These are great days for the concept of diversity. Universities offer diversity studies. Consulting firms provide facilitators who provide diversity training for executives and boards. Corporate headhunters help companies develop a candidate pool that doesn’t consist exclusively of older white males.

Every financial advisor will counsel you that the first rule of savings and investment is to diversify your assets—that way if one sector of the market sags, another may pick you up. That’s what a mutual fund does—it spreads the risk around by investing your money in a wide range of companies, large and small, domestic and international, providers of goods and providers of services, and a variety of commodities producers.

Solomon advises you to diversify your education and life experiences too so that you have a number of ways to earn your bread: “Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well” (Ecclesiastes 11:6).

Never before have these words been truer. Our country’s economy is changing constantly, and skills that were valued yesterday may be automated tomorrow. The more things you can do, the more people you know, the more life experiences you’ve had, the better equipped you will be to take care of your family in the constant uncertainties of tomorrow’s job world.