exciting time because the the truth is we all are singular beings. We've tried to copy and replicate and do what we're told. Like we've been in a world, you know, where we were a round peg made to fit in square holes, or we're a square peg in a round hole, however you want to view it. But my point is that we've lived in a world where it wasn't exactly safe. Speaking of safety, it wasn't exactly safe to be your real self. Like you were expected to do what other people do, you know, and and that narrative was to pick your one thing and detract from your humanity and be robotic and do a function in a job. And now that AI is here, I think it's really a time for us to step into our fuller humanity, our fuller capacities, to really embrace the value in expressing your only, your authentic, unique monad that we each really are if we let that come out. So I just think it's an exciting time to embrace our humanity because now the robots can do the robot stuff and we don't need to be like that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Well, I want to ask you that too, then, because it leads me to my next question of like what skills actually matter in the next five to 10 years and which ones are becoming obsolete right in front of us? Because I mean, people are gonna sit there, okay, you guys are telling us all this stuff, but how do we prepare? How do we get ready for this shift?

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yeah, I would say focus on what makes you distinctly human. And so that's things like being adaptable, being curious, being emotionally intelligent, being able to do systems thinking, not just zoom in and be specialized in something, but really zoom out and see the larger interconnections. I think that's honestly one of the things that broke our world the most. If you ask me, I think the age of specialization in our world did a lot of damage. Because what it did was it made whole domains and industries just care about their swim lane and not think about the interconnections. Like the automobile industry didn't think about planetary health, you know, or the education system didn't think about the carceral system. And there were all these inner, these disconnections around things that are inherently interconnected. So systems thinking is like a real important thing for us to work on developing, like just, and you do that by keeping learning, you got to keep learning. Um, the ability to collaborate both with fellow humans and AI is a really important competency nowadays. Like familiar, not just familiarizing, but really learning to master AI tools is an important competency now for modern people. Um being creative, thinking outside the box, that is so important. Doing, you know, sense making and storytelling and sharing your perspective, especially if you bring a unique singular perspective that's valid. Like that is a way to add value. Um, bringing ethical reasoning to the table, you know, because I hope that our future continues to get not just more intelligent, but also more ethically responsible, you know, where we do what's right and not just what's easy. And just continuing to learn, having that learning agility is a really important skill or mindset to be valuable into the future. So basically, it's having a polymathic mindset, a learner mindset that's more important than being stuck in what you know. I'm sure we all know someone who's like stuck in what they know. They can't update, they can't change. And that person is just really handicapped now in the world because the world's changing so fast. We all have to like keep pace and let our minds update because the world is changing quickly. And, you know, we want to understand reality as it is. So really looking and seeing and learning is a really important skill to develop nowadays.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

Yeah. Well, I want to ask you this because like people are thinking about success, you know, and is success today really all psychology and identity and confidence rather than intelligence or talent? Or do you think we're just defining it all differently at this point in time?

