This week I cover generational differences, something consistently relevant but especially today. It’s a fun topic, mostly because we LOVE to hate on other generations. But the hate needs to be tempered – there’s lots of learning to be had.

We typically speak of generational differences in the context of work (Boomers vs. Millennials!), but the conversation needs to go significantly further than that. The differences have major impact on societal changes, political changes, community and home changes; and as we sit at major decision points, we have to be able to learn from different generations and incorporate the perspectives.

Here is why: context changes. The year 1985 was viewed very differently from people in their 20s, 40s and 60s. The same is true today.

Growing up at the tail end of Gen X, my perspective has been formed by the way we were treated by previous generations, as well as the context of our experiences and major events. Gen X was the “lazy generation,” and at a macro level, you can see that it’s left the generation as skeptical, yet capable, of doing important things.

Whether you find yourself in the Boomer set, Gen X, Millennial or Gen Z, we all have opinions on our own generation and others. But it’s important to remember that we each generation has validity of perspective; one that we can interpret and learn from, but those learnings and lessons must be adapted to today’s context.

The world will evolve in spite of each generation, and we will see each generation arc over to a struggle for relevance. It’s happened before and will continue to happen. No matter the decision you have to make – the learning mindset of approaching and understanding others will provide value and influence that is far bigger than the short term decision of today.

With that – have a good week, enjoy your learning.

“We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us….but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?” – JG Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur Your Title Goes Here

