Spending more money on your kids' activities (or education) than your future career?
Spending on kids’ activities is grand…but are you prioritising their ball-kicking over your future career?
I remember the day that I realised that we were spending around around £200 each month on both my pre-school aged daughters’ swimming, netball and gymnastics classes. BUT, I was spending £0 on my future career.
My husband and I were paying a nanny to take the girls to their weekday lessons. For the weekend classes, my husband and I would spend a couple of hours escorting them to their lessons, where they learned how to do a decent frog kick, perfect a roly poly and shoot a hoop.
Adoring mum as I am, I had a fairly good idea that neither of my daughters were headed towards the Olympic circuit!
But, I was exceedingly clear that I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing for the next 20 years.
When I noticed what was happening, it was the slap in the face I needed.
The notes from my wakeup call that promoted a rethink of my career strategy….from non-existent!
The slap in the face I needed
It dawned on me that I hadn’t invested a penny of my own money, nor a moment of my precious time, improving my chances of doing more fulfilling work in my future.
Sure, I was attending work events and doing training courses paid for by my company (which of course were designed to make me better at my current job). But, for the previous 3 years, I hadn’t prioritised my future career AT ALL!
When I was honest about it, my long-term future career hadn’t even made it onto my to-do list FOR YEARS.
Why the hell not?
I was flat out making my then career/family combo work (at least to a level where I was neither afraid for my job, nor breaking as a human. For the record, I had returned to work after my first daughter mid 2008…a time when all hell was breaking loose in the financial world)
I didn’t have a bloody clue what I might like to do in my future work
So…I admitted aloud what I did know for sure:
I couldn’t admit this out loud and do nothing about it.
And something changed.
“A bit of common sense leaked in”, as my Dad might say.
I sensed that I’d be in the same spot, in the same industry, possibly in the same company, in five years, if I didn’t do something.
Oddly, I’d begun to sense that the silent but deadly 50-year-old corporate toast phenomena would be rearing its ugly head sooner rather than later.
Little by little
I began to invest a little time, and a small amount of cash, into learning new things. Why?
To get my brain used to learning new stuff, because I figured that would be key to my transformation. If you always do what you’ve always done…
To give me hope, through action, that I wasn’t going to be doing the same thing forever
To give me, however small, a sense of control over my future
It's never been easier or cheaper to learn
Here are some examples, many of them free, that I played around with:
Duolingo – fantastic free app for learning another language from scratch, or polishing existing knowledge (brilliant for kids as well)
Khan Academy – fairly academic online courses, on everything from programming to engineering and beyond
Udemy – unbelievable subject diversity - speed reading, cartooning, digital painting, social media marketing, photography
YouTube – all major players, in every field, have a YouTube presence. Try their free stuff first before diving in
Podcasts – like YouTube, every man and his dog, in every field has a podcast or interviews on podcasts. There is so much opportunity to spend your commute learning about something that interests you. Listen while you are doing mundane tasks. When I wasn’t working or doing family stuff, I would just walk in mountains alone listening to weird and wonderful podcasts
Understanding what you don’t know, but need to
Over time, I started to get a sense of where my interests lay.
Even though I wasn’t quite sure where I’d end up, I made the decision that I would be doing something for myself.
That one decision meant that I could get more specific about what I needed to know. It prompted my journey to investing in me. Not bags of cash, but more than zero.
Here’s a copy of my starting list:
Public speaking
Work psychology
iPhone photography
Psychology of happiness
Article writing
Blogging
Social media marketing
Running a business
PR
Accounting in a one-woman business
Branding
Story-telling
Advertising
Website designing
Book publishing
Design
Agile business
Audience definition
Pricing
Meditation
Mindfulness
Life hacks
If you are smart…
Do this while you’re getting paid a decent salary.
Use at least one of your commutes each day to do something future-focussed that interests you. Even 30 minutes a day, during your working weeks, adds up to more than 100 hours a year. Imagine where you could be, what you could know, in 100 hours!
If you are to do anything different, you are going to need to exercise your brain – start before you need to. You never know where you might end up!
If you’d like some help designing your future, consider joining The Fierce Emporium career redesign programme.
