Do you often find yourself daydreaming of doing something better? Here’s the thing: Most people should not make their passions their professions. Over at US News, I share three common reasons why people want to pursue their passions, and why those are completely misguided. Read it here.
Doing my dream job part time, still working full-time with full dread! How long did it take your confidence to make the jump? Should I set a time/deadline for myself?
How do you get money to come to you? To do what you want to do because you love it and not for the money.
So if someone said to you that they love to write and have always thought they were going to be a writer but found themselves always working in the Defense Industry, what would you say to them… especially if you saw their written work and writing potential …?
A lot of people want to turn what they love to do into what they get paid to do. It was a common question in last week’s AMA, and I often get emails from folks looking to quit their job. Usually they’re asking permission, but sorry, not-sorry, that’s not how I roll.
Since it comes up so often, I want to be very clear about my philosophy on dream jobs:
You probably can’t make money doing what you love. Writing, for example, is a good example. And I say this not because you’re not a tremendous, dedicated and talented writer, but because you’re not a good marketer. And to make money, you have to be good at sales. Most people who are good at writing aren’t that great at sales, or simply don’t put in the time and effort to sell. But making money on what you love requires you to sell what you love. Do you think you can do that? Here’s how to check. Finish these sentences:
“Sales makes me feel…”
“Business makes me feel…”
“Marketing myself makes me feel…”
If you answered anything but “excited,” “creative,” “energized,” or “awesome,” to those three statements, you can’t sell what you love. Not yet anyway. It will require a major mindset shift, and a good dose of coaching and knowledge.
You can use your full-time job to support your passion. We put a lot of weight onto our passions to support everything in our lives. We want what we love to do to give meaning and purpose to our days, and add money to our bank accounts. But it doesn’t need to be that way. We don’t have to do what we love for money. We can make money in a different job to support what we love. There’s a tremendous freedom in that, actually.
Try a mental mindset shift where you think of a full-time or part-time job as the catalyst and support for your dream work. Instead of thinking of it as something you have to do and dread, think of it as this great thing that allows you and pays you to do what you love. Because a regular paycheck isn’t anything to sneeze at!
When you’re able to align money as something that enables you instead of prohibits you from doing what you love, I guarantee you’ll be in the position to make a lot more of it.
If you can make both mindset shifts above, you pass Go, and can proceed with the following plan to turn your passion into your career:
1. Make some money. If you can’t make money now, you probably won’t be able to make money later. You already know how to do what you love, but do you know how to make money? Get a raise. Get a side job. Build a side hustle. Rent out your extra room on Airbnb. Sell your old stuff. However you choose to earn more money, make a lot of it and store it away like a squirrel would store acorns before the worst Winter of his entire life.
Shoot for a six to twelve month emergency fund, and max out all your retirement accounts too. With a full-time job and extra income coming in every month from just one of the activities listed above, this will go much faster than you think. Depending on your hustle, you could be good-to-go in three to four months.
2. Make some more money. Now that you’ve made enough money to support yourself for awhile, should you quit your job? HELL NO. Now you start making money with the-thing-you-love-to-do. If you think you can’t start your passion on the side, please stop reading right now. I hate you. For the rest of you, now is your chance to use all the sales and marketing lessons you learned in step one and apply it to building your passion business.
The goal is to make enough to cover your expenses when you quit, so that you don’t have to dip into your emergency fund at all. I also like to make enough to continue saving a bit too. Just depends on your risk tolerance. This is made much easier if you have a partner or spouse and their income can help support you both.
3. Reassess your goals and dreams. If you’ve gotten to this point, f*ckin’ amazing work. I’m beyond proud of you and I don’t even know you. But now I want you to look around and assess what a suh-weeet situation you’ve got. Because I always advocate for folks to have multiple burners running hot. Why? Because it’s when you have the most control. You don’t have to take shitty clients because you don’t need the money. You don’t have to stress out about your maniacal narcissist of a boss because you don’t need the money.