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Welcome to bellwether. Thank you for joining again. This week episode, 106. We’re gonna talk about the different generations. Very topical right now. I like to do topical things and we’re talking in a topical sense about the difference. The generational differences between boomers X, me is X millennials, Z, um, Y ABC, and every other letter. Uh, and I’ve talked about this before. Typically we talk about differing generations in the context of work boomers and millennials. It was like the, the battle of the century, the <laugh> right. They hate each other, um, the okay boomer and the, the ignorant millennials and the, you know, whatever it is that they want, but generationally, we there’s, there’s a lot of context by generation that really influences our, our worldview and our perspectives. And it’s kind of fascinating, the more you dive into it and the, the different generations that are out there and, and the way that they approach things.So this leads to beyond the workplace, things like societal changes, legal changes, political changes, uh, all very relevant today. And, and we can learn from these different generations as major decisions get made, or when we’re thinking about something relevant to ourselves. So for example, um, one time a while ago, I did a, uh, a podcast. I think I did a podcast on retirement and what baby boomers can learn from millennials in terms of the mindset of preparing the mentality of preparing for retirement. Now, we always talk about retirement in the context of financial decision, and do you have enough money to, to retire and go do whatever it is you want to do? Um, but there’s a psychological aspect too. And how do you approach it from an entrepreneurial standpoint to a keeping busy standpoint, to a side hustle standpoint, um, to a project based, you know, how do you keep yourself busy without doing the full grind kind of thing?And, uh, at the time, this was a few years ago, it was very, it was very topical from a millennial, uh, standpoint, um, point. Um, and just to be clear, uh, I’m not a millennial, I’m not a baby boomer, I’m at the tail end of generation X, which is the greatest generation. I will say that. Um, but I understand my wife’s a millennial and, and so I’m, I’m closer to that millennial so than I am to the boomers, but, um, but there was a time, you know, when the first baby boomer millennial kind of go at it, aspect of challenging each other, uh, I mean, it was probably at least a decade ago. Um, the millennials were probably what, late twenties, mid twenties. And so, um, you know, it was at that time when a generation was having fun, they should be having fun, um, and boomers resented it. And that kindOf led to the whole entire, um, difficulty, but, but the mindset and the way the millennials had approached work, thanks to the technology and context of everything that had happened was very different than the typical way that the boomers would’ve approached and even previous generations, because the world had changed completely. And, uh, you could kind of see the boomers resented the youth almost. And I mean, we and gen X dealt with it as well. We were the lazy generation, but, um, but so it’s interesting that generations hitting different times, you know, everyone’s gonna hate gen Z because they’re young <laugh>, but, but their, their world view is gonna be very different. So where this all came up from and why I wanted to talk about it. Uh, and, and really the point of this podcast is to just to get you to think about it.It’s not like you wanna solve problems with this thing, but, uh, I have a, a young lady who works for me, her name’s Leah. She has all my social media, um, because I hate social media. Um, I just hate doing it and I don’t do it. And, and it’s almost table stakes. You have to do it if you have a business. And so I’ve got Leah to do it for me, and she gives me a list of things to do, and I’ll do a quick video for whatever she asks and I put it out and, or I send it to her and she puts it out. Um, and there you go. Right. Uh, great, good, good, good, good. She does good work and, and I like it, but we were talking about stuff, but she wanted to, um, she said, can I repost something from Gary V for those who don’t know Gary Vayner, Chuck, he runs Vayner media.He did wine.com. He’s kind of a forward thinker, very popular, lots of followers. And I, I kind of jumped on the fence on that one. Uh, and it led to a longer discussion on why generation X really doesn’t care for Gary V um, from my, from where I sit and I’m, I’m probably, it’s not that I don’t care for him, but I, I, you know, the value is questionable and I’ve kind of ebbed and flowed on, on Gary V. And, um, it just led to a longer conversation on, on generational differences and, and she loves Gary V, um, which is great. And there’s a generation who loves Gary V and, and I, I think, you know, my initial response to her was the reason we don’t really care for Gary V is that generation X, if you could give us a word to define our generation, it would probably be skeptical.Uh, generation X is known to be very skeptical of everything. Um, and, uh, I, I think it’s a great, obviously I think it’s a great way to be, um, we tend to dive into, or at least I do sometimes I go into cynicism a little too much, but, you know, skepticism is, is kind of relevant. So, um, the value of what people are putting out, which is, um, we’re skeptical of it. And, uh, and it’s just based on our experiences and the way that we were raised. And, and, you know, we were constantly told we were the worst generation and the lazy generation and, um, with all of our grunge music and, and good stuff from the late eighties and early nineties, um, it was the first time that, that we had almost that scale. We could share information and, and boomers could share information.And, um, we’ve gone through more changes than, than some of the other generations and the younger generations are going through even more than that. So, um, so much of the discussion that we had, uh, with Leah was, you know, a lot of the discussion normally is between boomers and millennials, but there’s a gen X and gen Z one that’s going to, to shake out. Um, and it’s going to be driven by, or, or it’s going to result in something very different because gen X’s skepticism is very different than, uh, I think if you used the word to describe boomers, not being a boomer, uh, I think the, the non boomers would probably describe them as selfish. The non gen X would probably come up with other words besides skeptical that wouldn’t necessarily be positive. Um, millennials would come up with very different words to describe themselves than the other generations, um, as well as, as gen Z, because, you know, we’re, we think of ourselves as each generation thinks of ourselves is fantastic.But, um, when we think about Gary V back to the story, uh, the reason we’re skeptical of it, and, and I’ll, I can only talk about my perspective on it is when he first started making, uh, a ruckus, I guess, online, I was fairly dismissive of it only because it was just speaking of platitudes, right. There was no real value in it. Um, and, uh, and I said, that’s great, but it doesn’t mean anything. And, and then I started to come around and say, all right, some people can get value out of it. It hits people at the right time. Find maybe somebody gets value out of it. Um, but you know, what’s the message. And, and what’s really the point. And then I kind of went back to, you know, this whole NFT stuff, and yes, it’s valid. It’s gonna change the world and everything else.But, um, again, what’s the value and, and people, I think my issue with Gary V now is people blindly follow without fully understanding. Um, and so while Gary V has value, I would say gen X looks at it from a slightly different perspective. You know, some of us could hustle in multiple ways. You know, the big thing about Gary V was about hustling and, and there’s, there’s validity to that. And I think a lot of millennials and younger generations really were able to hustle, take the weekends to go do the garage sales and flip it and do all those types of things. And you’ll see that now. And, and I would attribute all of the, the COVID hustling, the people buying up all the properties and trying to turn them into Airbnbs and doing all of the stuff that comes down to