We are lucky. We have reached a remarkable point in the history of work. Today, it is possible to make a living out of pretty much anything. There is a growing tribe around the world who are not content just to make a wage to pay the rent, but want their lives to be about something larger – creating something unique, saying something important, trying new experiences, having some fun, taking a few risks, and daring to fall flat on their faces and or win big and strike it rich. They want freedom, variety, challenge and excitement; they want to stretch themselves, and to keep evolving every day.

The word “job” is irrelevant; even the word “work” seems a poor choice for the lifestyles that this new tribe has crafted for themselves. There are as much in it for the creative buzz as for the money.

Until recently the business world was littered with gatekeepers who got to choose who could come in based on background, race, gender, or any other arbitrary parameter. Now, no one can stop you crafting your work life exactly as you would like it.

We no longer need to be driven by the old work ethic; we have entered the era of what author Pat Kane calls “The Play Ethic”. This is play as the great philosophers understood it: the experience of being an active, creative and fully autonomous person. The play ethic is about having the confidence to be spontaneous, creative and empathetic across every area of your life… It is about placing yourself, your passions and enthusiasms at the centre of your world.

Today in the twenty-first century we find ourselves in the Conceptual Age. The skills we need now are what you might call right-brain functions such as design, empathy, meaning and play. Those of us showing inventiveness, empathy and big picture capabilities – players – will be the ones to excel.

To survive, you must develop skills that computers can’t do better, faster or cheaper. What can’t be automated may be outsourced to equally capable but cheaper staff in other countries such as China, India or the Philippines.

The key to getting paid for playing is to choose the right things to play. And the right things are those that you are naturally good at. Your aim must be to get into “flow”. Build a working life around the things you enjoy doing and have a natural talent for. But to do this, you need to widen your perception of what constitutes a talent far beyond the limited concept of “transferrable skills”. Remember, we are musical before we ever pick up an instrument.

Some people think that it’s nonsense to make a living out of what you love because they’ve never experienced it. The school system sets us up for this when it encourages us to work on your weaknesses. Forget it. Work on your strengths, work around your weaknesses.

When you finally work with your personality and strengths, and avoid the ill-fitting work that drags you down, the effect is like dropping into a jet-stream.

Whatever its form, the difference is primarily one of attitude. It’s a shift in responsibility from passive employee to active creator; a 180-degree turn, from looking outward for someone else to define our work to looking inward and creating the working life we really want. It’s the shift from worker to player.

Today’s digital revolution is changing the face of work all over again but this time it’s about a shift towards individuals and micro-business creating innovative products for niche markets, and attracting fans that market the products they like to each other. Business is becoming sexy and entrepreneurship is the new rock and roll.