Make the change to flexible work
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Make the change to flexible work
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 Age needn’t be a barrier to making the change to more meaningful work. Whether it’s more flexible hours, trying something completely new, or giving back to the community with volunteer work – here’s a plan of attack to help you on your path to happiness and fulfilment.
Baby boomers are passionate and want to make a difference. Whether it’s paid or voluntary work, people are choosing to make the move to work that matters in large numbers. This is not something that is restricted to Australia. In the United States, Marc Freedman(1), founder of Civic Ventures, suggests there are a large number of people that want to make a change to another type of work in their fifties and beyond and who want to make a difference.
Finding and doing work that matters can be a challenge - especially when you are starting out. So you need to ask yourself a few quick questions. |
What sort of work do you want?
Okay, so you are looking for work. Are you looking at the same job ads in the same career sections as before? What are the alternatives? Do you know where you'd rather be next? Do you want part-time work or volunteer work?
According to Mark Albion, author of Making a Life, Making a Living, the first step is to realise that the future should not be a question of whether you want to be rich or famous but how you can be happy. |
What is your passion?
A step in Albion's assessment asks people to factor their strengths and skills into the equation. A job is not an avenue for making money, he says. It's an opportunity to combine your professional, lifestyle and spiritual selves in a meaningful way.
How can you incorporate your past and your essence into what you do each day? How can you develop new skills based on who you are and who you want to be?
- Take a step back and ask yourself the tough questions. What sort of balance do I want in life? Is it a 50 – 50 split? Or, do I want a more diverse range of work options? If you are stuck, surf the internet for possibilities. Ask other people for ideas. See what others have discovered as their passions.
- Do as much research as possible. Know as much about your passion as possible. If this has been a passion for awhile, you may have already been doing this. At any rate, do even more research.
- Give it a try first. Test your new idea before jumping into it as a career.
- Never stop trying. Can’t find your passion at first? Don’t give up! Thought you had found your passion but now you are tired of it? No problem! Start over again and find a new passion.
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Where are you going?
The key thing to remember is that making a change to work that matters is an investment in you. As few as two additional years of work are enough to salvage many retirement financial plans, so take the time to plan and prepare for the kind of work you really want to do - particularly if it enables you to be happy working longer.
As Albion suggests all of us are going to make a living but how are we going to make a life. What he is pointing to is that there are many value sets that we can evaluate what we are doing.
Success needs to be a personal one and often it is a balance of finding work that matters to you.
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If you like this article you may also like to read "Take the steps to a job that matters"
References
1. Freedman, Marc. Civic Ventures, The Experience Dividend
External Links
To read more about Mark Albion http://www.makingalife.com/bio.html
To learn more of the work that Marc Freedman is achieving through Civic Ventures go to http://www.civicventures.org/
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