Struggling to stay afloat? Here’s what needs to change (and what doesn’t)

Zack Arnold (ACE) is an award-winning, twenty-five year veteran of film & television editing (notable credits include Netflix’s Cobra Kai, Glee, Empire, Burn Notice) turned career coach who helps creatives and digital artisans navigate difficult life transitions and pursue more meaningful work…without burning out.

If you’re struggling to navigate a career pivot, he’s open and willing to connect with you at → zack@thearnoldacademy.com.

Zack Arnold

Since the pandemic I have conducted literally hundreds of one-on-one Zoom conversations with creatives (primarily editors) across six continents about how rapidly the game has changed and how much more difficult it has become to make a sustainable living as a digital craftsperson. Every single conversation basically boils down to one of three realizations:

“Everything I was doing that used to get me work isn’t working anymore. Something needs to change.”

“I’ve been fortunate enough to keep working, but the job is harder than ever. I’m overwhelmed and burned out. Something needs to change.”

“Work isn ‘t my top priority anymore, I need to focus on life. But I have no idea where to start or how to structure my time. Something needs to change.”

The common thread → Something needs to change.

No matter where you are in work or life, I’m guessing you’re feeling the same anxiety driven by the uncertainty across all the media and content spaces. What used to work isn’t working anymore. The game has changed, and so have the rules.

To help you navigate this next uncertain phase of your work and your life, here are three perspectives I believe need to change in order to succeed in this new world (and two things that will never need to change).

Mindset Shift #1 → Specialization is dead. This is a generalist’s world (again).

For the vast majority of recorded history we has a human species have been generalists. It’s only over the last few hundred years since the Industrial Revolution that we have been reduced to specialized widgets serving a very specific role. Our “modern” educational system has trained us from as early as pre-school to pursue a singular path and master one craft. The promise was that by doing so we would have stable employment, we would be useful to society, and if we showed up on time and worked hard we would have a good life and a secure retirement.

Specialization is now the riskiest path of all. We have re-entered the world where only the generalists will survive. What needs to change is re-assessing the value we bring as creatives and craftspeople beyond our specialized skillset or tool of choice. It is the unique combination of our human skills, our abilities, our unique knowledge, and our life experiences beyond our résumés that allow us to bring the human touch to our work that the robots can never provide.

If you have spent much of your career thinking that being a “Jack of all trades” was your kryptonite, it is now your superpower.

Mindset Shift #2 → Your job title is not your identity (and neither are your tools).

In this new world that will be dominated by the generalists, what needs to change is the belief that the job title at the top of your résumé is your identity. What you do is not who you are. Moreover, if you’ve been carrying the identity for most of your career that you are a “Premiere Editor” or a “Da Vinci Colorist,” it’s not your tools that set you apart, it’s your choices. What the robots cannot (and most likely will never) replace is your taste, the thousands of micro decisions you make on a daily basis based on your intuition, and your human ability to empathize which allows you to make choices that result in your audience feeling something.

Step away from the idea that you are one thing or one tool and instead leverage the diversity that makes you human.

Mindset Shift #3 → Diversification is the only sustainable path forwards.

I don’t need to tell you how much harder it has become to make a sustainable living doing one thing. If you’re waiting until things go back to “normal” again, we’re there. This is the new normal. And diversification across multiple income streams is the only sustainable path forwards.

Up until this point in your career you have most likely invested your entire portfolio in only one or two stocks. And for much of your career those investments most likely paid off. Sure there were dips in the market, but the feasts outweighed the famines. In today’s market you will not survive without a diversified portfolio such that when one or two stocks dip you have other income streams covering those losses.

If you’re looking for the right places to invest your attention to diversify your career portfolio, begin by focusing on what will never change.

What Never Changes → The world will always need stories (and human storytellers to tell those stories).

We’ve already reached the point where generative AI can all-but replicate our entire body of work since the advent of motion pictures. But I think we can all agree that what we’re seeing just doesn’t feel quite right. It’s missing something…the human touch.

I do believe generative AI will create an entirely new medium with new and interesting ways to tell stories we could never tell before. However (and this is a BIG however), I also strongly believe we will always crave stories told by humans. Since fires lit paintings on cave walls, we have told stories to help us navigate our place in this world. So if we as humans use stories as our means to make sense of the world around us – and if we are still figuring out ourselves what it means to be human – how can we expect the robots will ever be able to tell our stories for us?

Stories are how we make sense of the chaos surrounding us that we call “reality.” And we will always need humans to be the ones telling our stories. Which means we will always need each other.

What Never Changes → You will always need a strong network.

What has not changed (and will never change) is your need for a strong network of peers, “experts,” and mentors. In this new world where the market is saturated by both an endless pool of available human talent as well as entire specialized sectors being eliminated by the robots, the only meaningful opportunities aligned with the true human value you bring will come from your network of humans.

Even if up until this point in your career most of your opportunities have “fallen in your lap” via your existing referral network, that will happen less and less (if it isn’t already?). At the very least you should be investing the same amount of time and energy into expanding your professional network as you do learning your tools and your craft, if not more. Because the path forwards for the creatives and generalists like us is through genuine, human relationships.

What got us here will not get us there.

It is more difficult than ever to maintain a sustainable career as a knowledge worker and digital artisan. Accepting that our previous definition of “normal” will never return is the first, most important step. Step 2 is moving beyond the limited perception you have of yourself as one specialized skill, one specific piece of software, or one job title and instead embracing the broad value your unique tastes, knowledge, opinions, abilities, and perspectives bring to not only the digital but also the analog world.