AI can now draft, research, and summarize in seconds. And AI tools continually get faster and more capable.
So, what should humans be focused on getting better at in this brave new world?
Futurist and trend forecaster Valerie Jacobs, who’s featured in 24 Seven’s 2026 Future of Work Report, helps organizations and their top leaders anticipate what comes next. In the report, she shares how the C-Suite can prepare their companies for the future.
Here, in her own words, Jacobs shifts her focus from the boardroom to the individual. Whether you’re a college senior a year away from your first job search or a creative, marketing or tech professional working to stay competitive, she identifies eight skills to start sharpening now.
Each one comes with something you can start practicing right away.
Keep building your own knowledge bank outside of AI platforms because AI can be exhausting. I’m constantly fact-checking it, but I’m also logic-checking it. AI’s polish can sometimes override our instinct to question it. An output can look logical, but it often isn’t quite right. So don’t offload your critical thinking. Fact-check and logic-check AI outputs. And ask yourself questions: Does the output capture the subtleties? Does it truly lay out its reasoning?
Widen your view by popping your filter bubble. In many areas of your life, you’re in an algorithmic echo chamber, and you have to actively work to broaden your view. That’s less about AI specifically and more about the persuasive algorithmic technologies we’re all stuck in.
Another step is to be very discerning about what you are taking in. When it comes to AI outputs, interrogate the source. Who or what is it? What are the credentials? Is it peer-reviewed?
When I use AI, I click through to the original material and evaluate it myself. I ask for the original material and then I go deep into that source.
After completing projects, start doing an individual postmortem session: ask yourself what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d do differently. That’s a form of metacognition, or thinking about your thinking. You’re examining the assumptions behind your decisions as well as the outcome.
As a futurist, I also ask what context made something successful. It’s easy to credit the actions you took and overlook the conditions that helped them work. Before you repeat that approach, look at whether those conditions still apply.
That’s how I connect hindsight, insight, and foresight. Look at what happened in the past, understand the conditions you’re working in now, and consider how they might change. The lesson from a successful project may still be useful, even if the same approach won’t work again.
Conversations matter when you need things to happen: whether that’s getting promoted, getting budget allocated, getting more resources. Young people are used to clicking a button and instantly buying anything they want, so that’s what they think of as sales.
But I’ve never sold an idea, pitched myself, or landed a promotion by clicking a button or sending an email. There’s still a huge need for human conversation, and you still have to know how to pitch. Practice making a compelling case in person. Connect with other people and understand the power of conversation.
Seek out work with other humans because AI feels like it’s moving toward homogeneity.
When I finish a project I’ve done mostly with AI, I think, ‘Great, that’s done.’ But when I finish a project with another person, I think, ‘Wow, that ended up in a place I had no idea we could go.’ Things just go in directions you do not expect – and they are often very surprising and delightful. You end up with a shared sense of purpose and meaning, and you can go accomplish it together. You just don’t get that from AI.
AI creates a frictionless experience. It generally agrees with you, and at worst, it’s sycophantic and makes you feel like a genius. I don’t think we should make our lives as easy as possible.
When you take the friction out of going to the grocery store, you also take away the opportunity for spontaneity. Reading is friction. Handwriting is more difficult than typing. All of these things invite something that is harder than what is presented to us.
This is where patience matters. With a smartphone photo, you see the result instantly. With a Polaroid, you have to wait for it to develop. We need to get more comfortable with that pause, rather than automatically reaching for whatever gives us an immediate result.
Focusing on deep work, embracing slower productivity and putting down your phone are part of the solution. They help you practice sustained attention: staying with a thought or a task long enough to work through it. That gives you room to think critically before reflexively turning to AI. The aim is to do better work and be happier doing it.
Engage with people whose ideas differ from yours, and be willing to stand up for your own. Treat ideas as toys, things you’re playing with, separate from your identity. That way, you won’t take pushback so personally.
Stop thinking of ideas as a zero-sum game, too. Instead of “May the best idea win,” ask, “How do we make any and all of these ideas win?”
Brené Brown calls it rumbling: You get into it at work, then leave it on the field. Afterward you say, “Great, that was awesome. Look at what a great idea we had from that.” Rumbling goes wrong when people start getting personal.
And if you don’t know how to diplomatically rumble, you need to learn to riff. If you are not okay with inviting the conflict, at least move over to jazz and say, “How are we going to riff?” Maybe that’s the way into learning to rumble: You learn to say, “I’m going to build on that. I’m going to riff on it.”
Thinking about the future without discipline is fantasy. Seeing trends is only half the story. Trends come into confluence, so it’s never a single thing, and there are multiple possible futures that could unfold. The power of futures thinking is scenario planning, creating anticipation and a plan regardless of what future unfolds.
Look for signals of change, which appear before a trend comes to fruition. A trend forms when signals coalesce into a recognizable pattern. By the time most people spot that pattern, it’s likely too late.
Then try three exercises when you see a signal:
If you start doing those exercises regularly, you’ll build anticipation skills. The output is preparedness. Even if your preferred future doesn’t unfold, you’ve practiced in the others, so you’re more agile and responsive.
My philosophy is that we need to imagine the future we want and build towards that in service to our creativity, happiness, meaning, and purpose.
For Jacobs’ perspective on how leaders can prepare their organizations for change, read her interview in 24 Seven’s new Future of Work Report, alongside insights from other futurists. The report also features findings from 24 Seven’s survey of more than 2,000 professionals and perspectives from top marketing leaders on how AI is reshaping work, talent needs and the human skills that will matter most in the years ahead.