hustle and side income and everything else, um, which is okay.Uh, gen X, we’re probably a little too late for that. Um, we have a different context, you know, money’s tied up in mortgages and kids and, and everything else. Um, so we’re at a different time in our lives, millennials who maybe in their late twenties, early thirties, haven’t quite made that yet are able to use some of this extra income to, to do these side hustles. And that’s great. And so that’s, that’s probably relative. Um, but my, my issue is, um, we need to take things like Gary V and interpret it based on where we are in that current moment. And, and each generation is in a different place at that current moment. Um, and, and I think the challenges with, with generations, I feel like boomers probably got the, the, the thing in the fifties and the sixties, right? They hated the different types of music and the older generations hated them from the late 18 hundreds.You know, the, you know, these crazy kids and calling young kids snowflakes it’s been around forever. Um, but there is a validity to the young generations, like gen Z. There is an idealism that comes from less exposure. It’s part of it’s naive naivety. However you pronounce that naivety naivety, um, and more exposure impacts our worldview. Um, we suddenly become more right and less of a learner. Um, and, uh, you know, we always joked in gen Z about being the worst class ever. We were told the worst class, this, we were the worst class the school has ever been. And I feel like that’s probably every, every grade that comes up. Um, but when we think about the context of different generations, the boomers growing up in just massive growth, it’s the end of world war II. It was so not typical. Every like the us was at the top of the world.Um, they didn’t really have to work the way that other people have to work. Other countries had to work, um, and that impacts their worldview now, whereas the us is on a slight decline, if not a precipitous decline, um, their perspective on how easy it was previously is not necessarily relevant today. And, um, you know, me thinking about being gen X, I didn’t have my first email address until I was in college. I didn’t have my first cell phone until I think I was a senior in college. Um, you know, we grew up before nine 11. I remember coming off planes and my parents meeting me at the plane. Um, we didn’t carry around the phone. There was a lot, you didn’t know everything about gen X is we just didn’t know. And if you wanted to learn something, you had to go to the library and actually look it up.Um, and we didn’t care to know it, and it was okay. And, and we had to figure things out and you know, now we have, now you look at the next generations who are growing up in this context where all the information is at their fingertips. And I spoke last week in last week’s podcast. I think it was, um, in terms of believability where information is constantly at our fingertips now. And how do you become a believable individual? Because just having knowledge doesn’t really do anything for you, just knowing facts. Doesn’t do anything for you. It’s how do you turn that into wisdom and interpret it into a, a different type of thing. So thingsLike Gary V promoting all this hustle stuff and, and everything else is fine. If you know how to interpret it for your particular situation. Um, and we do that through learning and we can learn from different perspectives. So I think the main point of today is I’ve been rambling for like 15 minutes is we can learn from other generations, but we have to apply their learnings and lessons to today’s context. Today’s context is very different than anything that came before us making rules in the 1980s or making decisions in the 1980s are fundamentally different than the decisions we’d be making today. Um, I see it a lot in the coaching world, senior coaches, the gray-haired coaches who are coming out, who were Titans of business in the eighties and nineties, who are trying to talk about what Jack Welch did is completely irrelevant today. It’s so outdated.And we find now that a lot of the things that were, you know, law of the land, the rules of, of how business operated and, and everything else from the eighties and nineties are really early, two thousands are irrelevant 20, 30 years. Right now, I just saw something. When I, I remember the early nineties, this movie came out called dazed and confused, and I loved it. It was, I’ve watched it hundreds of times. Um, and it was about this one day at this one high school in the 1970s, it was like 1975 or 76 or something. Basically it was 17 years before the movie was made. And if that movie was made today in 2022, it would be about 2005. And when I watched the movie in the early 1990s, the 1970s was a completely different world. Yes, I was born in the seventies, but you didn’t really get the seventies.Right. You just heard about it from before. And when you watch this movie in the early nineties, which was, you know, we were listening to Pearl jam in Nirvana and, and we were doing cool things and we could use computers, but, um, it just looked like a completely foreign place. If you look back now from 2022 to 2005, it seems like it was yesterday. And, uh, it feels like it was yesterday. So, so generations and context change abruptly right before our very eyes. And we need to do our best to try and keep up, but our context and our value and our relevance changes very quickly too. And if I were to think about the boomers and the X and the millennial and the Z, we all have defining moments, uh, defining economies, defining experiences, um, whether it was the challenger nine 11 or, or, um, any of the wars or whatever. Um, but the world is, is going to continue to evolve without us. And while each perspective has validity, the interpretation for its relevance todayIs, is consistently up for, for discussion. And if you look at where the, the different generations stand now, I mean, the boomers in a work context, especially are struggling for relevance. They’re trying to hold onto power. Um, but they are less and less relevant in the workplace. Um, and beyond I would say, right, I mean, they’re, they, they still are a juggernaut and they’re gonna be very expensive for the rest of us to take care of them and, and everything. And that’s just a fact, um, but they feel it too. And, and they feel they’re relevant slipping away. And gen X is just kind of in, in between, right. Um, you know, the bigger millennial group’s gonna come up after. And, and so, you know, our relevance is, is minimal in, in between these two larger generations, gen zer kids, but their perspective has validity, of course.And so the real struggle and challenge, I think if I were to, to wrap it in a nice little bow is relevance between generations generational differences are, are all about relevance and who’s relevant today. And when you feel your relevance slipping away, that’s a very difficult pill to take. And so the context of your relevance and how you create relevance is different. You don’t force it in, it just changes and, and that’s that’s work for you to do so. I just read a book, um, called the siege of Chris Nur. Uh, it was a fictional account of how the Brits kind of force themselves into India and India rose up. Um, but it was based in some reality. And, uh, they put this line in the book, J Farrow, uh, said, we look on past ages with condescension condescension. Um, we look on past ages with condescension as a mere preparation for us, but what if we are a mere after glow of them?And it was something that made me think, especially as I was thinking about the generational differences and everything else is we’re so condescending to other generations because they’re not us, but their perspectives have validity. And the light may be dimming a little bit. Um, but it’s not necessarily the cause of particular generations because the context of the world changes and we have to embrace that and we have to be open to that. And, uh, we have to respond to that in an appropriate way, um, because time will time will move on. So, uh, with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful week, something to think about generational differences and, and the older and the younger among us. And, um, yeah, I hope you think. Well, and I hope you have a wonderful week and as always, I’m, I’m happy to talk, chat with you soon. Thanks.