i don’t know what jobs my kids will have. but i know they’ll need this.
A tweet has been doing the rounds lately.
The uncomfortable takeaway is this:
If intelligence is now cheap and abundant because of AI, what actually matters anymore?
That question hits differently when you’re a parent.
Because if we don’t know which jobs will exist in 10-15 years (we don’t), then what exactly are we preparing our kids for?
The Wrong Question
Most parents ask:
What should my child study?
Which skills are future-proof?
Which jobs are safe from AI?
I think those are the wrong questions.
The better one is:
What kind of person thrives no matter how the world changes?
I keep coming back to one answer: agency.
Why I Keep Coming Back to Agency
Job titles decay.
Industries rotate.
Prestige expires.
But the ability to notice a problem, take responsibility for it, and move things forward without waiting to be told compounds in every environment.
That’s high agency.
If I had to pick a small set of traits to prioritise for our kids - traits that survive uncertainty - this would be at the top.
High Agency vs Low Agency Traits
This table is the entire post. It shows the difference between low-agency and high-agency traits:
Once you see it, you start noticing it everywhere - at work, in school systems, in relationships, and uncomfortably, in yourself.
What I’m Trying to Teach My Kids (Quietly)
You don’t teach agency with lectures or nagging.
You train it by:
Letting kids struggle instead of rescuing
Rewarding initiative, not just outcomes
Asking “What do you think we should do?” instead of giving answers
Letting inaction have consequences
It’s uncomfortable.
It’s slower.
It looks messy.
But it builds something more durable.
The Real Divide Going Forward
I don’t think the future splits into:
STEM vs arts
Technical vs non-technical
White-collar vs blue-collar
I think it splits into: people who wait - and people who move.
High agency doesn’t guarantee success.
But low agency almost guarantees stagnation.
That’s why this matters.
I don’t know what jobs my kids will have.
But I’m making a quiet bet.
That in a world where intelligence is abundant and instructions are automated, the people who do well will be the ones who don’t wait to be told what to do.
So that’s what I’m looking to train - not loudly, not perfectly, but consistently.
Agency first. Everything else can be learned.