10 Years Out

As a follow-on to the lottery exercise, I’m going to answer Anastasia’s questions from this post here in its own post.

In a nutshell, she asks: what does my ideal career situation look like in 10 years?

Now, I’m not generally one to make a heavily scripted 1o-year or even 5-year plan.  This works well for some, but doesn’t mesh well with my thinking style.  On the other hand, Anastasia is right to ask what my ideal outcome is, since you can’t attract or achieve what you can’t describe.  So I know generally what my ideal situation 10 years out will be, and I can dive deeper into the specifics of that situation as I need to (e.g. when I’m ready to move more quickly towards that destination, or if I need to tweak what that destination looks like).  But at this time I won’t script out the specific steps I’ll take.

10 years out, I :

• Have an equity stake in a small, high-growth private firm,
• Am probably not the original founder of that firm (not really my style) but came on board early on,
• Lead strategy and new business development for that firm (my favorite kind of stuff to do),
• Probably also own the back office functions and staff (also stuff I like to do)
• Carry a highly marketable title, such as VP of Strategy and Operations,
• Am highly compensated in salary and benefits, more so that I would have been at the F50C by this time,
• Work highly flexible, adaptable hours (my kiddo will be 10 by this time and I want high flexibility to be involved in school and lots of time for my family),
• Write: I Enjoy my work enough, and work flexible enough hours that I also easily have room to publish a relatively sophisticated blog and do some highly-selective freelancing & column work,
• Volunteer: I Enjoy my work enough, and have enough room in my schedule to have a leadership role again on a nonprofit board (larger nonprofit with multi-million dollar budget and/or statewide reach — this is a size I like),
• Am well-regarded (at least locally, not sure if I care or not about nationally) in my field and am sought out as an expert and collaborator,
• Run every day and race regularly; have completed a marathon,
• Have plenty of time to read widely (fiction, news & business),
• Have big & small adventures, and cozy home time, with my family,
• Laugh a lot,
• Wear jeans most days to work

Like the lottery exercise, 10-Years-Out is another great exercise to do when times are uncertain or scary. Thanks, Anastasia, for the prompt!

What Would You Do If You Won the Lottery?

I think one of the best time to do the lottery-what-if exercise is when times are scary.  Because if your current circumstances — your Plan A — go away, wouldn’t you rather have a Plan B that you really love (or at least a vision if not the actual plan), instead of a Plan B that’s more of the mundane same-old same-old?
Make a mere repeat of your Plan A, your Plan C.

Make your Plan B really special.

That way, if Plan A collapses, you’re well poised with a clear vision to start to execute that vision.  And if times start feeling abundant again, and Plan A is going well, why not consider: now that you have a great vision, what’s stopping you?

The lottery-what-if game is a great way to brainstorm some truly soul-nourishing Plan B options. Here’s what I’ve come up with, sort of in rank 0rder:

1. Focus full-time on this blog, freelance writing & writing columns.
2. Open the COOLEST skyway convenience shop ever, in downtown Minneapolis. Filled with what you need and expect but also with amazing oddities & unexpected fun crap.
3. Open an Etsy shop and sell custom-order poetry.
4. Consult for non-profits on back office management, career development & grant writing.
5. Run the back office of a small creative business and get an equity position.
6. Be a courier or concierge.
7. Stop working entirely, and work at home on artisan & homestead things (growing & preserving my own food, remodeling my house, keeping chickens, converting my car to run on biodiesel, you get the drift.)
8. Buy and manage all the properties on my block.

See, some are kind of crazy, some are do-able fantasies, and many are things I can start doing very easily and quickly!

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?

Hope & Change

Welcome to the brave new era of hope and change. The way we thought the country “had” to operate is out the window and we are standing on the cusp of sweeping new potentials.

Take a moment today to reflect on your own career situation.  In what ways are you operating because you are “supposed to” or because you always have or because it is comfortable?  What old, tired outcomes are you attracting again and again simply because you have not allowed yourself to focus on change?

Are you rising to your potential?

Do you even know what your potential is?

What do you hope you could do instead? What do you dream of?

What is one small step you can take today,

this week,

this year,

to usher in positive change in your career?

Start working on positive change for yourself right now.  If not now, when? What better time will there ever be? — the entire country is doing this with you!

Make a deal with yourself:  define a new vision for yourself by inauguration day. Take your one small step by inauguration day.  Start thinking differently about yourself, your potential, your hopes by inauguration day. Rethink everything by inauguration day.

Do the visioning work now to hit this deadline. Then move boldy forward on January 20th, taking steps to execute your vision, knowing you have freinds, neighbors, brothers, sisters, fellow Americans, with you like wind at your back.