Marci Alboher's "One Person Multiple Careers"

For a good part of my working life I've wondered whether there was something wrong with me. Most of my friends had a very clear career path and stayed at established companies for a long time and only leaving to go to a related job at a different established company. By contrast, after leaving a large media company in the early 90s, I've worked with a variety of start-ups in a variety of different fields. It seemed that I was always having to learn a new industry, make new contacts, and adapt to change. I actually thought that not sticking with a single career/industry until retirement was a character flaw that was holding me back from obtaining the type of "hyper-specialization" that has the hallmark of success. The funny thing was that all my career changes made me happy and I was happiest when working on multiple careers at the same time. It's only when I compared my work history to what I thought was "normal" was I not satisfied with my choices. Over time however I began to accept my odd career path and more recently to savor it. This long-over due epiphany is the gist of Marci Alboher's book "One Person Multiple Careers". In the book, Alboher shows that switching industries when you find something interesting to pursue is a career strategy that should be embraced not avoided. When it comes to careers, change can be very good.

Alboher had her own epiphany when she met an individual who was a Baptist Minister and practicing lawyer. This individual had realized that they enjoyed both and they would not be as happy or fulfilled if they had to choose just one or the other. Having multiple careers (or "slash" careers in Alboher's terminology) is 'having your cake and eating too' and that is exactly the point.

Multiple careers may seem like something that would entail adding even more work to an already over-worked life. However, people who are able to create a work/life that suit themselves so well don't feel overworked because much of what they don't doesn't feel like "work." In fact, Alboher has this telling passage about her own situation:

I used to think it [work/life balance] was about boundaries--about turning off the cell phone, leaving work at the office, and making time for vacations. I now think it is just the opposite, that it's not about respecting boundaries at all, but rather about letting your various vocations and identities commingle so that it's sometimes hard to tell when you're working and when you're just living.

It's no surprise that research shows that people do their best work when they are challenged and happy (think in the "flow" or "peak performance"). It is simply harder to do this if you have a single career and the concept of slash careers is born. This might sound so obvious as to negate the necessity of a book or perhaps the whole thing is just a new label being applied something that is far from new (Alboher cites Benjamin Franklin as a classic example of someone with slash careers). But for a variety of reasons cited in the book slash careers are exploding and there is a right way and a wrong way to go about doing it. The book is about how to do it the right way and over half of the tip-laden book is aimed at helping the reader avoid the mistakes that one can do in trying to simultaneously manage more than one career.

Examples include:

Embrace being a beginner. We are all insecure and filled with doubt when taking on new challenges. The only way to overcome those feelings is to acknowledge that they're par of the process and move past them.

When you try to turn a hobby into a full-time career, there is a lot of pressure to succeed. Instead, if you take it on as a slash, the pressure to succeed is of. You already have a career, so there's a lot less to lose.

Consider the "job plus entrepreneur" model. At the job, you might be able to get training, security, a benefits package, and other perks. In your free-agent life, you'll enjoy autonomy, freedom, and the chance to follow your passions. Together, the two might be the perfect match.

Writing, teaching, speaking, and consulting--the black pants of the slash wardrobe--are four slashes that go with everything.

Consider commission-based options like real estate and other sales positions. They blend nicely with other work because you an put in more hours when you have the time and your boss generally won't be interested in face-time.

Alboher also recommends (as do we) the influential book "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi.

One final bit of advice from Alboher that is one of the easiest to implement. That is to not hold back on introducing yourself as already doing your new career when meeting new people. For example, if you are just starting to write but haven't yet been hired to do this, Alboher suggests that you go ahead and say you are a "writer" anyway. That way it comes up in conversation and it's possible that the person you are talking to will be in a position to help you out. This is exactly what happened to Alboher. While still a practicing attorney, she introduced herself as a writer and one of the people she met then introduced her to other writers which led to writing jobs, which led to the book. In other words, saying it helped make it true. How will you introduce yourself?

Alboher blogs at: http://marcialboher.blogspot.com/

LifeTwo will be interviewing Alboher about multiple careers in September and will be linked from this page. Sign up for the LifeTwo newsletter in the upper right hand corner of this page for a notice when her interview is available.

Amazon link: One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success