September 1, 2025, Future Transmission issue no. 9

Hi Reader,

If you did a time audit of your week, where do you spend most of your hours outside of sleeping? Chances are it's your job. Now, what's the most common pushback against calls to individual action? The impact of corporations on environment and society outweighs our individual consumer choices. Do you see where we are going with this?

This September, we encourage you to explore how your career may align with your sustainability ambitions and life goals.

(If you just received this message as a forward, sign up here).

If you are reading this busy...

... and only have 5 minutes: complete steps 1-3 & schedule a follow up in your calendar

...or 10 minutes: complete all the steps & determine an immediate next step

Your September 2025 Mission

Integrating sustainability in your career

For corporations, sustainability has to make business sense—it needs to either increase revenue or cut costs. Companies can boost revenue by attracting eco-conscious consumers, and reduce costs by avoiding risks like employee turnover, compliance issues, or reputation damage from activist campaigns.

Your career likely already touches these areas, giving you insights into how your organization could be more sustainable. If you work outside the private sector, you're probably already contributing to sustainability through public services or alleviating harmful impacts.

So let's look in more detail how you can connect your career goals to your sustainability vision.

Step 1: Think back to your theory of change

Remember a few months ago you created a theory of change on how we can possible get to your vision of a sustainable future. Now journal on the following questions:

• What kind of work needs to be done for this theory of change to work? Be specific - if you had a billion dollars and could hire people to carry out this work, who would you hire?
• What kind of organizations need to exist? Think across sectors, types, industries, etc.

Step 2: Analyze your current work

How does it align with your theory of change? Where on this matrix would it fall?

General tip to remember: you don't have to aim to do everything perfectly. If your current job is not in the top right square, that's okay. All you need is to make sure that your career trajectory is on it's way to arrive there. That's what we are doing today.

Step 3: What would a perfect job look like?

Take a piece of paper and describe, how does a job of your dreams look like to you:

• What does it mean to be in the green square?
• How does your day to day look like?
• How much do you get paid?
• What culture does your organization have?
• How do you interact with your team?
• What kind of responsibilities do you have?
• How does the career progression look like?
• Which of these aspects are must haves vs nice to have?

This will give you a north star so that when you see opportunities come your way you can mentally evaluate them against your bucket list, even if not all criteria can be met at once.

Step 4: What skills and experiences do you need to have for the perfect job?

Let's say your bucket list all came true and the right job opening is staring at you from your computer screen. What do you need to have on your resume to qualify for it? Make a list.

Now remember, this is just your hypothesis that you will be testing in networking. It's so easy to make a really comprehensive list and start ticking it off without talking to anyone, only to find out in 5 years that half of the list was unnecessary and you are no closer to your dream job than when you started.

Don't create artificial hoops to jump through for yourself!

Step 5: Network, network, network

1. Go on LinkedIn and find 5 people that have your dream job
2. Analyze their careers - what steps did they take? What skills do they have?
3. Find a way to talk to these people: either directly or through people you already know
4. Ask them for career advice and for introductions to their network
5. Repeat until you are clear on your next steps

Step 6: Determine next steps

Okay, enough planning - let's act:

• What can you do in your current job to make it closer to your dream job:
  • Can you add more responsibilities that resemble your dream ones?
  • Can you develop the skills you will need?
• What should you accomplish in the next 6 months?
  • What research you need to do?
  • Who do you need to talk?
  • What actions you need to take? (e.g. update your resume, apply to jobs, take a course, etc.)
• How will the next 5 years look like for you to get to your dream job?
  • Write down step by step process
• September to-do list:
  • What from this list are you taking under your responsibility for the next 30 days?

Want more tips? We've got you!

Here are some more resources to integrate sustainability into your career:

Glimpse into the Future

Breathing in the chilly air of early fall mornings while sipping your fav tea and falling into the depths of your current book obsession:

Let's summarize!

Here are all the steps we shared with you in this newsletter:

• Connect your career to your theory of change
• Create your perfect job bucket list
• Identify the gap
• Translate it into action steps

Coming Next Month...

How to get through the "valley of despair"...

Savoring your vision of a sustainable future,

Future Society

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