Being a Boomer is a Mindset, Not an Age Range

Your resistance to change keeps you old

At one of the companies I work for, we’re setting up file management systems and document storage best practices. It’s been an overly postponed conversation and everyone has been filing in their own way. But to grow as a team and company, we need cohesion in how we manage files.

In our team of seven, four of us who are “younger” have been utilizing Google Drive for everything and taking advantage of the fact that it’s all integrated with our Google work emails. Meanwhile, our two-person leadership team has their own system going with Dropbox. I’ve offered to set up our Google Drive and offer a tutorial on where to find things, but they’ve called Google Drive messy, impermanent, and chaotic.

Last week, we finally sat down to have the file management conversation and I wanted to check my biases before the meeting. Was I too adamant on Google Drive? Was it actually me who was being stubborn and who was pushing Google Drive too much?

So I took to my Instagram to survey what people thought about Drive vs. Dropbox and why. In a clearly (not) methodologically sound and representative sample, here’s what I got back:

And in asking about the reasons why, the folks who preferred Drive cited reasons that matched my own: more streamlined, connected with other Google apps, live collaboration and editing, everyone has Gmail. And there were also comments around the clean interface and user-friendliness.

It felt like a no-brainer to me to use Google Drive if our company is providing us with Google work emails and Google Drive comes with free storage. Dropbox meant dishing out extra dough to get storage and working with another platform that’s not integrated.

Working through concerns with discussion and an open mind

I tried to approach the meeting with an open mind and acknowledge my biases. I do think some of the concerns around Google Drive were valid — less permanent than Dropbox — but for every concern, there was a workaround to address it.

Dropbox is more secure than Drive? You can turn on two-factor authentication.

It’s easier to organize files on Dropbox? You can create folders and do the same on Drive.

Drive is impermanent? Scared your cat is going to run over your keyboard and Drive will auto-save changes? (This was actually brought up.) There’s previous version history.

I could go on, but really, this story is not about which file management system to use, but rather, the inability to see new perspectives and learn new ways of operating.

The resistance to change is what keeps you old

Change is tough, especially when you’ve gotten comfortable with doing things the way you’ve always done. I myself fall into this state of getting comfortable and negating change. I groan every time my phone or laptop tells me it’s time to upgrade my OS.

But this resistance to change is what keeps us old and irrelevant. The world is changing and new developments are being made, whether we like it or not. The minute we stop being open to learning and better ways of doing things because it’s inconvenient at first, we become old.

Your age is not an excuse

You can no longer use being a Boomer (or any other generation) as an excuse for not being able to try new things and be open to better possibilities. If you’re closed off to new developments, that’s because of you, not because of your age.

Being a Boomer is merely a mindset and not an age range.

I myself am constantly checking to make sure I’m staying open to new things and am not limiting myself off to my old ways. And it’s hard because I know I’m resistant to change when I have a good system going.

But if you never open yourself up, you’ll never know if there’s something better out there. If we didn’t welcome change, we’d still be pouring through books in the library when doing research instead of searching at the tip of our fingers.

And hey, if you truly hate the new way, then you can always revert back.

Giving in to the new (or old) doesn’t mean you give up your power

Sometimes, I know I resist change because it feels like I’m giving up my power to the new generation. I was so against the TikTok trend for so long and didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

But what if we see it not as “giving up” power or a “taking over” of power, but rather as an opportunity — an opportunity to learn, to grow, to collaborate. And the learning works both ways too — there is value in younger folks learning from the older generation. There’s value in the intermingling of ideas.

Going back to the outcome of the Drive vs. Dropbox discussion, we decided to use both — Drive for active documents and Dropbox for static, final documents. In this way, all parties are able to hold onto a piece of comfort and everyone gets a voice in the way things are done while addressing concerns on both sides.

So, the next time you feel resistance to the new (or the old), how might you integrate different ways of doing things and share voice and power in an intergenerational way?

Thanks to Maria Garcia for her feedback and comments on this piece!