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Lose Track Of Time To Find Your Career

By Frugaling 6 Comments

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Looking out at my future

Graduate school consists of a series of races – from place to place, hour to hour. Today, I was a student, counselor, teacher, and technical assistant. Every day requires a series of hats, as I run from activity to activity. Sometimes my mind feels like it’s in a million different places at once. It’s hard to slow down.

Thankfully, I’m nearing the end of my tenure as a doctoral student, and ready to think about next steps. I’ve segued to future-oriented questions. The most important one has been: How can I make the greatest contribution to society, while continuing to be excited to work each day? This question propelled me in the first place to study counseling psychology and acquire a Ph.D. But next steps beget a reevaluation of how I can best make a difference. I can’t stay in graduate school forever!

As a counseling psychology student, I have the privilege of multiple career paths. Some go directly into private practice (seeing clients), hospitals, teaching at universities, researching psychological concerns, and/or informing public policy. Alone, any one would be nightmarish; I’d get itchy, looking for diversity in my daily routine. Doing a sole activity all the time scares me. I don’t want to become an automaton. Frankly, I’ve envisioned being most happy with a blend of research, teaching, and counseling.

Questions abound: Would I like to be a university professor? How about a counseling psychologist at a VA? Will I work at a community college or research institution? How much of the job will include teaching, practice, or research? Where will I find a new home – East, West, Central, another country?

Answers are nearly impossible to find, as the job market is constantly in flux and increasingly competitive. I won’t magically be handed a career because of my advanced degree. Surprising as it may be, having a Ph.D. only gets you into an interview – not in the door.

Future career prospects are also tempered by concerns of stress and overwork. In this field, I’d venture to say many academics put in 60 to 80-hour weeks. There are numerous employers that work people mercilessly. Too many treat their employees as replaceable “human capital.” These practices leave individuals prone to burnout and contribute to this country’s greatest killer: heart disease.

Where does that leave a soon-to-be Ph.D.? Like much in life, I’m seeking a balance between my wants and needs. The 30-hour workweek for an academic probably doesn’t exist unless you’re near the end of your career. But 80 hours per week for years frightens me to the core.

The secret for me is pursuing passions, which can often result in “flow.” This psychological concept centers on how “just-manageable challenges” tend to make employees feel purposeful and needed — in between anxiety and boredom. When this state occurs, people become hyper-focused, productive, and generally happy. It’s a mutually beneficial state for employers and their underlings, but not often made possible due to overscheduled weeks or monotonous responsibilities.

Researchers have presented six symptoms of flow:

  1. “Intense and focused concentration on what one is doing in the present moment.”
  2. “Merging of action and awareness.”
  3. “Loss of reflective self-consciousness”
  4. “A sense that one can control one’s actions…”
  5. “Distortion of temporal experience.”
  6. “Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding…”

Essentially, people are focused, active, forget their struggles, feel autonomous, lose track of time, and are internally motivated. From artists to scholars to writers to mathematicians, flow is an incredible place for creativity and excellence.

The greatest moments of my life have been here, when I lose track of time and become engrossed in an activity. For instance, when I started an endowment, Frugaling.org, and wrote my dissertation proposal, each were madly written, advocated for, and created. Despite the time to establish each, the pleasure of feeling purposeful made the hours fly by. They didn’t feel like work. I lost “reflective self-consciousness” and became the activity at hand.

While constrained by a society that values money over health (again, look at our health costs associated with being overworked and underpaid), I have the opportunity and privilege to pursue my own route. As I envision my “perfect” career, I imagine a series of part-time style gigs. I want a sprinkle of supervising counselors’ work, seeing clients, conducting research, and teaching future generations. The hours might become irrelevant when I’m tested, pushed, and encouraged to focus on helping others.

Two Novembers from now, applications will be due. I have time to find the right home, but I’m eager to fulfill the values gained over 26 years of my life. Right now, it feels like a professorship, but I’m open to change. I need to find my flow; without it, any job would be unbearable long term. Additionally, I need to be able to shape ideas, work, and daily activities in a manner that helps others directly.

How will you find your flow? What activities make you lose track of time? When do you feel purposeful, action-oriented, and passionate? Could these activities ever become a part of your work?