Anytime you don’t need the money, you’re in a better negotiating position for your life, your goals, and your dreams. It may be more work, but it’s less stress. And it leads to the greatest financial security. Which is what keeps most of us from pursuing our dreams in the first place.
4. Leverage your network. Before you replace your dread-job with your dream-job, reach out to your existing network and ask them if they are looking for the services you provide, have contacts that might be useful, and any other ways you need help. Be specific about what you’re looking for. When I took my consulting business full-time a few years ago, I was able to replace my full-time salary within one day of sending emails out. That’s the power of weak ties. I didn’t email a bunch of my best friends. I emailed folks I had met a few times and kept in decent touch with.
I’m not trying to be a debbie-downer here, but I want you to be realistic about what it takes to succeed since so many people are not. Most emails I get from people are from folks who love to dream. And if that’s your jam, dream on.
But if you really want that-thing-you-love to make you money, go through this plan step-by-step. I’ve seen people skip a step here and there, but only because they have super advanced mental capacities. I know that seems weird, but most of us aren’t ready to do what we love. We’re just ready to quit doing what we hate. If you change your mindset and follow this plan, you can do both.
You have the option to listen to this post:
[audio:https://kontrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/DontTrustYourToDoList.mp3|titles=Don’t Trust Your To-Do List. It’s Crap]One of my productivity secrets is obsessive singular focus. Give me a task, and I’ll put my head down and get ‘er done. Ryan likes to joke that the last time we moved, he left for work from one apartment, came home to a different one, and the location was the only thing different. I’m that good.
Once there is a goal in front of me, I throw everything at said goal to achieve it. That time we planned our wedding? Most big rocks were complete in 24 hours. Site redesign? Give me a weekend. Total career change? I need a month, max.
One after another, I devote my energies to each goal like a monogamous relationship. And for awhile, it works. Until it doesn’t. This magical productivity train (choo! choo!) stops when obsessive singular focus requires you to ignore everything else that’s important. And because you lose sight, you get overwhelmed. The productivity train slows, then stops.
Last Friday, the train didn’t slow or stop, it derailed. I had been working on merging our financial accounts for about a week. What shouldn’t have been too arduous a process was made more difficult by multiple attempts (like, a thousand calls) to verify my identity with our new bank. I finally got the accounts open Friday afternoon and Ryan said he would change his bills to our new joint accounts on Sunday.
Ahem.
SUNDAY? TWO DAYS AWAY?
Not only had I spent many logistical hours getting our accounts in place, but I had spent many more hours creating new budgets for our joint finances, and most importantly, I was READY. TO. BE. DONE. To cross this task, its sub-tasks, the whole freakin’ thing, off my list.
When Ryan went to pick us up dinner, I called my mom. “Can you believe it? He wants to do it on Sunday!”
“Well, it doesn’t all have to be done right now, does it?” she said.
My mom, ever-the-mediator. I took a breath.
No, it didn’t have to be done then and there. Not at all. In fact, there would be no dire consequences if Ryan changed the accounts on Sunday instead of Friday.
I took another breath. And really, if I had permission to not do things right away, just because it was on my list, maybe I could enjoy our Friday night, and Saturday, and Saturday night.
One more breath. Yes, of course, Sunday was fine.
We live in an achievement-oriented culture, where we add things to our to-do list, even when they’re already done, just to cross it off. The art of getting things done is more important than what we’re doing. Compile the weekly report. Done. Grocery shopping. Done. Write. Done. Exercise. Done. Meditate. Four out of five ain’t bad. But just because we measure by the numbers doesn’t mean we’re complete.
Climbing can be exhausting and I’ve tried to opt out. Not out of hard work, mind you. We glibly talk about first-world problems, but when your food and shelter needs are met, and you get down to the horrifying work of being a decent human being, sitting with your mind day-in and day-out, there are no easy problems. When you’ve stripped the titles and money and accolades, it can be more than difficult to just “be you.”
