5 Important Things

I always reflect around the holiday / new year time and lately what’s been running through my mind over and over again is that I have a list of five important things.

These are the very most important things to me, and therefore they are the things I should be focusing on and making time for over everything else.

1. My family.

2. Reading.

3. Writing every day.

4. Running every day.

5. Cooking healthy things from scratch.

Hmmm, notice that my day job and my career are not on this list? I be lying if I didn’t admit I have to maintain a pretty constant level of cognitive dissonance about why I work, since work isn’t directly aligned with my five important things.

In fact, I’m having trouble making room for two of my five things as it is (running & writing), so how on earth can I devote enough time and energy to my day job?

The main reason I work is to maximize my cash flow, in order to build wealth, in order to create a cushion and level of freedom from debt & the impact of crises for me and my family.  I’m not strongly entrepreneurial, so maximizing my cash flow is easiest for me by working for The Man, vs owning my own enterprise.  I’m aware that this isn’t necessarily the best way to optimize my cash flow, or max it out to the fullest potential, but this is about playing to my strengths.

Secondary reasons I work: to have interesting challenges to tackle; to get recognition from authority figures (this is acutally a problem for me and I am trying to learn how to be less interested in The Man telling me I done good and therefore am good); to feel like some sort of modern, interesting, fantastic, sharp-dressed, clever career gal from yuppie 1980s heydey cinema; I like empowering others and helping them reach their potential (which is why I like to lead people).

My big challenge is to keep the right focus. I want to work to live, not live to work.  It’s sooooo easy to fall into the trap of the latter.

Do you work to live, or do you live to work? Why?

Economy Hits Home

The economic downturn meltdown recession is starting to heat up around here.

• One of my friends just got laid off — he has the dubious distinction of being the first official person I know to be laid off.
• Another friend, out of work for some time, has finally applied for unemployment assistance.
• A third friend is receiving mixed messages from his boss. She wants him to work on three specific developmental goals, implying one minute, do this or we’ll lay you off and the next minute, do this so we can promote you.
• One pyramid in my company has an official hiring freeze. My pyramid doesn’t have a freeze but unofficially we are not posting or back-filling.  Accross the board, officers are reviewing open positions in their organizations and will propose to the executive committee which to post and which to ditch.
• One of my employees is freaking out a little because she is project-funded — capital is contracting (fewer projects) and she has seen bad results at former companies for project funded people during economic downturns.
• My nonprofit (I’m an emeritus board member –  treasurer & exec committee) is highly likely to be facing state funding cuts in the upcoming legislative round.
• I know several people stuck in homes they cannot sell.
• One friend recently received terrible personal financial news.

I should clarify that I live in Minnesota and while we are not dependent on traditional manufacturing here in the metro, we have a ton of Fortune 500 companies, all of whom are tightening the bootstraps.  We are also home to Northwest Airlines (recently merged with Delta), and we all know how healthy that industry is: they are hinting at layoffs.  Outstate, half of the state’s six mining companies expect layoffs. MN, like 41 other states, is facing a severe budget deficit.

All I can say is, I’m going to be focusing on what I can control. I will be making very measurable goals & objectives and then outperforming on them; sharpening my skill set through education; increasing my marketable experience via stretch assignments; laying groundwork with this blog to eventually diversify my income base; seeking freelance assignments now; helping my friends; praying; counting my blessings; and drinking wine.

Best of luck to you and yours, as well.

Relaunch!

Placeholder is now Open-Source Career.  Welcome to beta.

Hot Quote for Cold Economy

You need to always work for yourself, rather than working to put money in other people’s pockets

– Dan Perkins

Who is Father of Jennifer Perkins

Who is Founder of Naughty Secretary’s Club

And Austin Craft Mafia

Jennifer rocked her dad’s advice, and turned a jewelry-making hobby into a craft and publishing empire.  She’s been featured in Marie Clare, BUST, Teen Vogue, The New York Times, Lucky and more. She’s a producer of original content, not a processer of other people’s goods, and she owns her own intellectual property. She bootstrapped her own inner artisan into a successful business. I’m inspired!

Do You Have an Inner Artisan?

Scary predictions all over from the media, blogosphere and feds re: current economic situation entrenching further into severe recession.  As economic news worsens, more folks are thinking about their own employment situation: let’s hope layoffs do not start sweeping across various industries.

I can’t help but think about the skill set and value proposition I bring and whether that’s a strength or liability in times of economic uncertainty.  I worry a little it’s more on the liability side, as I don’t actually produce anything tangible.  I work as a support function to a support function, and ability to get people to talk to each other, to network and to politic are not exactly tangible goods.

More than ever, I appreciate the artisans I know: my talented hair stylist, my friend K who makes furniture, the gals who can knit and quilt and sew, amateur chef T, the graphic designers.  Being able to actually produce tangible goods and essential services from one’s own direct efforts is a strength no matter the economic conditions.

On the other hand, duplicating the IT function on the business side like a parliamentary shadow government is really only value-add in happy economic times.  In strained economic times it feels very much like duplication and at risk for cutbacks.

It’s one of the reasons I started Placeholder: To feel economically secure, I need to feel that I can manufacture a value-add actual product, in this case writing, without depending on a large bureaucracy to do so.

Perhaps the turmoil will usher in a new golden era for artisans and small business.  At the least, this is a good time to be like Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything and reduce one’s risk of being a non-value-add link in the supply chain:

I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.

So do you have an inner artisan that you can call upon if needed?

I Get It

As you know I have, historically, had a hard time articulating what it is I wish to do. Professionally.

Because of that, I’ve always wondered how people who moonlight do it.  Where do they find the time?

But I enjoy this.  Instead of watching TV, I’m up here writing this post because I enjoy it. I think I wish to do this. Professionally.

So I get it, now, that whole “work on what you love” thing.

There’s only one time in my life that I can remember wanting to go back to the F50C after dinner, because I was so excited about what I was doing. What if working was always that interesting and exciting?

Are you interested and excited with what you’re doing? If so, how will you grow it? If not, what steps are you taking to change it?

Big Plans and Big Fun

Shoot, this is a lot of fun.

Starting this blog has given me a ton of ideas, all kinds of crazy excitement racing around my head.

J from 101 Smackdowns and I have been talking about leveraging each other’s networks, guest-posting and other ways to increase or audiences and build our brands.

One of my goals for this blog is to content and a forum that’s really useful to me and to others as we develop our careers — and to help myself and others hack and re-engineer our careers instead of blindly accepting other peoples’ definitions of success.

Now I’m getting all kinds of great ideas of specific steps to take to help achieve this goal. So exciting and so much fun. It’s blue-sky! Anything is possible!

I am not limited, because I have never done this before. So I don’t know any better! I can make really clever decisions and make really excellent mistakes.

Has anyone read the book, Blue Sky Strategy? It’s waiting on my shelf for me. If you’ve read it, have you applied any of it to your own career or life?

Help me brand my blog!

Click the link up there for Contest!

The winner will get the fabulous satisfaction of being the winner, and also be interviewed by me here on the Placeholder blog.