The Career Accelerator No One Wants to Talk About

We’ve all seen the headlines. Commencement speakers booed for mentioning artificial intelligence. Graduates bristling at the idea that the world they spent four years preparing to enter has already changed before they could cross the stage.

Underneath the boos is something very human: fear.

Fear that a degree may not mean what it once meant. Fear that hard work is no longer enough. Fear that technology is moving faster than our ability to understand it, much less master it.

I get the anxiety. But I also side with Scott Borchetta, the founder of Big Machine Records, the label that launched Taylor Swift. When he took heat for championing AI during a speech at Middle Tennessee State University, his response was brief and brutal:

“Deal with it.”

That may sound harsh. It is also the most useful career advice anyone can hear.

Because the world is not going to slow down to protect our comfort. Industries will keep evolving. Tools will keep changing. Old certainties will keep dissolving. The people who thrive will not be the ones who complain most eloquently about disruption. They will be the ones who learn to look over the horizon, imagine several possible futures, and begin preparing before everyone else is ready to admit the future has arrived.

As an author, I see the AI debate play out every day. Publicly, many in the creative community treat artificial intelligence as a pariah. Privately, after a couple of beers, some of those same people admit how often they use it for brainstorming, research, outlining, editing, and problem solving.

AI is here. It is not going away.

We have to deal with it.

The Future Belongs to the Prepared

Anticipating the next wave has always been the difference between drifting and directing your life.

During my college years, I worked my way through the academic maze and barely graduated. But I also accumulated enough hands-on experience to move directly from the classroom into the radio control room. Even then, I was studying a new industry called cable television, asking myself what a hiring manager might need next, and trying to become that person.

Later, during a flirtation with academia, my office became a regular stop for former college football and basketball players bodies had carried them as far as they could. Now they were facing a terrifying question:

Who am I when the thing I built my identity around is over?

Many were smart, disciplined, charismatic, and competitive. But they had spent years preparing for one narrow future. When that future closed, they had no map.

I developed a diagnostic checklist. Before I would sit down with an athlete, I asked them to think through a few questions:

·      What is your purpose?

·      What would you do if money were not the first concern?

·      What talents do you have that align with that passion?

·      How might your target industry change in the next five years?

·      What will you do if the job you want today becomes irrelevant tomorrow?

·      What skills, networks, and tools do you need to compete in that future?

·      And most importantly, what three concrete things can you do today to prepare for tomorrow?

Those questions were not just for athletes. They are for anyone trying to build a meaningful life in unstable times.

Which means they are for all of us.

We are living through one of the most uncertain job markets in generations. No position is permanent. No industry is immune. Innovation will keep redefining the value of our skills.

That sounds frightening until you realize that uncertainty also creates openings.

The spoils will go to those who ask better questions, spot hidden needs, and bring solutions before they are requested.

Whenever I interviewed for a role, I did exhaustive homework. I wanted to know how the company made money. Who its competitors were. Where it was vulnerable. What problems might be keeping the leadership team awake at night.

Tom Hanks’ famous advice applies perfectly here:

Show up on time. Know your lines. Bring an idea.

A great interview is not an interrogation. It is a consulting session.

You are not merely asking someone to validate your résumé. You are entering the room prepared to diagnose needs, identify gaps, and offer useful thinking. Sometimes that means imagining a role that does not exist yet and helping the employer see why it should.

Act now as the person you intend to become, and you increase the odds of becoming that person.

The executive interviewing you may be under more pressure than you realize. Their business may be wobbling. Their department may be understaffed. Their strategy may be out of date. If they are wise, they will recognize the value of a person who brings purpose, preparation, adaptability, and ideas.

But the evaluation goes both ways.

You are not simply trying to be chosen. You are deciding whether to temporarily align your personal brand with their institutional brand.

I once flew out to meet the senior leadership of a mid-sized corporation to discuss an executive role. Within hours, it became obvious that my intensity clashed with their more relaxed culture.

We mutually agreed to schedule an earlier flight home.

That was not failure. It was data.

I have always been a techno-nerd.

My first computer was a Commodore 64. Over the years, I taught myself BASIC, Perl, C, Python, Java, R, HTML, YAML and machine language. I built my own radio automation system before commercial options were widely available.

But the technology was never the destination.

It was transportation.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins argues that great companies view technology as an accelerator, not as the source of greatness itself. That distinction matters. AI can accelerate your thinking, your coding, your research, your writing, your productivity, and your ability to connect dots across disciplines.

But it cannot give you judgment.

It cannot give you integrity.

It cannot give you purpose.

Those still must come from you.

AI has dramatically expanded my ability to write code for home automation, manage my radio station, synthesize information, and test ideas quickly. But I still audit what it produces. I still distrust easy answers. I still look for opposing evidence. I still want to understand both sides of the equation before I make a decision.

The tool is powerful.

The responsibility remains human.

Grab the First Handhold

I fail often. I start down paths that may lead nowhere. I pivot. I revise. I abandon ideas I once thought were brilliant.

But when I find something that sits at the intersection of purpose, passion, talent, and opportunity, I find a way to keep climbing.

That is the mindset I wish every new graduate, displaced worker, career changer, and newly minted free agent could adopt.

Do not fear the mountain because it is unfamiliar.

Great mountaineers do not stand at the base complaining that the peak was not on yesterday’s map. They study the rock. They test the weather. They check their gear. They learn from those who climbed before them. Then they grab the first available handhold and pull themselves high enough to see the next one.

That is how careers are built now.

Not by waiting for certainty.

Not by resenting change.

Not by hoping the old world returns.

But by preparing, adapting, experimenting, learning, and climbing.

In other words:

Deal with it.