Portfolio Career - Values and Psychometric Test

The next part of the selection process in identifying the best careers to put in to my Portfolio Career, is an exercise that will pull out the values that I have concerning work.

As we grow up we are exposed to many external influences and messages, all of which have an effect on our beliefs, preferences and priorities. These are then formed in to our value systems which uniquely shape our decisions and our perceived happiness. These values are better defined than attitudes and opinions, and more firmly set in who we are.

There are techniques that can work at changing these conditioned values that we all have, and if we need to change a value then Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a fascinating series of techniques to do so. However, even in order to initiate that journey you must first define what your values actually are.

In understanding which values are important to us and which are least important, we can help ourselves to understand what decisions will make us happier.

If I had understood my values ten years ago, then I would certainly not have chosen to go in to an Accountancy career, which goes very little towards my key values.

The exercise that I followed is quite simple. In the book "And What do You Do?" by Barrie Hopson and Katie Ledger, it lists 32 values and asks you to rank them in to five categories; Very important, Important, Quite Important, Of Some Importance, and Not Important At All. The aim is to have no more than eight in any one category, and no less than five.

My most important values are below, ranked again in order of priority:

Communication
Independence
Helping Others
Creative
Status
Money

My least important values that do not matter at all to me are below:

Promotion
Place of Work
Well Known Organisation
Routine
Competition
Precise Work
Physical Challenge

So, in itself, this is a vaguely interesting exercise to help me understand what I knew already inside, but this has articulated it for me. The real purpose of this though is to again act as a directional guide in making the decisions about which roles to chase after eventually. This, in the same hand with the achievements exercise, will provide a steer.

Psychometric Tests

The best personality test that I have ever completed is the Myers-Briggs personality type exercise. There is plenty of information regarding this on the internet, if the reader is interested.

There is repetition here in terms of the purpose of such a test. Many people under value these tests and consider them a waste of time, but this is more an indicator of the type of personality of those people. I personally think that, again, they can give you a great insight in to exactly what type of a person you are and act as a wakeup call. It is uncanny how accurate the description is for my personality type, and this helps to reaffirm the direction that I want to go in.

My personality type is ENFP. Each letter means something, and as mentioned before if you want to you can Google it, but the description and guidance is the important bit.

First thing to note is that this is one of the rarest types, only 2-3% of the population. There is a whole load of information, but a summary is below:

Warm and Enthusiastic
Live in a world of possibilities
Ability to inspire and motivate others
Talk their way in or out of anything
Love life
Broad range of skills and talents, and can turn their hand to most things
Strong sense of values
Importance on being genuine
Great people skills
Need to be liked
Intuitively understand people after a short time
No importance on detailed, maintenance tasks
Can make rash decisions on people that are unfounded, due to the strong sense of intuition
Need to master the skill of completing a task.

Incidentally, I agree with all of this, and some of the explanation behind these headlines really made me think that it had me to a tee. It also goes on to suggest preferred occupations of other people with this type. See below:

Consultant
Psychologist
Entrepreneur
Actor
Teacher
Counselor
Politician/Diplomat
Writer/Journalist
Television Reporter

As you can see this is an interesting mix of roles, but one that really excites me, and there are some in there that I wish I had moved more into years ago.

Anyway, that is for another post. The next time I will be getting into the actual list of potentials that I have come up with, and then I can start chipping away at them.

Portfolio Career - Achievements

In order to achieve a Career Portfolio and leave behind the corporate world, an important step in the process is selecting the individual roles to fill the portfolio. I am working through the exercises in a book called, “And What Do You Do?” by Barrie Hopson and Katie Ledger, and this suggests a couple of approaches that will help to clarify the areas that you actually enjoy, are important to you, and that you are actually good at.

The first exercise focuses on the achievements that you have had in your life, and the Motivated Skills that were used in achieving it. The point being that if you have used these skills to motivate you to success in the past, the chance is that you are naturally stronger in these skills. Although the corporate world would have you believe that you must work on developing your weaker attributes to become stronger, the truth is that if you concentrate on doing the things that you do well even better, then you will excel in that field. Also, if you are employing those skills that you are good at then you will be more motivated because you will constantly feel that sense of reward and achievement.

