The financial slap in the face I needed to rethink my career longevity.
A ten-minute exercise made me realise my financial priorities were messed up.
The realisation
2014 ish…
I remember the day that I realised that my husband and I were spending around £200 each month on both our pre-school-aged daughters’ swimming, rugby and gymnastics classes.
While, I was spending £0 on my future career.
I was spending the princely sum of £0 insuring I was able to, and interested in, continuing working for the next 20 years.
We were paying a (brilliant) nanny to take the girls to their weekday lessons.
For the weekend classes, my husband and I would escort them to their lessons, where they learned how to do a decent frog kick, perfect a roly poly and throw a ball around.
Adoring mum as I was, I knew - without a shadow of a doubt - that neither of my daughters were headed towards the Olympic circuits!
Yet, it had become exceedingly clear that I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing for the next 20 years.
When I noticed what was happening, it was the slap in the face I needed.
To think differently.
It’s worth grabbing a pen and doing your own calculation.
The notes from my wakeup call that prompted a rethink of my career strategy….from non-existent!
The slap in the face I needed
It dawned on me that I hadn’t invested a penny of my own money, nor a moment of my precious time, improving my chances of doing more fulfilling work in my future.
Sure, I was attending work events and doing training courses at work - all paid for by my company (which of course were designed to make me better at the job I didn’t want to keep doing).
But, for the previous 3 years, I hadn’t prioritised my future career AT ALL!
When I was honest about it, my long-term future career hadn’t even made it anywhere near my to-do list FOR YEARS.
Why the hell hadn’t my long-term future made it onto my to-do list?
I was flat out making my then career/family combo work (at least to a level where I was neither afraid for my job, nor breaking as a human. For the record, I had returned to work after my first daughter mid 2008…a time when all hell was breaking loose in the financial world)
I didn’t have a bloody clue what I might like to do in my future work
So…I admitted aloud what I was certain about :
This meant I was already moving into action.
I couldn’t admit this out loud and do nothing about it!
So, something changed.
“A bit of common sense leaked in”, as my Dad might say.
I sensed that I’d be in the same spot, in the same industry, possibly in the same company, in five years, if I didn’t do something.
Oddly, I’d begun to sense that the silent but deadly 50-year-old corporate toast phenomena would be rearing its ugly head sooner rather than later.
Little by little
I began to invest a little time, and a small amount of cash, into learning new things.
Why?
To get my brain used to learning new stuff, because I figured that would be key to my transformation. If you always do what you’ve always done…
To give me hope, through actions, that I wasn’t going to be doing the same thing forever
To give me, however small, a sense of control over my future
It's never been easier or cheaper to learn
Here are some examples, many of them free, that I played around with:
Duolingo – fantastic free app for learning another language from scratch, or polishing existing knowledge (brilliant for kids as well)
Khan Academy – fairly academic online courses, on everything from programming to engineering and beyond
Udemy – unbelievable subject diversity - speed reading, cartooning, digital painting, social media marketing, photography
Ted Talks and Tedx Talks (years later, I ended up doing one of these myself)
YouTube – all major players, in every field, have a YouTube presence. Try their free stuff first before diving in
Podcasts – like YouTube, every man and his dog, in every field has a podcast or interviews on podcasts. There is so much opportunity to spend your commute learning about something that interests you. Listen while you are doing mundane tasks. When I wasn’t working or doing family stuff, I would just walk in mountains alone listening to weird and wonderful podcasts
Understanding what you don’t know, but need to.
Over time, I started to get a sense of where my interests lay.
Even though I wasn’t quite sure where I’d end up, I made the decision that I would be doing something for myself.
That one decision meant that I could get more specific about what I needed to know. It prompted my journey to investing in me. Not bags of cash, but more than zero.
Here’s a copy of my starting list:
Public speaking
Occupational psychology
iPhone photography
Psychology of happiness
Psychology of change
Article writing
Blogging
Social media marketing
Running a business
PR
Accounting in a one-woman business
Branding
Story-telling
Advertising
Website designing
Book publishing
Design
Agile business
Audience definition
Pricing
Meditation
Mindfulness
Life hacks
If you are smart…
Do this while you’re getting paid a decent salary.
Use 15 minutes of dead time every day to learn something new that interests you.
Even 15 minutes a day, adds up to more than 50 hours a year.
Imagine where you could be, what you could know, in 100 hours!
If you are to do anything different, you are going to need to exercise your brain – start before you need to.
You never know where you might end up!
If you’re feeling stuck, don’t waste time re-inventing the wheel, alone.
Dive into structured, proven, step-by-step guidance to design your next decade of work to suit you and feel good.
Consider joining The Fierce Emporium career redesign programme.
It’s been designed exclusively for mid-career professionals who don’t want to do what they’re currently doing forever.
If you liked this, you might also like these:
How to choose a career coach / career consultant - even if you’re not sure you need one yet
The Joy at work podcast: About 100 episodes - all ten minutes each. No fluff. No woo woo. No snoozy back-stories.
When boring becomes unbearable (a Speedy Sherpa Client Case Study): What it’s like to work with me on my fastest programme.