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: Autonomy, balance, Career, counseling, flow, Income, jobs, Life, professor, time, vocation, Work

Picture The Life, Not The Millions You Want

By Frugaling 3 Comments

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Rich Kids of Instagram photo
Photo: Rich Kids of Instagram

There’s a powerful allure to the “self-made millionaire.” Across vocations and incomes, some of the most viral and popular articles in the personal finance world provide how-tos to readers. And if they’re not step-by-step guides, articles tend to showcase people who’ve succeeded in their path to great financial success.

The lesson is simple: watch and learn. View a role model, and copy the steps to success. Seemingly, this is propagated as a convenient and regular method for monetary gain. Unfortunately, every individual is different — from intelligence to net worth to credit rating. Each of these factors can influence your ability to hustle and follow in these role models’ footsteps.

Too frequently, affording a lifestyle is purely linked to income and wealth. That goal of riches seems empty to me, what do you think? What if we reversed this strange paradigm and reviewed the life, rather than money, we want?

Today I wanted to introduce a new method for success that downplays the millionaire status for something more lasting and rewarding. The following are 5 key elements for a fulfilling and happy life, and may just provide the riches along the way!

Photo Rich Kids of Instagram
Photo: Rich Kids of Instagram

1. Freedom. This is continually at the top of the heap for financially savvy worker bees. Freedom allows for free time, family time, and fun time. Often, more work and income are seen as the pathways to this goal. This ironically can propel us further from freedom and enter into a vicious work-cycle that only perpetuates our desire for more down time. When we scrub away goals of financial riches, freedom and time become crystal clear. Reduce any discretionary spending (if possible), and you’ll suddenly see more money in your pocket — all while maintaining and/or reducing time spent working. Now, you can read that book with your newfound free time (just make sure to check it out of the public library)!

2. Autonomy. People love choice and independence. Heck, as children, our first words are usually “yes” and “no” (right after “mom” and “dad”). We are born, bred, and instructed in the world of autonomy. Imagine for a moment the toothpaste aisle. Can you picture all the options, rows, columns, and sale items? Every time I walk by the toothpaste I’m bombarded by the variations — uncertain where my money is best spent. With more money, we get more choice. With riches, we are able to choose grander items — upgrading from a Ford Pinto to a BMW 7-Series. But this is the unfortunate influence of massive advertising dollars. Will the BMW 7-Series make a fundamentally whole and self-actualized person? Unlikely. And that brings us to the original point of this list: fulfillment. Let’s make fulfilling decisions that last, not spontaneous purchases that fill wants and cravings.

3. Self-worth. The things we own tend to say a lot about us. There’s actually a professor, Sam Gosling, that wrote a book called Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You. He points out some pretty self-explanatory conclusions about your living spaces. Your home represents you, and can often provide a sense of self-worth. Remove your items, and who are you? Really, I mean it… Without your iPhone, Macbook Air, furniture, photos, and material goods, tell me about yourself. Can you do it? I bet you can, because your self-worth and personhood is bigger than anything you own. After years of shopping sprees and poor financial planning, I realized that once I stopped spending wantonly, my self-worth soared. This is an intrinsic trait that requires inner worth and work — your bank account will never provide true self-worth.

Photo Rich Kids of Instagram
Photo: Rich Kids of Instagram

4. Health/Safety. There are countless examples of wealthy people having bodyguards and security teams. Their money is frequently seen as a path to safety. But this is comically out-of-whack, as the wealthier you become, the more threatened you may feel. Frankly, the stories of billionaires being kidnapped for ransoms should scare anyone. What this tells us is that there’s a middle-ground for wealth and safety. The safest and healthiest levels seem to center on getting your health needs met and living in a proper shelter. Again, this doesn’t require millions.

5. Companionship. I dream of hosting lavish parties in a loft apartment; preferably, encapsulated in the clouds with glass windows. Something modern to look out at the world. What my heart and head is really getting at is a desire for friends and companionship. It speaks in funny ways, when it desires these simple pieces of fulfillment. Companionship and connection with other people is fundamentally human — we are social creatures. But money isn’t necessarily required for that. Sure, you may not look like the Rich Kids of Instagram, floating on a yacht full of tanned 20-somethings, but there are people who care and will be around when the going gets tough; again, regardless of the digits in your bank account.

Filed Under: Save Money Tagged With: Autonomy, Billionaire, Choice, Companionship, freedom, health, Millionaire, rich, Rich Kids of Instagram, Riches, RKOI, Safety, Self-worth, Wealth

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