Want a life? Plan a career that leaves room to pursue personal passions
By Penelope Trunk, Globe Correspondent, 8/21/05
Sarah Kenny wakes up at 5 a.m. six mornings a week to get to Back Bay Yoga where she practices Ashtanga — a genre of yoga known for acrobatic, extreme moves, such as tucking the feet behind head, and doing fifty push-ups.
After that, she goes to work as a senior operations specialist. For Kenny, both parts of her life are important. "I am good at my job and I am good at yoga and I had to figure out how to balance both," she says.
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One of the most liberating moments in career planning is to realize that you don't have to get paid to do your favorite activity to be happy. Get rid of the idea that the most important thing to a worker is work, and you free yourself to make work just one portion of a fulfilling life.
Kenny's success comes, in part, from the fact that she has structured a life that caters to two sides of her personality — the organized office manager and the live-in-the-moment athlete.
Paul D. Tieger, coauthor of the best-selling career guide, "Do What You Are," advises that you pick a career based on your personality, which nearly ensures that you'll have passion for what you do. Tieger's book helps you to understand yourself so you can nail down your personality type and then find careers that cater to it. Give the system a free test drive at personalitytype.com. What is clear form Tieger's system is that a career need only to cater to the dominant sides of your personality to be fulfilling.
The key is finding a job that leaves room for a life. Kenny, for example, will not work at a company that does not respect her yoga schedule. Leslie Cintron, assistant professor of sociology at Washington and Lee University, says that workers like Kenny are not aberrations. "We have a generation that is clamoring for more balance in their lives," she says.
But this is a different sort of balance than baby boomers aspired to. "Baby boomers were talking about issues that they had to deal with when women moved into the workforce and policies didn't acknowledge that fact," Cintron says. "Today, one difference is that men in their 20s also are saying they want balance. They want extra space to be able to develop themselves as individuals," she says. Another difference is that baby boomers asked, "Can we work and have a family?" The new generations ask, "Can we work and have a life?"
For some people, "having a life" means having time for friends or developing a relationship. Other people might seek meaningful activities outside of work, such as sports or travel. Whatever "having a life" means to you, take solace in the fact that you don't need to get paid for it, you just need to find an employer who will give you room to pursue your personal passions.
Be bold when it comes to getting what you need. The new generation is rife with people like you. Management advisers across the country are warning companies that if they don't make the workplace flexible they will face a shortage of willing workers.
Having control over your time and your work is the most important factor in job satisfaction.
Penelope Trunk can be reached at penelope@penelopetrunk.com
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North of Boston Career Fair
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