Many Passions? Try Portfolio Career

Realising creative potential is paramount to overall life satisfaction. Most of us struggle to pursue all our passions and feel limited by the 9-5 jobs that eats up most of the productive hours. Could portfolio career be an answer?

Combining multiple careers instead of pursuing just one could be the answer to realising your full potential

Growing life expectancy will change our lives

Realising creative potential is paramount to overall life satisfaction. Most of us struggle to pursue all our passions and feel limited by the 9-5 jobs that eats up most of the productive hours.

In addition, with life longevity growing every year, those in 20s and 30s today will likely live until 100 years old or longer. This will have a profound impact on many areas of our lives.

For example, it might be trickier to sustain a relationship for 70 years or you will need a lot more savings to still retire at the age of 65. The traditional 3-staged life of ‘Education – Working years – Retirement’ will not work anymore.

If you are planning to continue working all the way into your 80s, it is likely you will need to get re-skilled along the way to keep up with changing workforce requirements.

While all this might sound scary, good news is – you will have a lot more time to pursue many more careers that interest you. Could portfolio career be the future of work and the key to improved life satisfaction?

What is a portfolio career and is it right for you?

Portfolio career is having several careers at a time, instead of one.

Just like with polyamorous relationship, if you are familiar with those, there is no one size fits all when it comes to portfolio careers. There many ways in which you can build your portfolio career.

For example, you can spend 3 days a week working as a freelance business consultant, 1 day as a lecturer at the university and the remaining time running your very successful Instagram account.

Or you may choose to be an artist, writer, blogger, life coach and yoga teacher at the same time fluidly moving between each career, driven by the priorities.

How can portfolio career help you realise your potential?

Do you remember, when you were a child, you did so many different things throughout the day? First you built a big brick tower, then you dug a whole in the ground in the backyard hoping to grow an apple tree by planting a seed. After lunch you organised your friends to play hide and seek and, in the evening, delivered a multi-disciplinary performance for your parents.

Can you recall the feeling after a day like this?

You likely were in the ‘flow’ throughout all those activities. Being overwhelmingly consumed by the excitement of each one. You were tapping into your talents and passions each minute throughout the day. Isn’t it wonderful?

It is in our nature to have many talents. It is hardly possible to find a job where you will realise your full potential. Even in my very exciting and creative job as an innovation consultant, where I had to plan, think creatively, draw, talk to people and solve problems, I felt there is so much more I want to be and do.

Yet, we are meant to be monogamous about our jobs. We can all collectively thank Adam Smith for figuring out that labour division increases productivity. Now, we are a bunch of very productive, but rather unhappy individuals.