Leaders of the Free World

This article is a call to action, delving into your current situation, being ‘stuck’ with your job, an idea to free yourself and some great resources to get you started in making the leap into the free world…

Gloomy

You’ve worked, saved your money, and are looking to the future. A bit of world travel, an investment property or two later, and you’ll be staring down the barrel of 30 years of work, career progression, climbing the ladder and moving into management positions. Which you’ll soon discover means more responsibility, longer hours and an enforced ‘passion’ for the job.

A couple of years of panic, job swapping, research, trialling alternate income streams and saving those pay checks and that brings us to the present day. It’s time to focus our efforts on ‘You’ Pty. Ltd. Not someone else’s company.

Good Friends or Work Colleagues?

I found myself struggling with the concept of ‘being employed’. You’re not in control, your employer controls your life essentially; overtime, family time, waking time, vacation time – you’re not in control.

You could be working so much that the only people you socialise with are work mates? That’s not your fault; you spend all of your time there! I’ve been lucky enough to make some good friends for life in a couple of my jobs, some of them I’ve had lengthy discussions about the state of the working world and even convinced a couple of them to look at investment properties, re-arrange their finances, start freelancing for themselves and say goodbye to the working world. (Personally this is my driver for writing these articles, the feedback & encouragement I’ve had from my converts!)

Stuck

“Get a degree behind you; it’ll open so many doors”. And so after completing my university studies, I found that it also closed plenty of doors. I’d done four years of full-time study, there’s an expectation that surely you wouldn’t waste four years of study and ‘not’ play along with the working world? You’re throwing your career away!

Taking the leap, jumping off the cliff and landing in the free world doesn’t have to mean quitting your job or throwing the towel in, it’s a change of attitude and focus, an adjustment.

Just One Idea…

All you need is an idea, but to get to this stage you’ll need to free up your time. Clear your mind and be able to switch off from ‘work’ and ‘your’ looming deadlines. Your current situation could well be full and too busy, how on earth will you find the time to work on a side project?

I’m a firm believer in de-cluttering your life and this includes your day-to-day schedule. How often do you check your email, read the news online, post blog comments etc? You can batch repetitive tasks that you do throughout the day to once a day; the aim is to become effective. Soon you’ll realise that if you can do your job in half the time, your boss will ask you to do twice as much! This alone should make the light bulb go off and hopefully you’ll realise something’s not right?

Internet freelancers are available at the click of a button to do practically anything you need. Virtual assistants, shelf companies, freelancers, designers – the possibilities of out-sourcing are endless.

All you need is an idea. Now it’s probably best to not try and re-invent the wheel, or grab the old wheel and put an alarm clock in it. What do you do at work? Ever think you could do things a better way? If you’re a nurse do you spend your whole day hauling fat people off to the toilet or lifting them out of bed for a sponging? What would make your day easier? What about getting a cradle or sling designed, taking out a patent, getting it manufactured overseas and selling it online? Anything! If you think there’s a market for something have a go! Like everything else, if you try and fail you’re only going to end up right back here.

If you still don’t believe me, I want you to think about this;

The Ped-Egg;

For those of you not familiar, the ped-egg is a small hand-held container/fine grater that is used to remove dead skin off your feet, yummo. It’s just an Ikea cheese grater scaled down, used in a different application and with a bit of marketing spin! I use the ped-egg analogy because it’s the perfect product.

• Priced at around $20
• Appeals to general public/consumers
• No moving parts (nothing to break)
• Cheap to manufacture ($$)
• Small (easy to distribute/ship)

And so there you have it, an example of an idea that isn’t rocket science. You don’t have to be quitting work or jumping into the free world just yet, but could you be more effective at what you do? Potentially freeing your time up to investigate other streams of income or just enjoying yourself a bit more?

You

You work hard (probably) and surely there’s a thing or two you could change around the workplace, or you’ve had one of those “I wish someone would invent such and such” moments. What are you waiting for?

There are some great free resources online, here are a mix of some great FREE eBooks and blogs to check out; The Middle Finger Project – a website from an alternate leader of the free world, Rejecting the Status Quo & Rebelling Against Mediocrity; Rules Optional – Andrew from RulesOptional explores on a sail boat, runs, kayaks, swims, manages his own ad agency and is an excellent writer; The Art of Non-Conformity – prepared to be jealous, a blog and travel journal of Chris Guillebeau, grab his brief guide to world domination; Through the Illusion – A very well written blog, in particular this article is a must read. And lastly the article that gave me the kick in the arse I needed, Steve Pavlina’s ’10 Reasons you shouldn’t get a job’, the king of the free world who has managed to decouple his time from his income and is a wealth of knowledge. I challenge you to read Steve’s article and not be pissed off at your current situation.

Is working for someone else, being employed and trading your time for money really the most effective way?

Related Articles

• Is this it?
• Corporate Fluff

Did you wake up this morning, alarm set as the same time as yesterday, and the day before, and tomorrow? You might drive a different way to work, or wear an obscene tie that doesn’t match, just to mix things up. Ever wake-up to the alarm on a Saturday? And on auto-pilot find yourself in the shower way too early, only to laugh annoyingly at the fact that you have a day off but still got up for the Monday – Friday routine?