If you do the things that you are good at, then you enjoy what you are doing, this means that you are motivated, and this means that you will succeed; and the cycle then becomes self-fulfilling as you expect to succeed, you do.

So, I listed out the personal achievements that I could think of, which is actually quite hard. I found that the memories I tend to remember are the ones where I failed, and the achievements were buried much deeper under a cover of self-deprecation and a blanket of modesty. We tend to concentrate more on the failures in an effort for it not to happen again, and gloss over the achievements and just move on.

The achievements can be in any walk of life, not just your occupation, and the list I had in the end totalled around twenty. Some went right the way back to school and others related to more recent successes. The three prompts that the book mentioned in order to think in that frame of mind were; 1) You believe it you did it well, 2) You enjoyed it, 3) You were proud of it.

My achievements varied from School Plays and Swims, to Finance Projects, to Exams, to being a Dad, with a broad range in between. You could say I’ve been good at many things, or you could say that I’ve been scraping the barrel here, but the interesting point for me was what my perception was with these things in particular. Most of my achievements have not come easily, they have all taken a bit of pain, but ultimately the reward when it all pays off is fantastic and everlasting. This is something that I can take away for free from this exercise, the fact that perseverance is needed in anything in order to really succeed.

Anyway, the book then asks you to rank your achievements and select the top seven to score in a matrix versus the Motivated Skills that were used in completing this achievement. There are about thirty motivated skills listed and I averaged about eight skills used per achievement. Without going through the whole thing, the common skills that were used in my achievements, and therefore those skills that should be my natural strengths are as follows:

Came up five times
o Communication

Came up three times
o Solving Problems
o Motivating and Leading
o Working Creatively
o Managing Time
o Strategic Thinking
o Performing
o Helping Others
o Assertiveness

I think that these are a true reflection of the areas that I would consider motivate me to do a good job, and also the areas that I tend to concentrate on in any job that I have had. It also articulates some of the frustration that I have in my current role because I do not get a chance to use some of these skills. You can probably tell which ones.

This will now become valuable information about myself that I can bear in mind as I move along this journey towards selecting occupations that really fit with what motivates me, and that simply - I will enjoy.

Later this week I will post the results of an exercise that I have completed on my fundamental values, and I will also show the results of a psychometric personality test. All of these exercises will be directional, and some interesting conclusions are generated.

Portfolio Career: First Milestone

The journey to reach a Portfolio Career has just reached a significant milestone. I have some incredible news to tell the world. News that the world never thought would be told. Not since Moses stood upon the craggy top of Mount Sinai holding a couple of rocks, have the world awaited such a proclamation.

The first stage of the first stage of my plan was always to write a novel. I have been writing this for a long time, too long really, but now finally the first draft is complete. I penned the last sentence yesterday, and I can now confirm that the last word is 'together', and the butler didn't do it.

I know how much this news will mean to you all, but to me it is a significant point in time. I will now plough on with the edit, and effectively re-write the entire book.

This venture began back in 2008, and although I have taken quite lengthy sabaticals, the important point that I wanted to prove was that I could stick to one thing for a long time, and complete it. This has now been achieved and the edit will take a long time, but psychologically I have proved something important to myself.

The other point that I have proved is that I actually quite like writing. Especially 'made up' nonsense. It's my own world where everything happens because I want it to, and nothing can hurt you. I have found this extremely therapeutic, and I now need to keep up the persistence to get it to the next stage, which is the unveiling of it to other people. A scary proposition but an inevitable one if I want it to be published.

So, that's it for this update. An important milestone, and next week I promise to continue with the progress being made with the identifying of potential portfolio careers.

Catch 22 - Take 2

Just a quick update to mention that the proposed shift of work from me to some other poor insignificant has been completed. There were no problems at all with the request. I had positioned it in a way that hopefully did not sound like bleating but had reasoned justification to it. I now have to work on a transition plan to move it over but after that, it will definitely free up more time.

It proves how it is possible to take a little bit of control back even when working for an oil tanker. One thing that probably, in fact, is easier to do in a bigger company. The benefit of anonymity.

