Agile Personal Development

After tracking your life budget for awhile, there are a number of issues you’ll probably find. Here are some of them, and some ideas on how to work through them.

1) Difficulty Tracking your Time. Even if you use a tool like Toggl, it is difficult to keep up with how you spend your time. This is especially true if you have to catch up on it after you get home from work. If you miss a few days, I recommend you input some typical times for your different life budget categories just to keep things moving along. Keep in mind that the main point isn’t to get everything perfect, just that you understand where you are not spending enough time (or too much).

2) More Detail Needed for Categories. The standard categories may need to be adjusted for your own use. For example, you might want to measure how much time you spend on a specific personal development area, like self-reflection, versus just the general category. It would make more sense to split the Personal Development life budget category into smaller chunks. I recommend not having more than 10-15 categories total, and that you should not have a category with a budget of less than a few hours a week.

3) Duplication of Categories. You’ll find that some activities in life fall into more than one category. For example, mowing the lawn could be considered as house upkeep, as well as exercise. It is fine to “double-count” this time against both categories, but it gets difficult to track this. To handle this situation, I recommend making a note against each activity, and then reviewing at the end of each week (or day if you have time) and make sure you have counted the time against all appropriate categories.

4) Different “Quality” of Time. Sometimes an hour of your time doing a task seems like it should be worth more per hour than your budgeted time. For example, the calculations of how much an hour of exercise is worth is based on a moderate level of exercise (walking, mowing the lawn, etc). If you go out and run a 5K, you are working out at a higher level than moderate. This reduces the number of hours you need to exercise against your budget. However, this gets tricky in practice. I recommend that you modify the hours you spend on higher level exercise to the equivalent hours at a moderate level. This keeps you from having to recalculate your hourly rate for the higher level of exercise, and yet still ensure that you are meeting the required goals for your health. You may also find that due to multi-tasking or other distractions, you need to reduce the actual time spent to better reflect reality.

5) You Spend Your Time Differently Than Expected. After establishing your Life Budget, hopefully you will continually think about how you are spending your time, and whether it aligns with your personal vision and values. However, you may find that it is really hard to change how you spend your time. For example, week after week I continue to spend more time on work than budgeted, but have yet to find a solution to it. I also find that I spend a lot of time on personal development activities, but they don’t always have tangible benefits (like checking something off my life list). You also will find that hours may go by and you can’t even remember what you spent them on. While this may be a difficult feeling to have, I believe that tracking your Life Budget at least helps you to recognize that you are not spending your time as you expect. And knowing is half the battle, as my favorite childhood cartoon burned into my brain….

After getting all liquored up on reading blog posts on how working for yourself is the only way to live, I’m starting to get a hangover. After researching what it takes to start and run a successful business, it seems that the data doesn’t back up the story. Of course, as we say in the corporate world where I work - “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story”.

Ironically , this week a new book came out on this very topic - Escape from Corporate America, based on a blog of the same name. There are other blogs dealing with similar topics, including the Four Hour Work Week, and Steve Pavlina’s blog. The common theme is that working a “9 to 5″ job for a corporation is bad, working for yourself is good. There are a many reasons typically given for this, such as how working for yourself is less risky than a corporate job, or your experience is limited working for a corporation. While I find it fascinating to read about their adventures, I’ve started to think that the corporate life I have today has a lot of advantages over taking the entrepreneurial plunge.

Here are 10 reasons why you should stick with the corporate gig:

1) Less Risk. The whole idea that self-employment is somehow less risky than a corporate job seems silly to me. Granted, you never know whether your company will merge with another and your job will go away, or your new boss won’t like you and will fire you. You could also work for an Enron or a Bear Sterns and watch everything evaporate quickly. But those types of events are few and far between. Frankly, the byzantine human resources process within most corporations practically ensures you’ll have a job for awhile, even if they want to fire you. You’ll likely know it long before it comes. And for those economic downturns that result in layoffs, doesn’t that impact you even worse when you are on your own? Not to mention the loss of insurance through your company. How much more risky can it get? You also have a steady flow of income in the corporate world, versus wondering where your next paycheck will come from. The probability of your own business venture succeeding is pretty low. According to this article, only two percent of self-employed people remain that way for longer than 10 years. That doesn’t account for whether the 2% is even successful or not, just that they are still working for themselves.

