- Do You Need More Personal and Professional Freedom in Your Life?
- Why Do So Many People Remain in Unfulfilling Jobs?
- Simultaneous Career Acts, Stimulating Options
- Finding Your Career Acts
- How to Create a Career with Multiple Career Acts
- Adding Career Acts Ethically
- Approaches for Adding Career Acts
- The Necessary Elements for Multiple Fulfilling Career Acts
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Simultaneous Career Acts, Stimulating Options
As a work psychologist and a career counselor, I am well aware that having a satisfying career takes some serious, planned, and purposeful work on your part. Especially during these difficult economic times, giving advice on building and managing careers is rather sobering.
Life is complex, but thinking of your various income-generating activities as career acts can lead to an exciting, balanced, and fulfilling career, and one with a safety net or two. I have many rapidly shifting career acts myself, but this isn't about me; this approach is all about you and finding what fits best in your life for your talents.
Let's start by having you think of those people in your life whose careers you know well and admire most. Do their careers possess any of the following features?
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Do they have multiple professional career acts?—The individuals who have the most fulfilling careers often have jobs across a variety of career acts. Some of these individuals have multiple related career acts: the mechanic who rebuilds classic cars for clients, the sous chef who gives cooking classes in her home, the orthopedic surgeon who invents a new prosthetic device, or the aerobics instructor who is a personal trainer. Other individuals have multiple unrelated career acts: the nurse who runs a weekend cake-decorating business, the teacher who runs an online antique tools business, or the engineer who owns and manages several rental properties. They each have multiple career acts. Each career act is independent and potentially interesting. |
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Do they have options in their lives?—The individuals who are the most free from the bonds of an unhappy job have options in their careers. If you have the ability to leave your company at any time, you earn the right to operate with more freedom and flexibility within the career act. Individuals with multiple career acts tend to not be bound to any one company for their paychecks. They might enjoy their jobs and want to stay with their companies—but they do not need to do so. The difference is exceptionally liberating. |
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Are they unique and central to the success of their organization?—The individuals who have the most fulfilling careers are central to their organizations, across their career acts. These individuals tend to have unique skills and personal characteristics that are difficult to replace—and others recognize this. They are critical to the success of the career act or the business—and, again, others recognize this to be true. Those with successful careers are not necessarily the most senior individuals in the organization—or those with the greatest number of degrees—but they do know how they contribute to the organization's success, and they have a realistic sense of their value across each of their professional roles. |
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Do they talk about their careers in ways that sound stimulating, interesting, and energy giving?—People who love what they do draw energy from the career acts they are in. Instead of dreading the idea of going to work or working, they actually look forward to it and enjoy it. I promise this is a reality for some people (you might even know a few). I want it to be a reality for you. |
Professional and financial freedom has never been as critical as it is today in 2010. As I write this, the unemployment rate in the United States is about 10%. Even during a period of lower unemployment, however, having a multiple-career-act life will enable you to obtain greater fulfillment from work given that the sources of this fulfillment are spread throughout your multiple career acts.
I do not advocate working longer hours or toiling in multiple jobs. Multiple dull career acts would still result in a dull (and more stressful) life. I also do not advocate running yourself ragged trying to do multiple jobs (even if they are engaging). I advocate finding multiple income-creating activities that you sincerely enjoy, that fit with your life in a fulfilling, balanced way, and that offer you financial freedom because you are not relying on any one employment setting.