Not convinced? Witness the existential crises the most privileged among us face: the have-it-all graduates of the Ivy League. In a bracing essay for The New Republic, former Yale Professor and author William Deresiewicz argues “our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.”
So we fill our time. With weekly reports. Daily lists. Merging financial accounts. We make things that don’t need to be priorities super important. So we feel important. So that we have meaning. So that we feel we’re on this Earth for some sort of reason.
Me too. I’m super competitive, despite never getting above fifth place on track or speech team in high school (FLUKES, I tell you). I’m good at what I do. I was groomed for the new American Dream where your email open rate counts for more than the type of car in your driveway. I love seeing numbers going up-and-to-the-right whether it’s revenue or minutes per run. Tracking. Self-quantification. Besting my personal best.
And me too. I’m hard on myself. Way too hard. It’s okay not to do it all. It’s okay not to have it all. I have to remind myself.
Obsessive singular focus is a magic potion. But it can be poison. It depends on the task at hand. But here’s a tip: Don’t trust your to-do list. It’s crap.
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If you want to work on what matters, new spots are now open for the next round of Accountability Friend, wherein you invest in whatever your heart desires, and I become your accountability friend for two weeks. Click here to take control of your time, and take responsiblity for your life.
I like to wait until everyone else publishes their New Year’s resolutions, goals and non-resolutions and then publish mine. I want to know I’m not missing out on anything. And, I want to process everything.
So first, accomplishments from 2013. I got engaged, which was quite the celebration; kind of like being welcomed into a club I didn’t know existed: “You’re getting married! You’re one of us now!” I didn’t really get the mania, nor did I understand the constant questions of “When is the wedding?” It is the next logical question to ask, but very rarely have I imagined my wedding and more often I have imagined a non-wedding. (Also, weddings are too freaking expensive. Marriage is not an industry, folks.)
Besides getting engaged, Ryan and I also celebrated five years together. This seemed like a much bigger achievement. We met six or seven years ago through blogging. Ryan was writing Employee Evolution, the blog that started his company Brazen Careerist, and I used to comment on his blog and tell him how wrong he was. In fact, I was inspired to start my blog because I felt like I had more to add to the conversation. He wasn’t phased, and true to his character, he was the second person to comment on my blog. That’s how he is: no grudges, doesn’t take anything personally. We have good conversations. I like to say I fell in love with his mind before I ever met him, but it doesn’t hurt that he’s also super good looking.
Other things that happened last year: I quit a job I hated with every particle in my being. I hated it so much that I became indifferent, which is the worst kind of hate. It’s like the gasoline slowly leaked out of my tank, and then hit empty, and then went past the reserves, until I’m sitting in a coffee shop with my nice boss (not the reason I hated my job) and the words “I quit” just slipped out. There was nothing else to say.*
(*Okay, there was a lot to say, but I said it all to a coach. Which was another big thing for me in 2013. Asking for help.)
I have a list of “Successes in 2013,” and at the very top, above anything else is “Quit a job I hated.” So this was a big deal. I decided I was worth more.
I spoke on a panel at Google in 2013, which was particularly awesome because I was on the panel with really important people, and when it was time for the Q&A, I prepared myself for all the questions to be directed at these really important people. Instead, the first person directed her question toward me, and she said she read my blog. And then the second person, her question was for me too, and she read my blog too. And so on and so forth. And it was joyous. Because sometimes, even with all the comments and the likes and tweets, it’s hard out here for a blogger, and people were telling me they liked me, face-to-face. AT GOOGLE. It’s something I will never forget. Thank you to everyone who tells someone else nice things. You are good people.