The other unexpected reaction to this push back was that it has appeared to have increased my currency. I have had a lot more respect since and an understanding that I am in control of my piece. Although, the politics in my company are such that even if they didn't think much of it they wouldn't tell me. I couldn't care less about this side of it though.

I now need to start to concentrate on trying to identify, investigate and establish these income streams that I have talked about. The first step is therefore to identify possible options. I don't think I will find the perfect blend of options straight away. But, hopefully I can find enough suitable contenders that will give me the impetus to believe that this will work.

So, next entry will be a list of flexible roles, jobs, projects, activities, ways of life that excite me. A completely unrelated list of vocations that I have either always been interested in, or I think may suit me. Then I can rattle through them to work out if they are realistic or not.

Catch 22

When you're stuck in the work life that you hate, how do you free enough time to concentrate on the changes that you want to make? Although the easy answer is to forget about the current job and find the time, it isn't that easy when you have to make really sure that you don't get sacked from that current job in the mean time.

I was working last night until 10pm, and that was not because I enjoy work. I had to do something because if I didn't then it would end up causing more problems later, and I then end up in the problem. How can you make your life easier in the short term whilst ensuring that you don't have to do it at all in the long term?

I think that the straight forward answer is simple hard work. If you want anything to change then you have to find the time, you have to free stuff up as much as possible and you have to focus on the key activities. Do not waste it when you do have some free time.

Today I am going to go in to work and explain that I need to get rid of some of my workload. This would not have been an option before because I would have risen to the challenge and kept my head down. But now I need to continually concentrate on where I want to get to, and although my pride at work will take a dent, there is no shame in not carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.

My role, like probably most peoples in large or small companies, is as big or as small as I can take or get away with. In my large pharmaceutical anonymous company they have reduced the finance staff by half across the globe. The work that remains has not changed but they pass the work on to the remainder and see how they cope with it. A common misconception that if you pretend that you can cope with it then it will look good on you is rubbish. If anyone is doing too much then the quality of the output will not be sufficient and you will get no thanks at all.

Today I will ensure that my responsibilities are reduced so that I can be sure to deliver a high quality in what's left. The only way that companies no if they have too much for the workforce is by listening to the workforce. If the workforce are martyrs then there's no chance.

There's only two ways that too much work can affect you - it can make you ill, or it can make you push back. I think that the point is that you have to remain in control of your life. No-one else will ever do that better than you. Things don't just get better, something has to change first.

On the subject of the new quest to establish new income streams, I have now bought a book all about Portfolio Careers. Apparently there is an actual name for it, and one million people in the UK already have them. I have taken two online questionnaires and one in the book, and it turns out that I am the perfect person for a portfolio career.

I have never known one thing that I want to do, but I fancy a number of things. I want to be able to be flexible in my work life and earn money around other things. Due to getting bored quickly I need different roles that will keep me energised and passionate. I need to be able to chop and change, and I actually quite like that anyway. Some of the vital skills needed is confidence (which I have never had a problem with), networking, self-marketing, time management and multi-tasking.

The traditional view of someone working 9-5, 5 days a week stems from the Industrial Revolution one hundred and fifty years ago. It was brought about through productivity analysis, companies could get more out of a human resource by making them concentrate on one activity continually. (Specialising) This never helped the person.

Through the advent of computers and the ability to work from anywhere, there are more opportunities today to reclaim flexibility. Everyone I know can work from home, but instead of making the most of those hours saved in the rush hour traffic, they just work two hours longer a day. Who wins there?

What finally convinced me of this direction being the one, is the analogy that was made between this way of life and Mr.Benn. My favourite cartoon from childhood where he would disappear into the fancy dress shop and transform into a different role every day. I think that there must be some subliminal seed that was planted when I was a toddler, because as soon as I heard that it all made sense. I want to be an astronaut, and a chef, and a clown, and a knight, and a deep sea diver. I've now to work out how I can for money.

The New Revolution

As some of you know, if there is anyone that still reads this, I have been somewhat tardy with my blog writings of late. The reason I am putting this down to is two-fold; 1) I have been writing my book, and I want to dedicate as much time to this as possible, 2) the blog was about my general life and I wrote about which ever whim took my fancy. It was dependant largely on mood as well as news worthy activities that I had encountered.

