Make the decision to have a life which will give you more independence and flexibility. Acknowledge that one full time job may not be the best way to use your time and your talents.
Many people today have come to the realization that there is no one single career or job that could satisfy all their aspirations. Increasingly people want to express themselves, they want to find meaning in what they do and they want to be well rewarded for it. Working at one full time job inevitably requires some kind of trade off. To do what they are really interested in, means having to earn less, or to make full use of their creativity, some people have to sacrifice long term security.
Many people today have come to the realization that there is no one single career or job that could satisfy all their aspirations. Increasingly people want to express themselves, they want to find meaning in what they do and they want to be well rewarded for it. Working at one full time job inevitably requires some kind of trade off. To do what they are really interested in, means having to earn less, or to make full use of their creativity, some people have to sacrifice long term security.
Although there is often an underlying wish to be self employed and to have real independence people often abandon this idea because they have financial commitments and assume that they will not be able to manage the risk of starting something on their own. Making the decision to construct a portfolio life will enable you to use your best earning capacity as well as your strongest interests and talents. The key to starting on this path is, simply, making the decision. Self employment is a key element of living as a portfolio professional, and although this may be daunting to those who have spent much of their careers in various corporate structures, it is a liberating experience once the bridge has been crossed.
Many people today work at jobs they don't like, and put up with conditions which make them unhappy. Often this is because they feel underutilized or that they are not sufficiently visible to the top decision makers to get the real career breaks. Frequently they are forced to spend unproductive time trying to gain advantage by playing the company political game or by undermining their competitors for the bosses favour. When people are unhappy at work, their natural inclination is to look for another full-time job. And because there are politics everywhere the cycle simply is repeated.
For others, they feel unsure about the future, and want to continue with their full-time jobs, but want to hedge their risks by having something else to fall back on in the event of a redundancy or a company failure.
In both these cases re- programming their careers into a portfolio would provide a practical way of finding new fulfillment.
Back to the five steps
Back to the five steps
