Five Things That Help New Work Pioneers Make Real Change

So, I’ve introduced you to the (not so) silent rise of the New Work Pioneer; I’ve shared how New Work Pioneers use times of crisis as catalysts for change; and indeed how New Work Pioneers come into being.
Today I want to share some practical thoughts about how to set off on the New Work Pioneer journey. They come from my own experience of having walked away from a six-figure corporate career in order to design my own lifestyle. And from the work I do with professionals facing career and life change challenges.

“Change your life.” Sounds easy enough, besides which the bookshelves and the internet are full of advice to do just that. Arguably, it’s easy enough if you’re a kid whose life is still relatively unformed and you have few responsibilities. But for a professional who’s a bit of a way into their much longed and studied for career, it’s not so straightforward. You’re much more ensnared by the tentacles that implicitly come with your professional existence, and knowing how or whether to unleash yourself from any of them is quite a challenge.

How, then, do you begin to deconstruct a life in the process of creating a new one?

Become more selfish

Realise that, yes, there’s been a large part of you in what’s got you to this place, but that you’re living out other people’s agendas for you too.

The parents who are being vicariously successful thanks to you. The partner whose self-esteem and way of life are enhanced by your position and your earnings. The companies who puff about having you as such a stellar member of their team. The portfolio of accounts who consider you as being indispensable to their endeavours. The professional colleagues and peers who are validated by your staying in the game.

It’s time to stop thinking about them and to focus on you; to ask yourself questions and to be prepared to listen to the answers:

• “What do I want from my work and from my life?”
• “What do I need my work to deliver for me?”

Because you, like most of us, have spent so many years ignoring your own, internal voice, it may take a while for you to really hear it, and to really know the answers to these questions. But that’s okay. The knowing will come.

Do a life audit

Take yourself off and brainstorm the things in life that are important to you. They’ll include things like: work, relationship, family, hobbies, friends, health, self-development, spirituality…. Score out of ten how well you’re doing on each, then stand back and review what you’ve just come up with.

• What’s on the list that surprises you?
• What’s not on the list that surprises you?
• What has led you to score each one as you have?
• What areas of your life are really calling out for your attention?
• What changes are you prepared to make in your life to begin to embrace these neglected, but important, parts of your life?

Contain the effects that your current work has on your life

When I started on the road to a different kind of work, my old consulting career demanded that I was “on” 24/7. The same is true of most of the lawyers, accountants, bankers, consultants and senior managers with whom I’ve ever worked. The mindset? Work always comes first.

If you want to fundamentally change things, that belief has to be challenged.

What can help is for you to map out your own boundaries. So, to decide what is and isn’t okay for you in terms of your work’s presence in your life. For example, you may choose that it IS okay for you to work late and/or attend client or networking dinners two evenings a week; that by exception you’ll pull an all-nighter; that if there’s an emergency that threatens a key account relationship you’ll allow yourself to be called over a weekend. By the same token, you may choose that it is NOT okay for your Managing Partner or MD to expect you to work through the night with no prior notice; or for people to email you when you’re on holiday and expect you to be on your BlackBerry on the beach; or for you to be given additional responsibility without your say-so.

It’s then all about your managing your workload, your deliverables and people’s expectations of you around those boundaries.

I’m not saying this is easy, but it is possible. Adopting this guideline myself, I decided that it was not okay for me to sit with my consulting project team late into the evening, night after night and to forego my fitness activities. On one long-term project in South Africa, I invoked my Programme Director’s wrath by leaving my desk at 6pm a few evenings a week to go to the gym. “Is there something wrong with you?” were the actual words that were on occasion used as I ran the gauntlet of critical eyes. But, interestingly, by the end of the assignment, many of my colleagues had followed my example, and my client gave me formal recognition for being a model for “work life balance” in the consulting team.

Commit to doing a non-work activity that lights your fire

In my story of Joe, it was writing. For other people I’ve coached it has been variously T’ai Chi, rock climbing, Cordon Bleu cookery lessons, drawing or painting, photography, training to be a Pilates instructor, choosing to spend more time with their babies and institutionalising it for themselves, and doing counselling certificates.

I cannot tell you what “it” will be for you, but you’ll know what “it” is. It might have a feel of silliness or playfulness about it. Or at first to be something you feel you really can’t or ought not to let yourself do. “I could never admit to any of my work colleagues that I was doing this,” say a few of my clients in respect to whatever it is they do. At least at first.

But in giving yourself permission to lighten up and have some fun, you’ll begin to feel yourself and your view of the world and work expand. And you’ll start to see different and new possibilities unfold for yourself.

Make time to plan and reflect

Coaching and indeed good, positive psychotherapy can give you the time and space to switch off from always needing to be attending to this or that and to focus on you for an hour or so.

If you have a good, supportive, loving relationship it can work in the same way. Just make sure you make time for it. My partner, Steve, and I have breakfast together first thing every Friday morning. It’s sacrosanct time in which we chat with one another about what’s going on for us: what’s working, what’s not, what we need to give more attention to, what we need to drop and move on from.

Just saying out loud to another person what’s going on for you and how you’re seeing the world is of itself a way to bring life to your thoughts and to gain traction.

These things together begin to enable you to see the woods from the trees and to figure what further changes will look like.

And you? Have you worked with any ideas like the ones I’ve just been talking about? What kind of results have you seen? Has anything different worked for you that you’d be happy to share?

Related posts:

1. New Work Pioneers Use Crises As Opportunities For Change
2. Introducing The Manifesto For New Work Pioneers
3. The Birth of a New Work Pioneer
4. Why Freelancers Hold The Key To Happiness At Work
5. Unhappy at work? An alternative look at this week’s job satisfaction statistics