Recoding for independence
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) “We don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA.” —Pema Chödrön
You’re likely a bit like me, |NAME|: our assumptions about hard work and success were shaped by many years of school and working at salaried and wage-based jobs.
Those are places where rewards, recognition and advancement are determined in large part by how well you are able to do what you’re told.
There, hard work is measured by whether you stick to—and then exceed—a 9 to 5 schedule. There, remuneration is based largely on what you can deliver within that schedule. Also there (and this needs to be said), you’ll find an obsession with performance metrics where the quantity of data collected tends to have far greater importance than quality and meaningfulness.
Yes, I’m a little biased against that way of earning a living. I did it for a decade before I started this business of mine in 2001.
I don’t mean to suggest that salaried work with benefits and a pension is either without merit or presents a terrible trade-off.
It’s right for many, many people. It just wasn’t right for me.
Going indie is a choice (http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=e2405f6262) .
It’s one shared by a growing number of people: it’s predicted (http://http-download.intuit.com/http.intuit/CMO/intuit/futureofsmallbusiness/intuit_2020_report.pdf) that by 2020, some 40% of our workforce will be made up of independent workers. Most will be on the younger side of 40. And it’s not a stretch to say that most could work that way for their entire careers, if they want to.
Going indie also entails a certain amount of recoding in how you look at the world.
Fixing a big mistake
One of the biggest mistakes I made in early years of self employment: I didn’t challenge my deeply ingrained assumptions about the nature of hard work and the meaning of success.
Moving from a salaried to an independent mindset, I continued for years to govern myself by a series of false beliefs about how I was supposed to do my work: each one obviously wrong because it didn’t hold up under the scrutiny of investigation. Among these: * If my schedule is not completely filled with work, then I am either underemployed or unemployed. * If I am not working to a 9 to 5 schedule—and of course exceeding those hours—then I am under productive. * If my income or my client list or even my newsletter subscriber list does not grow steadily, then I am less successful than I should be.
Each of these contains a problem and a conclusion that I jumped to based on what I used to feel was true but was unsupported by facts.
In recoding for an independent mindset, I slowly began to look at things differently. Examples: * I accept there is a boom-bust nature to independent work in terms of output, whereas the flow of input—the ideas and information I seek to both refine and challenge my knowledge—is where I have far greater control. * My client list grows more and more diversified and this has a positive, repeatable effect of influencing the quality of my work and has added greater depth to the advice I provide. * For every unsubscribe to this newsletter, I gain many more who are engaged, loyal and who refer new business.
The future of work for us
For those of us who choose this kind of independence, the future of work is much more individualized. It means having to reframe (http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=f88bb30192) your thinking so that your methods and outcomes are better suited to your business and your clients. Not for a large employer: for you.
As a result, I don’t measure much in my own business anymore.
Instead I ask myself three questions.
Am I continuing to solve interesting business problems? Am I doing work that I give a damn about? And are my outcomes helping to make things better for myself and for my clients?
This approach works best for me. You have to decide what’s best for you and your own business as part of working with a sense of presence (http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=4452b28623 ) .
I share this because the results I get are ones that matter as much to you and they do to me: I produce more work and better work in less time today than at any other point in my career.
Very best, Patrick
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