Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Workers: The Growth of "Jobbies"
Knowledge workers lead multiple lives. They're successful professionals in the workplace. They're committed parents at home. And over the last few decades, they've found ways to integrate these lives. They have flexible schedules, do work tasks at home and vice versa, and at least occasionally telecommute.
As the boundaries between work and family life have become more porous, a new frontier is coming into view: the self. Working on the self--whether it's body building or developing the natural artist inside--is filling all the spare time that workers can find, and it is often here that they feel they do their best and most important work. Meanwhile, companies are realizing that there are untapped skills and passions in the "hobbies." Self-expression is thus poised to become the next arena of daily life to enter the workplace. With this trend will come the growth of "jobbies"--jobs that build on workers' personal forms of self-expression.