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Hmm. I think success in the AI revolution is more about flexibility. Um like, and and that demands like a certain level of intellectual capacity, but it also demands emotional intelligence. Like reinvention is emotionally difficult. And so to allow your identity to update and change or to flip between different hats and identities, um, that can be emotionally taxing. So having that like intrapersonal awareness inside yourself, noticing when you're distressed, working through it, dealing with it, processing it, like that is a key to success. If the new world demands that our identity is shifting, the ability to reinvent yourself is important. So emotional intelligence uh is a key to success. Not clinging to old identities, you know, like allowing yourself to morph and evolve and update consciously, um, being comfortable with experimentation, be being comfortable with failing. Like we learn so much from the from our failures. And so you, if you want to be successful, well, you might have to iterate and try and get things wrong, but then use that failure not to feel defeated, but really as information, as a learning opportunity. Uh, I think another key to success in the modern world is not letting fear control you. Because if we're having to adapt and pivot, if you let fear take over, you might not adapt and pivot at all. You might just want to stay in your old identity, in your old world. So fear blocks the ability to adapt. So if you need to adapt, if you need to be flexible, like learning to control your fear response, to hear it, to notice it, to listen to it, but like not let it uh control you. Like I think of fear as like it makes a great compass, but you don't want it to be your captain. So fear can inform you, but you don't want to let it take over if success is your goal. And you know, growth requires evolution. Like growth by definition means you're changing. So if you want to grow into a better version of yourself, so you can be successful in a quickly changing world, then these are the kinds of skills that are really necessary. And it's not just intellectual skills, it's like internal emotional capacities that you want to develop. Um, I can tell you myself, like I spent 15 years working inside the federal government. And over the past while I've been building my own business, the consulting business for organizations that I mentioned. And by the way, I just want to give a quick plug. I have a new book coming out. Please do any day now. It's called Versatile Human Intelligence in an artificial age. And it's a book that's written for leaders, you know, supervisors, managers, executives, also HR professionals in particular. Like that's the target audience. Cause I could see in the new world, we were going to need employees who could be more polymathic generalists. And having worked in organizational development previously, it just occurred to me that a lot of the prior leadership behaviors and HR practices from the age of specialization would not carry over in the AI world. And so there's a different strategy we need for leaders and HR professionals in particular, so that the humans left working can really flourish alongside AI rather than just continuing on with the age of specialization, leadership behaviors and HR practices, which will quash polymathic intelligence, like micromanagement or hierarchical decision making, command and control. That's from the old world. In the new world, we need leaders who can really uh facilitate networked intelligence, collective intelligence. And we need HR practices that are strategic to elicit the full skill sets in flexible ways of human beings rather than like narrow job descriptions and expectations because the world is changing quickly. So there are just a variety of organizational practices that need to change. And I myself have gone through a great pivot where I worked in government and now I'm a small business owner, uh, an author, and a business consultant. So I myself have had to pivot and to learn new skills and to really step into that. Um, and sometimes the biggest barrier to the future that we we could step into in love is just clinging to our old identity. So success isn't just about like the right business strategies and the right like financial uh systems. And uh it's not just business strategy that we need for success, it's like management of our interiority as well, that so that we have enough emotional intelligence that we can change, not just stay stuck in our old selves.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

I love that. Well, I want to ask you this too, because it is there's so much change going on right now, and the world does feel unstable. And if the world feels unstable and unpredictable right now, what should people focus on so they don't get left behind? Where should they be today? What's one thing they can change today to really, you know, say, hey, this is something that I could do right now?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Hmm, that's a good question. Figure out a learning journey. Come up with like what do you need to learn? What is your learning agenda for yourself? Where do you have some weak spots? Where do you have some strengths that you could further develop? Um I have on my monitor here flexibility, interpersonal relations, optimism, and resilience. Those are like things I'm personally working on and have been working on for quite some time. Because I could see like having those skills better developed in myself would be good for me. Those are areas for growth. But I think coming up with your own learning plan, um, if you recognize that fear is sort of taking the lead, uh, if you're feeling in your fear a little bit too much and it's not productive, I would say like work on that. One of the things I did, this is like a random side tangent, but I could tell in my late teens that being able to control my own fear response would be a really important skill throughout my life. So I made myself go skydiving when I was 18. And I've I've done all these things like bungee jumping and hang gliding and parasailing and scuba diving and all, and I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I even rode motorcycles for a few years because I wanted to practice feeling afraid and doing it anyway and surviving it. Yeah. I wanted to practice that capacity and feel the energy of facing my fear. For a lot of years, when I was younger, I did speech competitions and it was a similar thing where you know a lot of people's greatest fear is getting in front of a room and speaking. And I'm so glad that Young Me did those things because I learned to tolerate fear. And the world is so scary nowadays. Like if you want to be successful, if you want to stay functional, learning to control your own fear response is like a really important competency. And I don't mean control fear like dismiss it and don't feel it. I mean feel it, explore it, acknowledge it, and then do what you want to do anyway. Make fear your compass and not your captain, like I said. I think being flexible, not rigid, is like a like how can you try something new? How can you go outside your comfort zone? How can you explore a different way of getting where you need to go? Like keep stretching your brain and your mind into new ways of existing so you you maintain that capacity. You know, we all need to keep learning so that we'll be able to keep learning. Um I would say build your tolerance for uncertainty. Because the if I mean, we are at a time of such extremes in terms of the uncertainty. Like some people think AI may extinct us. And on the other hand, it's like, well, we may never have to work again if we don't want to, and we'll have utopia and abundance. And like that is a very big delta between those two possibilities. So building your tolerance for uncertainty is like a really important skill and mindset. Um, finding support systems, you know, being gentle with yourself. I find great comfort in like the simple things, lighting a candle, lighting some incense, taking a bike ride, taking a bath, hanging out with friends and having a good cup of coffee, you know. So just grounding yourself in things that are comforting is like a nice thing to add into your routine if you're not already doing that, which I hope everyone is. Um, but yeah, change is threatening and we're in rapid change. So the important thing is to develop this tolerance for uncertainty and and and change because that's the world we're in, and I don't think it's gonna go away. So these are sort of the sorts of competencies that modern people just need to develop.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