The Washingtonian named me a Tech Titan in 2013, for leading the DC Lean Startup meetup where we’ve built an amazing learning community. And while sometimes I think maybe it was a situation where the editors said, “Dang! There are not enough women on this list; are there ANY other women in tech?” I am still really proud of myself. Particularly because the Lean Startup meetup is what gave me my footing in DC. When Ryan and I moved to DC, I was a fish out of water, lonely working from home for my old job back in Madison, and depressed. The world was bigger than I had led myself to believe, and I was much, much smaller. Finally, I got off my “woe is me” butt, and attended the meetup, spoke at the meetup, and then started volunteering to help organize the meetup. It was through the meetup that I built my network, a community, and my own little interesting corner of the city.
What else? I climbed a mountain. I spent a lot more time outside. I spent a lot more time exercising and moving. I caught up with family. I turned 30. I feel 27. I keep all my old driver’s licenses and my first driver’s license lists my weight as 130 lbs, and I still weigh 130 lbs. I am damn proud of that. So yes, like the weather: 30, feels like 27. Or 16. The older I get, the more I realize what a goofball I am, and why-does-everyone-have-to-be-so-serious-all-the-time. And me, I don’t have to be so serious all the time.
On that note, I learned to let go in 2013. Of people who suck, and people who are not very nice people. I ran out of gas here too, first putting energy into trying to make certain people like me, and then, just like that, all the energy was gone and I was done. Turns out indifference is a useful therapy for not only expunging dreadful jobs, but also dreadful people.
I am happier. Or wait, I don’t like that term. And I don’t like happy people. I have found more peace. 2013 was the year of finding peace, coming to terms with myself, and my head, which is an awful place to live. Now I live in my lungs, where I breath. Life is two sides of a coin, happy and sad, good and bad, and you can never separate the two from one another. When happy comes, I learn to recognize it and I say, “Oh, this is nice, and it will pass.” When bad comes, I learn to recognize it and I say, “Oh, this is not-so-nice, and it too will pass.”
The last quarter of 2013, I got a new job, after taking a break from all the jobs, and it is good. Really good. And I have a good feeling about 2014. Last year, I tore down what wasn’t working; this year I’m looking forward to building things back up.
It was five weeks ago when my boss and I were sitting in a coffee shop and I told him I wanted to transition out of my position. The words kind of slipped out. I was mentally exhausted and tired. While certainly there were parts of my job – and people too – that I enjoyed, there wasn’t a day that passed where I didn’t think, “This isn’t what I want to do.”
Last Friday was my last day of work.
I wasn’t planning to quit, really. It seemed right to suck it up and keep going. It seemed responsible. But I told Ryan constantly that I wanted to leave. Many times I told him this was the day I was going to go in and do the deed. And many times I came home and told him, “Well, it was okay today. It wasn’t so bad.”
The job was a good one and I sort of fell into it, and not at all intentionally. I was making a lot of money consulting. I didn’t particularly enjoy consulting; clients are often just as messy as employers, but the money is better. And that was something. But I also craved the security of a job, or so I thought.
What I really wanted was to opt out.
I wanted permission to get off the career ladder. To step down, instead of up. I wanted to stop competing – with myself, with everyone, with society. I am leaving to do my own thing and to build my own business, but also decidedly to take a break.
Most people don’t have that luxury, I understand. We are bound by lifestyles and responsibilities seemingly outside of our control. And I view this period in my life as a last chance, or rather an opportunity, for that reason. Ryan and I are engaged, and soon we will be married and have kids and a house and many other things that don’t make it impossible, but certainly make it loads more difficult to try something different.
It seems weird that someone who has written about careers, practically her whole life since college, should then decide to opt out of her career. Perhaps those with the highest hopes have the largest illusions. I thought work was going to be great. There’s nothing more that I wanted than to work with a team toward a larger goal. I didn’t expect the constant power struggles. I didn’t expect the lack of meaning. I certainly didn’t expect complete and utter burnout.
Work has largely been a disappointment to entire generations, so I’ll take some comfort that it’s not just me. Seventy-two percent of American workers are either not engaged or are actively disengaged at their jobs, reports the Harvard Business Review. Those that aren’t engaged are “essentially checked out. They’re sleepwalking through their workday putting time – but not energy or passion – into their work.” And those that are actively disengaged are doing what they can to make life hell for everyone else.
