August 1, 2019 by Dymphna

Truth Bomb Tuesday: The truth about the gig economy…

I always thought the gig economy was a disaster! I never thought about it in this way before.

Everyone complains about the ‘gig economy’.

I get it. The nature of work is changing. Secure full-time work is slowly being replaced with ‘gigs’ – temporary, variable-hour work.

Soon, they say, there won’t be any secure, full-time jobs left in the economy, if there any jobs left at all.

And I can get why people see the rise of the gig economy as a bad thing. It was easier to plan your financial future when you had a job for life. You felt more secure about everything when you had secure work. On the whole, it was easier… more comfortable.

But where some people see a ‘gig economy’ I see a ‘responsibility economy’.

The modern nature of work is forcing us to take on a radical responsibility for our own lives.

This isn’t easy, but it can have a profound impact on your growth as a person.

And let me ask you this, other things being equal, would you rather be your own boss or would you rather have some one else telling you what to do and when to do it?

Would you rather have your entire career determined by some decisions you made in high-school, or would you rather have the freedom to explore your own interests and passions?

And would you rather have income security because there are a bunch of laws that make you impossible to fire, or because you have developed a set of skills that make you invaluable to others?

I’m not saying everything is awesome and I’m not trying to trivialise how hard life in the gig economy is…

I just want to point out that a lot of things worth fighting for in life, are hard.

And for all the challenges that the gig economy presents, there are some real blessings too.

Like it or not, the responsibility economy is here. And it’s going to have a huge impact on who we are as a people.

I look forward to seeing where that growth leads us.

DB