Chapter 7: What’s a “Career,” Anyway?
The reward of our work isn’t what we get, it’s what we become.” – David Hassell
It’s impossible to talk about becoming time rich or to understand Time Wealth without discussing a career, and more importantly, the current belief as to what a career represents.
A “career,” in the traditional sense, is represented by a career path.
You go to college or university so you can get a good job, so you can climb the corporate ladder, so you can accumulate money and societal validation along the way, and so you can enjoy your time in eventual retirement.
You enjoy the safety of a path, where point A will lead you to point B, which will lead you to point C, and so on. You work hard and save your pennies until retirement, after which you’ll have the time – and freedom – to do whatever you want with the time you have left.
While your title will increase along your path, you’ll have increasingly more important bosses and superiors, who will tell you what needs to get done, and by when it needs to get done.
In reality, a traditional career is the exact opposite of Time Wealth. A traditional career pushes you to be monetarily rich and time poor. And even that isn’t the full truth, because a traditional career has a ceiling, and often forces you to stay middle class, in terms of physical assets.
When you follow a traditional career path, you’re foregoing your Time Wealth for a perception of safety, monetary assets, the approval of society, and future happiness. You’re allowing yourself to give up the ownership of your time today, for the promise of a leisurely life tomorrow.
But time needs to be viewed as the most valuable asset you have, and one that once used, is gone forever. Every second you spend not doing something you love, or not doing something that will help you achieve what you love, is literally wasted, and reduces your Time Wealth.
So, if this is the case, we need to refocus our career aspirations in some way that will allow us to have full ownership of our time, and will allow us to spend it in the way in which we extract the most value.
Project Path Over Career Path
Rather than a career path, we need to focus on a project path, so we are able to pursue the aspects of life that make us happy.
At its core, a career is nothing more than the following:
Career = Cash Flow + Savings + Retirement – Risk
Retirement – Taken out of your earnings pre-tax, your retirement is the amount you allocate into your 401(k) or other retirement investment vehicles.
Cash Flow – The after-tax and after-retirement portion of your career that “floats” your lifestyle. You use it to pay all of your monthly living expenses and all of your monthly entertainment expenses (barring any one-off entertainment, such as a vacation, for which you dip into your savings).
Savings – The portion leftover after your cash flow, that you save for future needs, i.e. vacations, investments, or rainy days.
Risk – The only negative portion of your career. The higher the risk, the greater it subtracts from your career.
When thinking about it this way, your career is nothing more than cash and safety, depending on your risk aversion. The point of a career, then, when taking into account Time Wealth, should be to fulfill your cash flow, savings, retirement, and reduce your risk, in a way in which you’re able to focus on your passion and purpose.
In today’s world, where loyalty on behalf of employers and employees is small, and where it’s easier than ever to create a product or service that adds value, we have the ability to create a collection of projects that fulfills the first three components of a career, while reducing the fourth.
You need to view yourself as the CEO of brand “You.” You are the owner of multiple “companies” (i.e., projects), which fund your “holding company” (i.e., your life).
Visually, your career should look like a project path:
With a project path rather than a career path, you’re able to do two very powerful things: build a collection of projects that reduces your work time and affords you the time to follow your passion, or build a collection of projects around what you love so, although you may be working 16 hour days, you’re literally working on your passion projects.
Time Wealth is the full ownership of your time, so you can spend it in the ways you see most fit. Building a career made out of a collection of projects allows you to do just that.
This is Your Career on Projects
Think about your career this way:
You have a base project that generates most of your cash flow. It could be a consulting business, a personal website, informational products, a Kindle book (hint hint), anything really. The cash generated from your base project should cover your living expenses, at minimum.
You have a second project that’s your “stretch project.” It might not be making much money – if any – at the moment, but it has a lot of upside, and could become your cash cow. Granted, keeping Time Wealth in mind, you’ll have to look at the amount of time you’re investing in the project, and make sure that the upside outweighs that investment.
It can also be your passion project, one that might not yield a ton of money, but one from which you extract a ton of personal value.