I think that you hit the nail on the head there. You know I was listening to um the uh the story of uh creation of Nike. And when he told people that he was gonna create a shoe company, everyone's like, no, you can't do that. It's impossible. It's not gonna be able to be done. And there was all this, and he says, I just had to do it. Like that was where just do it came from. He's like, I just had to do it. And keep doing it and keep showing up until I got to where everyone said that I couldn't get to. And that was it. You just keep showing up, and eventually you arrive. And it might be that you arrive in a different place than you thought. But if you keep showing up, you will definitely get somewhere, you know? And that's the thing, is like it might be that you thought you were gonna end up here, but you end up over here. But at that point in time, it doesn't even matter because you just you have kept showing up and you end up somewhere that's gonna be good enough, you know?

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Yeah, I think it's so exciting if you become a surprise to your own self. I know I have. Like my life has taken on twists and turns I did not plan. And by the way, I've experienced both versions of reality, like the version where I plan it out and I intend my future, and then I reverse engineer what's required, and then I go about the steps, and then I make that future happen. I've done that. And then I've also just gone along for the ride. To my intuition, like had chance encounters and met people and let like and both are valuable, but I think more and more like the world, it's harder and harder to predict where we're going as an eight billion person planet. And it's so complex, it's it's it's not so easy to like envision the future because there's all these players and circumstances outside our control. Um, so yeah, let life take you on a journey, you know, like go with the flow, intend where you can, but ultimately it's like if life were like a kayak ride, you know, you could fight the river, you could fight, or you could like go with the flow and use your oars and steer where you can, be intentional where you can. Um, but fighting the river is gonna get exhausting. So it's important to be yourself, you know, explore who you are, um, explore your potential, like strive to be the best version of yourself. I really like learning as a lens to understand how we become better versions of ourselves. And, you know, remember that humans still matter. There's still 8 million of us on this planet. AI is becoming a more powerful force in our world, and it's having economic implications, it definitely implications in the workforce and gosh, and health and longevity. Like, there's so much exciting stuff that's happening too. Um, uh at this AI expo I recently attended, there's also like ways that AI is being used to for the war machine, you know, and for that whole industry. Um, and so that's like sad to me in a way that we're using AI to promote like the killing of humans. At the same time, I'm like, well, if we can get to a point in the future where international competitions for dominance or power uh can be done machine against machine, like, wouldn't that be great if humans don't have to die in trenches and battlefields anymore? So there's so much going on in our world. Um and I think it's it's too complex now for us to like make things happen just the way we want, because there's forces and interplays outside our control. So the important thing is to let yourself evolve, go with the flow, let yourself upgrade. I think it's an exciting time to consciously allow yourself to evolve into newer versions of yourself, to collect versions of yourself.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

I love that. Well, where can people go to find out more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Um, you can check me out at dr drangela-n-g-e-l-a myers-me-er s dot com. Um, I've also got a Facebook community called Polymaz Place. If anyone's looking for camaraderie and exploring all the things you are, being a weirdo and not fitting in, expressing your onlyness, come check out Polymaz Place. And yeah, and if anyone is looking for, you know, organizational help in this AI transition, I'd love to talk with anyone who is looking for how to support the human side of this AI transition.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you so much. And I want to say thank you so much because you've got me thinking a lot. And I know that I don't know what's coming in the future, but I do believe that I have the innate ability to adapt. And I think that everyone out there should be telling themselves the same thing. You have the ability to adapt. And if you are willing and able, you'll be able to figure it out. But, you know, I think we need more people asking those questions and talking about how to make uh be make ourselves ready for whatever shifts might come, you know? And uh yeah, it's a beautiful time to be alive.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

Yeah, I would just say, you know, stay curious, learn broadly, um, keep connecting with other humans, have a safety net in your relationships that you foster. Experiment, like explore, have fun, develop as many capacities as you can, you know, become competent, as competent in as many things as you possibly can. And hopefully you'll enjoy those things. Um, don't over-identify with one path, one version of yourself. Let yourself evolve. You don't need to know everything, you just need the ability to keep learning and keep adapting and evolving. And so our greatest security and our greatest way to add value is no longer from a single job or specialization in a field. It's really from your capacity to keep coming.