I want to tell you that ‘this’ isn’t it… There’s more out there for you, you can have and do whatever you want, but unless you scratch the miracle lotto ticket or a long lost relative leaves you a heap of cash, you’re going to have to make the changes yourself.

So what are you doing? Shuffling papers, working towards next Tuesday’s deadline, sucking up to your boss, hiding in your cubicle or trying to figure out which way you can sit at your desk and not get caught having a snooze? Just for a minute take some time to think about how your life would be if you were enjoying yourself all day, every day?

What do you do?

I want a world where you strike up a conversation with a stranger, when they ask you what it is that you do for a living, you don’t answer with what you get paid for, you answer what you love doing. Unfortunately we spend too much time of the week earning a crust that we adopt our mindless job as ‘what we do’. It’d be nice to meet someone and automatically answer with – I’m a; Photographer, Surfer, Musician… anything that YOU love doing. I want to know what YOU DO, not what you get paid for.

You’re saving your money, putting some aside for the glory years, maybe a holiday once every now and then and some investments here and there for retirement. If money buys you time (retirement), then when do you declare there’s enough money to spend it on time? Is a lengthy retirement really the goal? Why can’t you have your freedom now or a little bit here and there? If you do have a prosperous retirement then you’ve probably worked too hard to get there and won’t know what to do with yourself.

The Epiphany

My realisation came at work, having a conversation with an older co-worker, he was telling me how he’d recently sold a fishing trawler for well over a couple of million bucks cash, $2m cash! After I slapped him around and beat some sense into him* I clicked that for a lot of people, work isn’t the thing that people do for money, it’s just a thing they do, it’s the norm, it’s their life. Friends, the routine, the auto-pilot; something has gone terribly wrong here?

So What?

I want you to take some time out to REALLY think about what you’re doing at work and why you’re doing it. Can you remove the safety blanket of the weekly paycheck and take a chance on yourself?

Related Articles

• Corporate Fluff
• The Work Life Balance

Successful?

Have you ever seen a slim, fit, athletic manager, executive or director? Me neither. Have a good look around – news articles in the paper, online, always with a photo of ‘some’ CEO who just closed a big deal, no need to ask who ate all the pies.

And there it is, you’re that much of a success that you don’t have time to eat properly, exercise or get a ray of sunshine during the day? I think someone should evaluate how loosely we use the term ‘success’.

The corporate ladder is a funny one, its own little world. You’re a team player, a company man.

In my previous job, my next step up in a few years would have been a project manager; making the tough calls, running the job, reporting to my bosses about the project cash-flow, and ultimately being the first in line to be shot. Inspirational stuff.

Before I entered the working world, I decided I’d like to be a project manager – all that control, looking after the job, the smooth operation of things. I was quick to discover that it meant excessive responsibility, living the job, no time off and in the end devoting your life to the company and project.

I’ll harp on about this, because I am so perplexed that someone who’s supposedly been educated can become so brainwashed and removed from reality. To be honest, I’m also so passionate about this work/life conundrum because I used to be so hell bent on a career path.

You’re special!

Working within a company structure, you’d be surprised to find that you’re just another name in an organisational chart, replaceable and interchangeable. The further you travel up the company ladder, the harder it will be to climb back down.

Now a lot of the guys I used to work with out on the construction sites were a good bunch of guys, but picture your typical construction workers. Not the healthiest brood around, it was the norm, work 11 hours, shovel in a couple of pies during the day and then head to the pub at night time, repeat. It was a social norm that most of the older hands were on heart medication, blood pressure tablets, and cholesterol medication. Not once was the thought to exercise, eat well and have a break from work. People (management, workers, anyone) are willing to put their own health and safety before stepping back and taking the pedal off the gas?

If you remember way back when you first enrolled in the joys of the working world, you worked to live, not the other way around. It will all become a grey mash-up of job/career/life/work. You stupid JERLK.

The ‘career’ might be fit for some of us, if you enjoy the job then why not. But if you want to climb the corporate ladder then don’t worry about the MBA or extra-curricular study, here’s an easy how-to;

• Carry several documents under one arm when walking through the office,
• Look slightly angry around the office, people will think you’re busy,
• If you work in front of a computer, shake your head a lot, the odd fist slamming against your desk won’t hurt,
• Casually greeting your bosses doesn’t hurt, a bit of bravado and confidence will get you everywhere,
• Most superiors/managers/executives are hot air factories, say yes a lot and stroke their ego’s,
• Don’t get caught playing solitaire too much,
• Learn a few ‘office buzzwords’ Refer to Corporate Fluff for the game ‘Wank-word Bingo’.

So there you have it, you could be a manager in no time at all. One thing that I won’t be forgetting too soon is the conversation I had with one of my managers when I resigned. A human resources ‘manager’ was also present. After explaining how I wanted to take a brief sabbatical from the working world, explore my options, maybe travel a bit etc. the HR manager present offered me counselling sessions! So the concept of taking an extended break from work is that far removed from the corporate world psych that I probably have a screw loose?

God help us all.