I’m a human Venn diagram who’s built a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts.
This is how I’ve been introducing myself for the last decade or so. Why? Because on the surface my resume makes basically no sense — I’ve been a theater director, a computer science educator, a management consultant, a fashion entrepreneur, and now I’m a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. You see, I’ve always lived between multiple worlds, and the intersection of those experiences, skills, and networks is what I bring to the table. And I’ve found that that strategy has given me both stability and flexibility in a world that is not likely to give you either.
Some call it a portfolio career. But me? I call it a portfolio life.
Here are three insights from my book on how and why you can build a portfolio life too.
Insight #1: Be Your Own BATNA
BATNA is a term from the legal world that stands for the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. In other words: it’s a back-up plan.
Feel like “once-in-a-lifetime” disruptions seem to be happening every, I don’t know, 5-7 years? Wars, pandemics, bank collapses, recessions, world-altering climate disasters, world-altering technology advancements (hey there, GPT-4!). It’s not in your head: monumental changes are coming faster and with greater impact than ever before. That means the playbook that worked for other generations just doesn’t apply anymore. How can you build a career — a life! — in a state of constant change? You’re going to need a back-up plan. Or several. Really: a portfolio of them.
A Portfolio Life offers four things: identity, optionality, diversification, and flexibility. Together, these four attributes give you back-up plans in spades.
An identity beyond your job title means a layoff doesn’t mean you lose who you are. Optionality to pivot to a different industry or function means you never have to feel like your back is against the wall in a professional space that is contracting or going through an existential crisis. Diversification means you can weather the constant disruptions that have become the norm (technological, ecological, political, you name it). And flexibility to rebalance your investments — your life — when your needs or goals change means you don’t have to figure out everything you’ll ever want or need and pick the right path for your entire life… you just have to form a strategy for now, for this season of life.
Insight #2: Give it 85%
Have you ever been told to give 110%? Do you hate that idea as much as I do?
It’s pretty common in the startup world to be expected to work at your max capacity at all times. We do “sprints” and live tethered to our phones and somehow have normalized a level of work that basically ensures we all hit a point of burnout. And that ethos has seeped out of startups (and finance and consulting and big law) into every corner of our culture. This notion we should give our all — and then some — is in the water. But it doesn’t feel sustainable, and that’s because it’s not.
Looking for alternatives, I turned to my operations management colleagues at Harvard Business School to see if there was research on the optimal work level and stumbled across a surprising finding: the world’s best-run manufacturing lines run at 85% capacity. That’s facilities at the *top* of their game. Who’ve worked out all the kinks and perfected their systems. They intentionally leave 15% of their time unscheduled. Why?
Because planned downtime is cheaper than unplanned downtime.
Planned downtime means time for routine maintenance. It means space for do-overs when (not if) you make mistakes. And it means there’s room for the surges that may come from time to time, and those surges won’t break you (or, say, cause you to burn out). It means acknowledging reality and leaving space for life rather than planning for only the best case scenarios. Now I know we are humans and not manufacturing lines, but honestly that should make the case even stronger for seeing 85% as your target maximum, not some hypothetical 110%.
Insight #3:Rest is a requirement not a reward
There’s a big caveat in my book that I’m not afraid to put out there: when it comes to planned downtime, do as I say, not as I do.
I was raised with a work ethic that was formed by scarcity, religion, exceptionalism and the quintessential American narrative of bootstraps and as such have never found a five minute window I couldn’t be productive in. Working, working, and more working is how I mitigate disasters and manage my anxiety (as well as fuel all of my interests and projects).
So one of the big insights from my research was the imperative to include rest in your portfolio. To see it as a requirement, an opportunity to refuel and recharge. A key part of making your life sustainable. It’s not a reward to be earned.
Rest can and should come in small ways throughout your day and week and month, as opportunities to recharge and recover. But it can also come in larger ways through intentional breaks like sabbaticals. I came across research from my colleague DJ DiDonna of The Sabbatical Project. Sabbaticals may feel like a rich person’s solution to the modern problem of burnout and overwork, but they are actually a very old idea.
He and his colleagues found “Much more than an extended vacation, sabbaticals provide a psychological safe space to figure out what it means to live a more authentic life.” And perhaps surprisingly, they found that while many sabbatical-takers did make drastic changes afterward (like quitting a job or deciding to have kids), the majority “simply returned to a version of their previous lives with a newfound, hard-won perspective.”
Remember: you are more than the economic value of your labor, and the imprint of your life is far bigger than your business card.
Here’s the bottom line:
The world is changing faster than ever before. In the midst of that change, it can feel daunting to aim for a life that is fulfilling, financially stable, and flexible enough to accommodate all of the dimensions ofyour human Venn diagram. It can also feel like a personal shortcoming when the playbook our parents and grandparents set out for us looks utterly impossible to follow. Yet you are entitled to build a life filled withjoy, growth, love, adventure, beauty, and rest. And honestly, you should demand nothing less. Because, it’s true: Youdoonly live once.(Yes: I’m reclaiming YOLO.)
