cf #95: how to future-proof ourselves
:lolsob:
You are reading contentfolks—a monthly(ish) blend of sticky notes, big content ideas, and small practical examples. Thank you for being here! ~fio
Hey there 👋
If you were the ball inside a pinball machine, this is probably what your life would feel like: you are quietly going about your business when BAM!, you’re suddenly catapulted into chaos, bouncing off things and spinning around erratically. What used to be up is now down—or maybe left or right? It’s hard to tell. And just as you’re starting to regain your bearings, BAM!, you hit a flipper and you’re flung right back up in the middle of the flashing lights and loud sounds…
…which, if you ask me, looks suspiciously similar to the first half of 2025. You probably felt it too: the sudden acceleration. The disorientation. The noise.
Cognitive dissonance levels = high
I don’t remember another time in my career where I had to navigate this level of disruption while simultaneously having to wrestle with (very) conflicting feelings. Maybe this resonates? My list includes:
Worried about the future of our industry and careers—while also enjoying the tools that might eventually do us out of our jobs1
Feeling energised by the act of learning new things—while also getting exhausted by the speed of change and the pressure to keep up
Loving the creative freedom—while also worrying about the long-term erosion of brand equity and strategic focus
Enjoying the momentum of fast-moving projects—while also knowing that good work sometimes needs time to unfold properly2
Pushing ahead, because what else can you do?—while also feeling a sense of impending doom about the real cost(s) of it all
It’s a lot to hold all of this in mind while also, you know, getting your actual work done 🫠
How to future-proof ourselves & our teams
My working theory is that our long-term employability as marketers depends less on which tools and technology we mastered (or didn’t), and more on the mental models we use to approach work—whatever ‘work’ looks like 1, 5, 20 years from now.
For example, there are at least two core modes of thought every marketer should master moving forward, no matter your job description or level of seniority:
Sequential thinking, or if this, then that logic → the foundational ability to map out conditions and define what happens when they are, or are not, met. As more marketing moves towards automation and workflows, if this, then that skills become essential; but the approach is still just as powerful for non-automated work, like breaking down and managing complex projects, identifying dependencies, and removing blockers.
Consequential thinking, or thinking through actions and their ripple effects → the foundational skill of anticipating the outcomes of a decision and the next layer of consequences that follow. It’s the one you use for pitching projects, getting buy in, and recommending pivots and experiments; it’s also the model you use to evaluate investment trade-offs, like balancing short-term activation with long-term brand building.
My point here: by all means, meet the moment and build a baseline level of AI fluency. But don’t forget to double down on sharpening how you think, switching between models quickly, and sometimes applying multiple ones3 at once.
Tools will always come and go, but the ability to think clearly, adapt, and make sense of things compounds over time.
That’s my mindset for the second half of 2025—and if you have been feeling like a (pin)ball as well, I recommend giving it a try.
Here’s an example of that dissonance: last week, I read this piece about the CEO of Relay.app building himself 40 AI agents instead of a 5-person marketing team. My knee-jerk reaction was somewhere between mild horror and deep annoyance—but I also immediately signed up for a free trial to see what I could do with it.
Unsurprisingly, this newsletter feels like my private arts & crafts corner: a place to make something I want to make, exactly as I want to make it, taking however long it takes. For example, today’s issue began as a stray thought last Wednesday as I got woken up at 6am by a windstorm. I tinkered with the concept over an 8-hour train ride on Saturday, then wrote what felt like 23 separate drafts on Sunday in between jigsaw puzzle breaks. Let it sit on Monday, rewrote 75% of it on Tuesday, and I’m still tweaking it now that I’m about 10 minutes from sending. I am fully aware I am giving off ‘Victorian gentleman building a ship in a bottle by candlelight’ vibes here, but hey!, it’s my arts & crafts corner and these are the rules 😉
I have subscribed to many marketing newsletter, and this one is still the best.
Great post, and the pinball analogy is SO true.
Arguably the ability to think clearly is only magnified as LLMs present increasingly convincing arguments in support of bad ideas…