Best Career Advice EVER? Work for yourself

This is not a post about how you should go into business for yourself.  That is actually pretty difficult and time consuming.  

Instead I want you to re-frame the frustration you feel about your job.  At our most frustrated times we all day dream about a “better” place.

What are some of the qualities and characteristics of this “better place?”

1. Your co-workers will “get it” (translation: agree with you)
2. Your manager will understand all the things your current boss doesn’t
3. You will have all those great benefits you read about everywhere else: free food, free healthcare, free gym, unlimited vacation and whatever else you fill in the blank with.

What is wrong with all of the above?

All of the above are “gimme’s” They are things we all want from a company. We think if our current job had these benefits we would be happier, healthier, more productive, and skinnier.

What if instead of focusing on what the company gives us, we focused on what we can get by doing our best at our job?

Now, before you stop reading and think this is some rah-rah sell-the-company-your-first-born post you are dead wrong.

The truth is, whether you realize it or not, you are already working for yourself.  

Companies have drastically cut their training and development budgets.

Companies are becoming flatter organizations, without the layers of middle management our parents scaled.

The economy has fundamentally changed and middle class jobs are becoming scarce.

Layoffs are the norm and continue to be the norm despite the uptick in the economy.

Instead of working for someone else start working for yourself: 

Re-think how and why you work.

Many of us tell ourselves we are working for a promotion. Or maybe we are working for a bigger bonus.

We think money will buy us happiness. It does but at some point (around $75,000 annual income) the effect wears off.

Stop working for things.

Start working for yourself.

What are your goals and dreams?

Are you doing anything to achieve those goals?

Look at the work you are doing. Is it leading to an accomplishment bullet point on your resume? It should be.  Someone much smarter than me (Penelope Trunk) said that if you aren’t doing work that adds value to your resume. Stop doing it.

I’m not suggesting you go rogue and ignore your manager’s directions or stop doing the work you were hired to do. But I am suggesting that you start to think outside of your every day job duties.

Realizing that ultimately you work for yourself is pretty great.  When something crappy happens at your job, remember that you are working for yourself.  That means you don’t help yourself by sulking or snipping at others. You don’t’ help yourself by taking out your anger on others.

Instead you realize that you help yourself by doing a great job where you are at now. Do a great job now, develop a stellar reputation, extend your network and other opportunities will open up.