The recession particularly screwed Generation Y, and the change we sought in the workplace just didn’t come. An open office isn’t a sign of advancement, for instance – it’s just an employer hopping onto another bandwagon after another. While seventy percent of workers sit in open-office plans, no one really likes it. Workers in open-plan offices get sick more often (due to a lack of privacy and stress), are irritated by noises from conversations and machines, and are less productive due to reduced motivation and decreased job satisfaction.
There is no real thought or inquiry that goes into what composes a great work experience. While I have no desire to sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day, I have even less desire to sit on display in front of twenty other people for eight hours a day.
Frankly, I don’t want to sit for eight hours in any capacity. I want to be outside. I want to lie down at 3 pm and read a book. I want to meditate. I want to go for a run at 10:30 am. I want to build something. I want to meet friends. Since when do we believe that being in one spot for our whole lives is meaningful? The Internet is a poor substitute for life.
I worry about our economy when our brightest minds sit all day. Maybe I am not opting out of my career, but opting out of every convention that we currently impose onto work. I saw Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg speak in Washington, DC and read her bestseller Lean In within just a few hours. Almost every page is marked up. The will to lead is certainly within me, but not like this. Not like it’s been in nearly every job I’ve held since my first paycheck.
While I have quit jobs before, it was always to climb the next rung. This time was an intentional and measured decision about my life, the first of its kind in awhile, and the first of what I hope is many. Too many times I have walked into doors that have been opened for me. Luck, some would say. Although I try not to attribute success to luck; success has come because I work hard, network and connect with the right people, and show up to the communities I’m involved with. In the past five weeks alone, I’ve turned down two jobs. I know how to make money. I know how to have jobs. I can see the path of a successful career ahead of me. But what I want is entirely different.
This time, I want to be present. I expect the rest will come. I don’t expect all roses; I know life is hard. I don’t believe in the pursuit of happiness without the pursuit of sadness. But I won’t be checked out anymore. I refuse to just go through the motions. I choose to lean in – but on my terms.
I think this is what they call, peace.
Generation Y does not need permission to fail. We got medals and ribbons for that very reason as kids. Gen Y normalized failure. Failure is not scary. It means you get to stay in the status quo, which most of us are very comfortable in. You get to keep being who you are, and that isn’t all bad.
It’s success – that’s scary. Indeed, we’re not changing stuff up because we’re afraid to fail, but afraid to succeed. We need to let people know, “It’s okay to succeed.”
Part of the reason we are so obsessed with normalizing failure is that we want to feel good about ourselves. And that’s hard right now, no doubt. It’s hard to find a job, to get out of debt, to pursue meaningful work. It’s hard to make time for family, get away from our computers, and engage face-to-face. It’s hard not to compare our bottoms to everyone’s top on Facebook.
So, we embrace failure. In its call for speakers, the Dare Conference says, “If you’re willing to be vulnerable, admit your failures, and share what you learned from them, we want to hear from you.” Apparently people aren’t doing that enough on the Internet?
So, we court failure. This guy goes around trying to get rejected on a daily basis. He intentionally tries to fail as if that’s an accomplishment.
So, we sleep with failure. We dream of failure. We live with failure — as a point of pride.
I don’t want to fail. Failure is boring. Failure usually means you didn’t try something; you didn’t follow through; you didn’t finish. Most people don’t really fail. They succeed at being lazy, and call it failure. But at least they tried. Er, right?
Lazy is not failure, it’s just lazy. Practice moderation, instead of binging on inspiration. Practice patience, instead of quick wins. Start something, but then finish it.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the modern web browser, Netscape and leading venture capitalist, said pivots used to be called fuck-ups and begged for the startup community to put a little more stigma back into failure.
“We joke around the office that the worst is the fetish for failure,” Andreessen said. “You don’t want people to be intentionally encouraged to fail. Maybe it’s time to add a bit more stigma. The entrepreneurs I admire — I admire the ones who pivot but I really admire the ones who have persisted.”
