From Career Ladder to Personal Enterprise

We’ve been conditioned to think of life as three stages — school, career, retirement.

We’re now already facing the need to adapt to a multistage work life that will be more fluid as technology constantly eliminates tasks and entire jobs. Add to that a longer work life (and life in general), and your career is going to start looking more like a series of projects than a standard career arc.

Even if you manage to maintain a single traditional “job,” all the current career advice says you’re going to have to perform like an entrepreneur to do well. Except you’ll still have all your eggs in one basket.

The problem is, with just one change of heart (or lack thereof), your single employer can smash all your proverbial eggs. On the other hand, the personal enterprise approach looks for a replacement egg to add to the mix that maintains (or increases) your income.

When you think about your work and income in terms of a series of projects instead of a career ladder to climb, you set yourself up for success in many more ways than just monetarily. But given that we all have to make a living, the money can be much better as well.

Just as with investing, diversification is the way to think about your livelihood. And it will likely be the way you have to approach it in the near future whether you want to or not, so why not be proactive?

Don’t let change just happen to you and put you back on your heels. And certainly don’t let someone else cut off your income and hang you out to dry.

Interested in finding out more on how to make this happen? Take our free personal enterprise course by clicking here.

Keep going-

Brian Clark

P.S. Did you know you can get free access to our Well + Wealthy membership community by referring just three people to sign up for Further? Get all the details by scrolling down to the Sharing section at the bottom of this issue.

Gut Check

Having an unhealthy gut isn’t just uncomfortable and painful, it can seriously impact your overall health in a negative way. Bad gut bacteria can cause depression, anxiety, and can increase the risk of diabetes and obesity (in addition to other health issues).

How an “Unhealthy” Gut Impacts Your Health, According to Experts

Zoned In

A three-hour flight from Tokyo, Okinawa is Japan’s southernmost prefecture made up up 160 subtropical islands. Aside from the appeal of its emerald forests, spotless sandy beaches, and coral reefs, Okinawa is revered for its status as one of the world’s five Blue Zones — places in the world where people live longest and healthiest.

Blue Zone Wellness: The Secret to Longevity Lies in Okinawa

Well Oiled

When it comes to healthy cooking oils, olive oil always gets the ovation. But another type of oil, often overlooked, is just as nutrient-dense and delivers a bevy of benefits for your heart, eyes, brain (and more) that support healthy aging.

The One Cooking Oil Longevity Experts Want You to Use More Often

No Place Like Ommm

By now you know about the many health benefits of meditation, but there’s a good chance you find yourself struggling to start or keep up a meditation practice. You’re not alone.

Four Tips for Sticking to a Meditation Practice

Moving On Up

We know that retirement at age 65 doesn’t make as much sense as it did when the Social Security Act was promulgated in 1935. And we also know better than to think we can rely on a Social Security check to live. But now when we decide that we want to start claiming those benefits may be out of our hands until a later age.

Social Security’s Retirement Age is Moving to 67. Some Experts Say that Could Go Even Higher

Putter Your Way Into Productivity

By Trudi Roth

Want to know how you can tell when I’m stressed? Just open the kitchen junk drawer, hall closet, or pantry. If you find things organized, especially in distinct patterns, you’ll know it’s been a doozy of a week.

Puttering might not feel productive, and that’s because it’s not exactly. There’s an aimlessness and gratuitousness about it: finally alphabetizing your album collection by artist/genre isn’t the point. Think of it as an emotional and mental sorbet your brain instinctively serves up when it needs a break from its regularly scheduled stress-inducing activities.

So, puttering isn’t a waste of time. In fact, psychologists agree that small, repetitive tasks can be an effective way to preserve your peace — and productivity.

Take Stress to Task

Unlike full-blown procrastination, which may derail you from more purposeful work, a tidying up interlude can provide a therapeutic respite from the stresses of the day.

At the most superficial level, puttering may be useful because it occupies the mind, so that we devote fewer resources to the things that are worrying us.

There is scientific evidence that supports the efficacy of doing “mindless” tasks mindfully. For example, a study where people were asked to focus on sensations vs. the “how-to” of washing dishes found the sensory group had a significantly better mood afterward. Becoming immersed in the simple activity reduced nervousness and even made study participants feel “inspired.”

Beyond that, the act of cleaning and organizing provides a sense of “perceived control,” where your actions feel positive and proactive. This helps de-excite the central nervous system, reducing the fight-flight-freeze-please response and increasing feelings of well-being.

Master the Putter

The key differential between puttering and flat-out procrastination lies in the activities you choose. If it’s zoning out to endless hours of Schitt’s Creek on repeat (easy to do, I’ll admit, especially Season Two, episode two), then you’ve fallen woefully off-task. The point is relief can be found in a sense of agency and purpose.

Plus, taking on household projects like decluttering leaves you with a more Zen environment, reducing cortisol (the stress hormone) and increasing your ability to focus. When you do activities in puttering mode, the focus is on the act itself, not the result. Just let your brain meander its way to managing disorder and creating space for a refreshed outlook.

Importantly, you don’t necessarily have to remove the clutter to prevent this from occurring — simply rearranging it will do. Organising objects into groups — by colour, for example — may provide the brain with more obvious cues for navigating the chaos.

There are many ways to respond to uncertainty and stress in our tumultuous times. Puttering around might be one of the more straightforward ways to regain your footing — and your focus.

Puttering around: Why small tasks feel so therapeutic (BBC)