I recently sat down with a mid-career HispanicLatino who wanted my advice about where he stood in his professional life.  At the age of 35, he is in a job that he sort of likes, but not really.  I asked him if he had other interests than his job and, of course, as I feared, he responded energetically with a list of activities related to entertainment and sports.

This is a reasonably young man who had he had better schooling and better counselors should have his own medical practice.  But he spends his truly invaluable time seemingly irrationally – a product of the kind of neglect that seems to be a societal curse these days for even the brightest of HispanicLatinos.  By the time they mature and are ready to raise families, young men and women such as these who remain unfocused end up underperforming for themselves and for the country as a whole.  But perhaps there is madness in their method.Years ago the kids in college around me changed their majors every semester.  One of the most oft-heard refrains heard in the dormitory halls was, “I don’t know what I want to do.”  Perhaps nothing has changed.  Perhaps they still flit about seemingly in mass confusion – except that these days that is the remedy for success.  That is why all is not lost, and that is why we should have hope for the future.

I advised my young friend to spend one hour daily engaging in creative thought – imagining products and services and tools that could be re-invented and to look around him to see how the changing demographics around him are affecting existing businesses, their products and the services they offer.  He has the kind of mind that properly applied can come up with a number of ideas and propositions – except that no one has pointed him in the right direction or convinced him that his current job might disappear overnight.

Aside from his mind, the asset that he – and everyone his age – has is the kind of energy that can sustain the pursuit of different dreams and ideas simultaneously.  It matters these days to pursue more than one idea seriously – as if they are additional jobs.  It might take years for one of the ideas to succeed.  But that is what today’s economy demands: A dedication to ideas and hard work.

If by the age of 40 or even 50 one of his ideas has clicked, he will have succeeded.  He in all likelihood will have created a company – and jobs.  And he will have taken part in a far more serious endeavor:  Helping maintain an economy that is critical to America’s survival.

Move, young man.  Now.  Before your life melts away.

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