Persist. It’s okay to succeed.
2012 was the year of money. I made a lot of it.
Making money is easy, making meaning is hard. Making money is finding it where you can get it, and last year, I found it everywhere. I had six different sources of income (eight, if you’re the IRS), that made me more than six-figures. Mostly from my pajamas at home, sometimes with a sandwich at a coffee shop.
Making money is fantastic. People that tell you otherwise, I don’t get them. Money feels good, and earning money feels real good. There’s something particularly great when you earn it directly, without a middleman, something about proving your worth.
Especially when your main activity prior to bringing in the cash was the torture of “What should I do with my life?”, “I want to do something meaningful!” and “I’m not living up to my potential.”
Making money after a constant wringing-of-the-hands is freedom. At least in the beginning. Making money after a career in non-profits and startups (my first job out of college paid me $26,500), is all the more amazing to me. No background in banking, no experience in sales. Just desire (and if it’s not obvious, a lot of work, positioning and connections, lest I perpetuate the myth of the American Dream).
Salaried jobs have a ceiling. You work, and “get a salary and a status bump with every sideways leap… flightiness is the new aggression,” argues New Yorker’s Nathan Heller. After job-hopping, you work and make more when you do more. And then finally, you work more until you realize you can’t make more. You hit the ceiling. Maybe with some maneuvering you could earn an extra $20K a year. But most people hit the ceiling and then settle.
I hit the ceiling and looked for a window.
It started with a dinner party. I met the owner of a small business, followed his company, and noticed an opening for a full-time marketing professional. I pitched him the idea that I could do everything in his job description for two-thirds of the salary and half the time. The next day, I still had my full-time job, and signed my first client.
“Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops/coworking spaces,” argues the Atlantic.
Creating a portfolio career, where we have more than one job/employer/client at a time is not for the feint of heart. Many of us have employers, precisely because we don’t like what we do. It’s easier to shift personal responsibility to the organization. It’s easier to play a pre-defined role instead of create your own. And despite being the most entrepreneurial generation, for many Gen Yer’s it hasn’t sunk in yet that a salaried job carries just as much risk as a do-it-yourself career.
Regular emails from young graduates land in my inbox, frustrated by their Starbucks career, anxious for “real work.” Their search for the elusive dream job lacks any real direction or enthusiasm, except for an insistence that they don’t want to be part of the sixty percent of America who can’t put a finger on what’s holding them back from their goals. Not knowing our purpose in life, it’s unbearable. “My insatiable desire for more money, knowledge, time and freedom leaves me perpetually unsatisfied,” argues blogger Ryan Stephens.
Gen Y’s overwhelming anxiety began long before the recession, and has only deepened after being forced into jobs we should feel grateful for, but instead only make us feel claustrophobic. Pile on the generation’s massive debt and unconscionable unemployment rate, and we’re at a loss to do anything but ask, “Now, what?”
I chose money, at least for the short-term. I paid off my student loans, maxed out my Roth IRA, built a six-month emergency fund, bought a new wardrobe twice, nested our new place, and paid for a two-week European vacation (with real beds and adult dinners). I chose money over settling. But I also chose it over meaning.
It’s here I’d like to say I proved my hypothesis – that you should make money, and do what you love on the side. But jobs that pay well require your full attention. And insatiable desires to change the world don’t just go away (darn it).
So 2012 closes how it started, between making money and creating meaning, a rock and a hard place. I’m relieved to have my finances in better order. I’m proud to have proved “my worth.” And I’m still desperate to do something with my life.
How do you reconcile your dreams with a paycheck?
Discovering your career purpose is tough work, especially when you have multiple interests. Too many choices, the feeling of potentially missing out and the inability to decide can all act as roadblocks to finding that elusive dream job. Over at Brazen Careerist today, I talk about the five ways you can succeed, even as a multi-passionate careerist. Read it here.