2) Less Hours Worked. Granted, some of the ideas for living a four hour work week are pretty useful no matter what type of a career you have. However, the reality is that self-employment takes a lot more time than a typical corporate job. Not only are you working more each day, but you need to work weekends too. With a corporate job, you are making money just by waking up in the morning and going to work. On your own, if you aren’t developing your business, you’re not getting paid.

3) Lot of Resources to Leverage. Working for a large corporation gives you instant (well, OK, not instant, if may take you awhile to find them in the corporate address book) access to people with a variety of experience. If you are into research and development type activities, you can go after a pot of money to fund your next project (pretty similar to getting a venture capitalist to fund your new idea - except you’ll still have a job tomorrow if the executives don’t buy into your idea). Some companies like 3M even pay you to develop your new ideas. Out on your own, you’ll need to pay for this out of your revenue, while working for a corporation, you get it for free.

4) Multiple Career Opportunities. Most corporations resemble a bunch of small businesses all rolled into one company with a cool mission statement. This is especially true for those that have been through a lot of M&A activity. Get bored working one project or tired of working for your boss? There are plenty more opportunities you could transfer to, without losing your coverage in benefits or your retirement (or having to get rid of your cool shirt with the company logo). Each group within the corporation will have a different culture and energy, just like small businesses.

5) Stable Environment for Testing New Skills / Role. Maybe you want to try something a little different, like moving from software development into that evil world called “management”. Within a corporation there are likely career paths you can try out to see if you like it. Want to go back to being a code jockey and get your not-so-pointy hair back? No problem. Lot better to do it that way than risk your family’s dinner next week on your trying out a new freelance career on a whim. You can also gain new skills with good mentors around you (that you aren’t having to pay with future stock of your company).

6) Added Value. Beyond the salary, there is a lot of added value you get from a corporate job. It is a competitive job market, and will continue to be so for awhile with the big generational shift going on. This means that companies need to provide a lot of incentives for good employees. Healthcare coverage, 401K matching funding, stock options, performance bonuses, free tuition for degrees (how would you like to pay for your MBA on your own while trying to grow a business?), even personal discounts on consumer goods due to the corporate-wide agreements - all of these things add up to a lot of additional value that you would have to pay for out of your own pocket if self-employed.

7) Get Paid for Your Work (and even your Non-Work). One downside of self-employment is not getting paid for the work you do. For example, if you’re a freelance writer, you might put 10 hours into an $500 article. But if your editor doesn’t like the article as written, you may have to put another 10 hours into the same article to fix it, with no additional revenue. In the corporate world, you might think your Powerpoint presentation is ready for Donald Trump’s boardroom, but if your boss disagrees, you are still going to get paid for the work you put into it. You also get paid for sitting around the water cooler catching up on your favorite reality shows. (Don’t worry about your boss finding out, he was the one that asked about the last Survivor episode).

‘8) Opportunity to Work on Really Big, Important, Interesting Projects. Want to be part of the team to send astronauts to Mars? Or maybe develop a cure for cancer? How about designing the next hybrid car or harness a new energy source for a sustainable future? These aren’t the kind of projects you are going to be working on while sitting in your home office in your pajamas. These projects take a lot of funding and teams of skilled people to execute. You’ll need to work for a reputable company with related experience before you have a shot at these projects.

9) Brand Name Recognition. Speaking of reputable companies, having a well known logo on your shirt help you open doors for new business. When you are on your own, it is difficult to establish a reputation while competing with existing companies. It is really hard to convince people to let you work for them when they don’t even know if you’re going to be in business next week. A strong company brand helps that tremendously.

10) Great Experience. Many view the corporate world as a great training ground to start a career. This experience gives you great work history when moving on to smaller business later, or even (dare I say it) starting your own business.