This meant that sometimes when I was in the mood to write, I couldn't because there was nothing to write about, and other times when I didn't want to write I had felt a duty to enter a blog entry because something grand had happened. This led to some strange entries, even if I do say so myself. In times of no real news, I would let my imagination play away and the result would be something peculiar at best and just weird at worst.

But the new blog will be different, not because I am going to write in a different way, or that I am going to be more disciplined (even though I will be as well), but more that the new revolution is something very real that I want to change about my life, and the blog is just a vehicle for me to track my progress. Therefore a specific theme for a specific blog, and coincidentally the title still remains apt.

I am going to change my life from the one that most people recognise me for. The life that probably, and scarily, defines me to people who don't know me, more than the other aspects of my life which sum me up better.

I, of course, am talking about the Corporate life that I have existed in for the last 12 years. The Old Accountancy Avenue. The Bean-counters Boulevard. The Corporate Crescent. That vocation that I have landed in, more through a laziness to think of anything else that I wanted to do, and a few failed dreams along the way, than an actual considered direction.

Guess what, I have found direction. My lighthouse is shining bright upon the rocks of the darkened bay, and guiding me away from danger. Now most of you that know me will, I am sure, think that you have heard me saying similar things roughly every year. Well, you may be right. This time, however, I have much more belief behind me, and also one other quality that will lead me to the Promised Land. Energy.

This was the problem that there always was with the band. Our energy levels were almost underground. I read somewhere recently that you only get back from the universe what you equally put in. Although this sounds quite spiritual, it is echoed in many places in one way or another. Even The Beatles sang, "The love you get is equal to the looooo-vvvvve you give."

The difficult dimension with the band was that there were 5 of us, and that is hard to pull in one direction. That isn't even including the wags, that honestly never wanted the band to succeed because it would have meant a life on the road, and not the ideal lifestyle for starting families. Although some of them wouldn't have said that in so many words, especially not Claire, the band knew it, and it was an invisible rope keeping us tethered to the hobby.

Now my new journey will be on my own, it is aligned with supporting a family, and it will provide many more opportunities than ever would present itself if I stay where I am.

A number of signals have been sent my way recently that have pushed me further and further towards action, rather than passively moaning about things.

1) A friend of mine that was 40 died a couple of weeks ago. I used to play football with him, he never had any vices, and he had 3 young kids. He hated working as an accountant and for at least 15 years he didn't enjoy life to the absolute maximum because he spent 40 hours a week in a rut. Then it was all taken away from him, suddenly. What a slap around the chops.

2) A long standing pension at my company, that people who had worked here since pre-1996 held, was taken away without any warning a month ago. This was known as the golden handcuffs. It was a final salary pension that encouraged loyalty from its members by keeping them here until they retire and they will be richly rewarded. By taking it away this promise is no longer there, even to those that were in the scheme. Those people that have worked for 20-30 years have now been slapped in the chops. Where's the loyalty from the other side. The answer is there is none. As long as you work for someone else then you can never be fully in control of your life. You will never have as many choices as if you held the strings yourself.

3) A variety of other signals that are small in isolation but at every one the message is heightened.

It seems as though now the whole universe is shouting at me to change. I realise that this is a symptom of focusing on a particular subject. Ever bought a new car and then seen that car everywhere afterwards? But, the message has reached the point where I have now screamed back, "enough already." (bit American, sorry about that)

So the time has come for a change, and I am the only one that has the power to make a change in myself. It's never going to be given to me.

The plan is this. I will use this blog to monitor my progress to an end goal of establishing a number of different income streams in a year’s time. I want to try a number of different things to assess the reward gained, the ability to ensure a kind of certainty around it, and also, more importantly, whether I enjoy it or it becomes a chore.

If the idea eventually is to continue in to the unknown with a number of these running simultaneously then by definition they need to be able to co-exist with each other. A good way of proving this is to jump into it while I am working 9-5 (on a good day).

In the next instalment I will aim to make a list of some of the ideas that I have had this far and hopefully come up with an approach to at least tackling number one. Also, you can expect to hear stories from the front line of capitalism as well. As this is the reason why I am chasing a new future, it is important for me to realise why I am leaving this security blanket. And I can't help myself either.

Until next time, Comrades. Peace.