In
order to keep up with my internal planning and publish at least one post per
month, I need to hurry to still fit it in October. I’ve been long speculating
on a topic for this one, and finally things are starting to crystallize. This
time I’d like to talk about inspiration, change of direction and a very
promising emerging form of employment that has caught my attention lately and
was on my mind, before I even knew there was a term for it – hybrid
employment. To my mind, these three things have to do with each other,
follow me and I’ll explain why I think that.
Inspiration
As
the darker days come and wintertime becomes effective, we are inclined to seek
more tranquility and slow down. At least this should be happening according to
the logic of nature’s cycles. No wonder, most of us have difficulty getting up
in the morning, might have less energy during the day and might even feel
melancholy from time to time. To keep up with what you are doing in daily life
with the same output you need things to inspire you to get your energies high
again.
I
get inspired by people who are living their jobs. I’ve come across a couple of
great inspirational examples of such people. One of them is Michael Stevens,
the founder
and creator of the YouTube channel called VSauce.
An ordinary, now 27-year-old American guy, who was probably bored with a
mediocre office job and at the same time genuinely curious about how things in
this universe work, created a YouTube channel a couple of years back and became
incredibly popular with it on the Internet. He makes videos relating to various scientific topics, as well as gaming,
technology and other topics of general interest characterized by a very
authentic and engaging storytelling style. He asks and answers questions – some of them
kind of silly, while others getting you really involved – with genuine
spontaneity and directness of a child. Just try watching some of the movies if
you don’t know VSauce yet – a lot of laughing guaranteed!
Another
example of a person living her job, or rather work of her life, is Irina Verwer, a practicing teacher of different yoga styles and a vegan cook, writing
blogs and books about yoga and nutrition. I discovered her website by chance some
time ago and found her really cool and inspiring, just to find myself sitting
next to her – you don’t believe in coincidences either, do you? – during the
first weekend of Anusara Yoga Immersion. It is the first part of my two-year’s
yoga teacher training that I started following about a month ago. Irina told me
how she found it such a gift to do what she really loved and I decided I’d be
looking as long as it takes to find this feeling for myself. Thanks for
inspiring me, Irina!
Change of Direction
So
as I mentioned earlier, I decided to do something less mind-centered than my
current occupation and thought yoga was that something I was looking for: it seems
to suits me because of the harmony and discipline, the former of which I seek
and the latter of which I think to posses. As I also wanted to deepen my understanding
of it, a suitable way for this seemed to follow a teacher training as I believe
that one can best learn something in case he/she needs to teach it to others.
A
kind of future I’m picturing for myself is thus a combination of a nice
part-time office job and giving some lovely soothing yoga classes a couple of
times a week. Seems like a perfect work-work balance, doesn’t it? More about similar
job combinations in the following section.
Hybrid Employment
It
turns out it’s not weird I’m thinking of some kind of combined career for
myself. While job-hunting, I’ve seen quite some professional profiles of people
on LinkedIn and was amazed to find out how many people have two and more things
filled in on their company’s line. I thought of it as an emerging trend and I
was right. Recently I’ve talked to someone who pointed out an NRC Next article to me where the term ‘hybrid employment’ was used to refer to
people having two or more jobs at a time or having a little business of their
own next to a regular job.
As
individuals tend to get more critical about the place work takes in their lives
and want it to have way more meaning than just earning a living, they long for
more variation in what they do and want to possibly utilize most of their
skills, abilities and ambitions. And sometimes those just don’t fit in one particular
job! That is why some of them are creative enough to make up a professional reality
that meets those needs.
Google,
for example, encourages their employees to work on a project of their own some
certain percentage of their time on the job. Another combination of professions
that has become pretty common in the last couple of years is the one of
part-time teaching next a job in a related industry. It actually seems like a
very attractive one, for both teachers as well as their students. As NRC Next
article about hybrid teachers claims,
one stays more focused if different roles have to be fulfilled interchangeably,
while at the same students, for instance, can benefit from the first-hand field-related
examples in class.
One
could think of quite some great ‘hybrid’ advantages, like enhanced vitality of
professionals and lowered risks of burnout as a result of variation in
activities. Also building up expertise in different disciplines makes one more
flexible on the job market and thus better employable during his/her entire
career.
One
could also think of less positive consequences of the above mentioned
flexibility though. As you spread your focus between two or more different professional
roles, you might slow down your progress in each of them. You might have less
chance to get promoted for example or miss out on things that happen in your
absence. But maybe if hybrid employment becomes more and more the norm in the
future, fulltime versus part-time employment will become less a criterion to judge
one’s performance and deliverables.
What’s
your idea of hybrid employment: a myth as you cannot succeed in a certain aspect
of life unless you give it your fullest attention and effort or an enriching and
productive way to combine more things that you like doing and are capable of?
Let’s discuss!
And
by the way: Happy Halloween to all of you!