Finally, you have a third project, a stable one, that mitigates your risk. Using myself as an example, it could be a freelance writing job found on oDesk or eLance. These types of projects, although seemingly risky, offer safety because you’re being paid by a reputable company, backed by a freelance website, and always have the option to look for other work on said site.
This project, as you see, generates cash, but is used more as a fallback just in case the money in your base project dries up. It probably won’t make enough money to support you on its own (or maybe it will), but it will definitely float you enough time to figure out your next move.
And to me, when it comes to risk, relying on three or more potential income streams is much less risky than relying on a single source of income. There is opportunity everywhere, don’t confine yourself to one avenue for earnings.
Spending Time to Earn Value
In essence, it doesn’t matter what your projects are, or even how many of them you have. As long as they allow you to enjoy your time in the way you want, then they serve their purpose.
Stated previously, there are two ways to approach a project path:
1. Reduce your work time:
Taking a leaf from Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week, you can create a set of projects so that you reduce the amount of hours you need to work or make money.
If set up correctly, a project – or projects – can be built so you only work a few hours a week, but are able to make enough money that it positively accomplishes the four components of a career.
With more time on your hands, you’re then able to pursue your passion and purpose in life.
Digital entrepreneurship is a great example of this. With technology today, many entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs are setting up online businesses that sell some sort of product or service. Since it’s all online, with almost all of the jobs outsourced (even distribution), it allows the owner to spend his or her time however he or she wants.
These entrepreneurs can then use the extra time they’ve created for themselves to pursue the things they love.
If you love to connect and meet with people, and spread ideas, your passion or purpose could be to create a podcast that adds value to peoples’ lives. Rather than building a podcast company that forces you to edit other peoples’ podcasts 16 hours a day, create a company – or base project – that allows you to record your own podcast whenever you want.
The company doesn’t need to be related to podcasting at all. You can put up a simple website with a PayPal button that sells some sort of informational product. Build the info product yourself, hire a web developer to work on the site’s SEO, and explore Google AdWord campaigns to see if you can get a return on the marketing spend.
If so, great! Keep running and optimizing the ad campaigns until you find a comfortable level of funds, and then pursue your passion!
In time, your podcast might just generate enough money to become your base project.
2. Build your passion project:
Conversely, it’s entirely possible to create a set of projects around your passion or purpose. Rather than building a base project to reduce your work time so you can pursue your passion, your passion might very well be monetizable from the get-go.
In this sense, although you’ll be potentially working 16-hour days, you’ll be extracting the most value from those hours because you’re working on something you truly love.
Using the example above, maybe your passion is still to connect and meet with people, but you discover that you really enjoy client services. Instead of starting a company that reduces your work time so you can pursue your passion, building a podcasting company where you’re editing other peoples’ podcasts for 16 hours a day is your passion.
This way, it’s your base project that allows you to fulfill your passion and purpose in life: working one-on-one with clients in order to make their lives better.
No matter the strategy you take, the important thing to remember is that you’re building projects so you can get off the career path, get out of the rat race, own your time, and pursue your passion and purpose.
We all need money, yes. Sorry to break it to you, but there are very few communities out there that still barter, and I’ll be honest, it’s a pretty inefficient model. Capitalism has lasted for a reason: on a large scale, it works.
So even through a project path, you’ll need to be making some level of money. But, since you’ve already defined and then refined your Emotional Wealth, and you understand that Time Wealth is owning your time so you can extract the most value from it, your focus moves from the accumulation of money to the accumulation of positive experiences.
As long as you’re making enough money to pursue your passion and purpose, you know that it’s all you need.
Your money then, doesn’t become a goal, but a simple necessity, the same as food or clothing. It is a necessary component, although small, to achieving true Time Wealth. Remember:
“Money is like gasoline during a road trip: you don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.” – Tim O’Reilly
“Money, of course, is still needed to survive, but time is what you need to live. So, save what little money you possess to meet basic survival requirements, but spend your time lavishly in order to create the life values that make the fire worth the candle. Dig?”
– Rolf Potts
Like Tim O’Reilly and Rolf Potts, you know that true value comes from the ownership of your time. How are you going to spend your most valuable asset?