There are definitely downsides of working in the corporate world, many of which are why people try to escape from it. You need to work on your external career and social networks or they will go stale. It is far too easy to get comfortable with not expanding beyond your internal network, since it is probably pretty large and gives you a false sense of diversity. Assuming you would be one of the successful small business owners, working for a corporation definitely limits your salary options. Unless you make it up into the executive level, you’ll eventually plateau off, instead of the “hockey stick” curve of self-employment revenue. Not that the corporate world doesn’t have hockey stick revenue predictions, you just won’t be getting any more money when it happens. It also isn’t easy to temporarily increase your income for something special. Although you could moonlight on the side to save up for that big surprise trip for your spouse, most corporations keep an eye on your outside activity, especially when you are doing something similar to your normal job. Even though you may get great benefits today, you never know what benefits will change in the future. There is no law that says you’ll always get a match to your 401K. Of course, on your own, you’ll be the one doing the matching.

OK, now you’ll have to excuse me while I go read “Escape from Corporate America” and get drunk again on the idea of a 4 hour work week. I’d love to hear comments from either side of the fence on that one, particularly from those of you that have escaped from the corporate world, and now have come back again.

Last week was National Volunteer Week here in the United States. If you’re thinking about giving some of your time for a cause, I’ve compiled 7 of the top questions you should ask, and ideas on how to get answers.

1) What type of organization to support? There are a lot of different types of non-profit organizations to pick from. Typically charity organizations like those that help the homeless or provide after-school mentoring for at-risk teens are the ones that come to mind. However, there are a lot of other types of non-profits to consider. For example, you may want to volunteer for a political campaign, or a business league, or an organization focused on promoting social welfare. Choose a type of non-profit that aligns with your personal values and vision. Here are some other ideas for more charity-focused organizations.

2) How to find a specific opportunity? Once you have an idea of the type of organization to support, you’ll need to determine what specific opportunities are available. There are a number of websites that list volunteer opportunities. If you live in the United States, there is a good listing here. This includes some more popular websites like USA Freedom Corps and VolunteerMatch. You can also find local volunteer action groups through Points of Light. If you are looking for volunteer opportunities internationally, check out World Volunteer Web. Most of these include opportunities for charity organizations. If you are looking for opportunities for volunteering for other types of non-profits, contact the organization you are interested in to find out what opportunities they have.

3) What types of skills do you want to use / learn? Volunteering can be a great way to do something different from what you do for a living. It can also help you explore a new career, or an opportunity to gain more experience with your current skills and help a non-profit. Some volunteer websites such as IdeaList allow you to search for specific opportunities based on the type of skills needed.

4) How much time can you commit? Non-profits rely heavily on volunteer support. You don’t want to commit to something that you can’t follow through on. Make a realistic estimate of how much time you can commit to volunteering. There are plenty of short term projects (over a weekend) that allow you work around a busy career schedule. However, you may have a lot of time on your hands, and spending 6 months helping out an organization might be something you can commit to.

5) How do you know the organization is legitimate? There are several ways to evaluate the legitimacy of an organization, including Better Business Bureau evaluations, or searching for opportunities on Network for Good. Network for Good combines the VolunteerMatch database (mentioned previously) with GuideStar evaluations of non-profits.

6) Should I volunteer in person or virtually? There are a number of opportunities for Virtual Volunteering. This type of volunteering allows you to support organizations electronically, rather than being there in person. While you might think that this would require less time than doing something in person, that is not necessarily true. This is just one myth about virtual volunteering. The reality is that many people volunteer both in person and through virtual means. However, you may not be able to support in person, maybe due to geographic reasons, or physical disabilities. In that case, virtual volunteering may be a perfect opportunity for you.

7) Should I volunteer in my local community, or someplace else? If you have the time and ability to travel to other parts of the world, you might consider an organization like GlobalVolunteers. They have many opportunities across the world for you to help out. Some people even choose to volunteer on their vacations/holidays. Alternatively, your local community likely needs your help as well. What could be better than helping out the area where you live?

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from CVTips.com, here are some links to interviews with key members of many of the volunteer websites mentioned above (and some additional sites) - Idealist.org, Projects Abroad, Latin America, Global Crossroads, WorkingAbroad, NFOAbroad, Starfish Ventures, Cross Cultural Solutions, and Ecoteer - Volunteering. There is a lot of good information in the interviews about how they operate and what to consider before volunteering.