3 . Every day, across the United States, there are people sitting in towers more than 100 feet in the air alone, scanning the distance for signs of smoke. They are fire watchers, also known as our eyes in the sky.

What is it like to be a fire watcher? Peter Naumann, a former fire watcher, tells about a typical day. “I’d get up at 5:30, eat a quick breakfast, and scan the area for smoke once every hour.” Other duties include reporting to headquarters twice each day, cutting firewood and so on. Aside from these required routines, a fire watcher should have hobbies and like reading, which helps pass the time.

While it might sound like a quiet life to some, at any moment, an adventure could begin. “Rainstorms and thunderstorms were a tough time. I had to be awake all through, looking for where the lightning was striking,” says Naumann. Sometimes, fire watchers also need to act as backcountry dispatchers(调度员). For example, Naumann once aided in the rescue of an injured horse rider.

It may seem surprising that the life of a fire watcher is very much the same all these years. Even much of the technology used in the early days is still used today. For example, the Osborne Firefinder is a tool that gives compass headings for fire locations. This tool has been in use for nearly 100 years. Today, fire watchers have the added help of spotter planes, helicopters and satellite imaging.

With more and more new technology, why do we still need fire watchers? “Ideally, you should have someone who knows the land features and the weather conditions,” says Naumann. Also, fire watchers are able to see things that satellite imaging cannot, such as the difference between cloud-to-cloud lightning and ground strikes.

So the fire watchers still hike to their posts each fire season. Why? They are our eyes in the sky.

4 . Up until the 1980s, people in many countries regularly followed in their parents’   footsteps by working in the family business or joining the same profession as them. In your grandparents’ time, there was the prospect (展望) of doing the same job from graduation until retirement.     1    

In fact, planning to work in the same field or industry for your entire working life just isn’t practical anymore.     2     The skills you have now are unlikely to remain related and be enough to help you through your entire career (职业). In fact, they will probably be out of date very soon. And then what will you do? Work hard? Win the lottery? Hope for the best? You might be lucky.     3     But most of us today have to look beyond the little box called “career”.

If you think you can work eight hours a day and build a career, think again. You might be able to keep your job if you finish what you are asked to do, but this is hardly a secret of great career success.     4     You’ll need to be a risk taker, an innovator, a problem solver, and a hard worker. Keep doing this, and you can become an expert in something one day. You have a chance to choose to build a career, rather than being told to stay or to go.

    5     If you think you can’t be replaced by software, or your job can’t be taken over by some robots, you are wrong. What if your job disappears after working for 10 years in the field? You may have to go back to the classroom and be retained in order to qualify to work in another field.

In short, you are the boss of your career, and it’s up to you to decide what you can do and how well you can do it. Are you ready for this?

6 . Jobs that use both technical and creative thinking are among the fastest-growing and highest-paying ones, according to a new report from Burning Glass Technologies, a job market analytics (分析) company in Boston.

It studied millions of job postings to better understand the skills companies require. What they discovered was that many want workers with experience in such new abilities as big-data (数据) gathering and analytics, or design using digital technology.

Burning Glass came up with the term “hybrid jobs” to describe these kinds of positions, which require skills not normally found together. For example, these hybrid jobs might require people with skills in data science and advertising, or engineering and sales. “The jobs of the future don’t involve just one skill,” says Matt Sigelman, chief manager of Burning Glass.

The company expects general job growth of about 10% between 2018 and 2028, but the hybrid jobs by 21%. What’s more, hybrid jobs pay more than positions that call for a traditional set of skills. For example, a marketing manager mastering a database program gets paid 41% more than a traditional one, with an average yearly salary of $100, 000. Moreover, an engineer who improves her sales skills and becomes a consulting engineer for a software company can more than double her pay from $180, 000 to $400, 000.

While data shows that workers who fail to update their skills will be able to find fewer jobs, people in hybrid jobs are less likely to become out of date, with only 12% possibility of being replaced by machine, compared with 42% for general jobs, says Burning Glass. Hybrid jobs are mostly not beginner roles, so they mainly go to workers with years of experience and, most importantly, more training after leaving college. That means workers, bosses and educators will have to think about how to better prepare people for these roles.

9 . I went to the dark end of the warehouse and pressed my forehead against the wall, thinking again if this was the way for the rest of my life: working on a brainless, low-paying, dead-end job after two years out of school. I was sleepless again that night.

The next morning, I found several new guys on the job — temporary workers obviously. One of them caught my eye. He was older than the others and wearing a uniform: smartly pressed trousers and a work shirt, complete with his name, Jim, embroidered (刺绣) on the pocket.

I watched him all that day and the rest of the days he worked with us. He was never late or early. He worked at a steady, unhurried pace. He was friendly to everyone he worked with, and the other workers liked him, too. He didn’t try to show anybody up. He did what was asked of him, no more, no less. He didn’t gossip or complain or argue. He just did the job — common labor —with more personal dignity. His attitude and every action showed that he was a professional. Labor might be common; he wasn’t.

When the temporary work was finished, Jim left for another job, but the impression he made on me didn’t. I started setting my own standards. I worked like a businessman fulfilling a contract just the way Jim had done. To my surprise, the managers noticed my new productivity and promoted me. A few years later, I promoted myself to a better-paying job with a different company. And so it went. Eventually, many companies and many years later, I started a business of my own.

Whatever success I’ve had has been the result of hard work and good luck, but I think the biggest part of my luck was the lesson I learned from Jim so long ago. Respect doesn’t come from the kind of work you do; it comes from the way you do the work.