Learn anything.

The future hinges on your ability to ask great questions, seek out and find the best answers, put that information to use, and to communicate about this effectively.

Technology is placing a lot of pressure on everyone. It is introducing compounding amounts of uncertainty into a competitive world.

Here's where we need to take a minute to breathe.

What is unlikely to change is our needs for the basics

1) A core moral sense and ethical foundation

2) Fulfilling relationships with others

3) A desire to reconcile our universal values with our love for the particular

4) Lenses and frameworks through which to evaluate the world and truth

5) Curiosity that drives us to ask questions and seek that truth in the first place

6) Courage to be right, as well as to be wrong

7) Skills that help us achieve our objectives

None of these require that we be rich. None of them require us to be powerful in a worldly sense. These gifts simply require that we cultivate them. They require that we try and fail and try again.

Most of the world will push you to constantly and rapidly acquire skills. They will sell you every course. Heck, even I love teaching skills.

You need skills.

Just remember that, in your pursuit of them, they are #7 on this list because they are there to serve, develop and implement the top 6.

Your questions, values, frameworks and relationships will determine whether you even put them to use, and if you do, to what ends? Do you use your math skills to help research rare diseases or do you just sit on them, never to even blow dust off the cover of your books? Do you use your training to add value or conceal wrongdoing? It's up to you. The first six are the hard ones, and you never stop working on them..

Look, skills are darn near free. They mostly cost you time and concentration. I know...nothing's free, but hear me out.

If you don't believe me, get a library card and go read, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Modern Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding. Write down pertinent information in a dollar-store notebook. Go to a Planet Fitness for $10 a month and go everyday for 6 months. Talk to people who have achieved healthy results in a healthy way. You will gain knowledge and a skill for $10 a month. Your curiosity kicks in, and you want to learn human anatomy, kinesiology, and nutrition. A path is then set for your to go to established strength and conditioning coaches to learn how best to help others.

Or you can borrow books on a particular topics Read them thoroughly. Take notes in a notebook. Use the web and e-mail to contact the author with well-thought out questions that can't just be looked up. You will be pleasantly surprised how many great responses you get. If you contact a professor, odds are that your questions will be comparable to or ahead of most of those from their students, many of whom never even come to class.

Or find out what databases and skill training modules your library is connected to. For instance, the public library in Osterville, MA is linked with Udemy. Pick one skill. Hammer on it for 60 days. You will have the beginnings of a life-changing ability.

Your relationship to my top 6 items are as individual as you are. And as you learn skills, apply them in service of your values and relationships. You will make a difference in your life and the lives of others. You will learn as you go.

Michael Kane is a career coach in Hyannis, MA. He is convinced that the best majors in the era of Chat GPT are philosophy, math, and hospitality, and not necessarily in that order. All three are about relationships. If he can help you discover what you want to do most, e-mail him at [email protected].