Turning What You Love into What You Do
By Patrick O’Connor
The previous segment of the “Turning What You Love into What You Do” blog discussed the concept that “everything is connected” along the RLT and career continuum. This segment digs deeper into that idea by examining the stages of the career continuum using examples from the RLT subjects. Also, a lifeline exercise that illustrates the RLT/career continuum interplay is explained. Readers can conduct their personal lifeline to examine their career continuum/RLT. This can be very useful in reflecting on someone’s path at a particular point in life. It can also be helpful in projecting where someone’s path is headed.
The Career Continuum
The career continuum represents a series of jobs over a specific time period. The length varies based on the individual.
The career continuum is a rather new concept. For many years, employees worked for one employer their entire work lives, sometimes at the same job. Those days are gone for the most part, though some employees (the exception) still spend their careers with one employer.
There is a good bit of zigzagging that occurs along the career continuum, which is affected by changes in technology, globalization, downsizing, work processes and individual preferences. For example, one factor that causes considerable change is how quickly knowledge increases. In 1900, knowledge doubled every 100 years. A recent estimate is that it doubles every 13 months. These changes continue throughout the career continuum. This results in people constantly adapting, which makes job searching, additional training/education, lifelong learning and career changing almost a basic skill.
There are four main stages along the career continuum: initial, mid, late and encore. An overview of the four stages follows with samples from the 16 RLT subjects.
- The initial stage of the career continuum consists of part-time work done as a teenager, such as babysitting, lawn mowing and other part-time work, probably in the restaurant industry. For example, 1/3 of Americans had their first job in a restaurant and 50% of all adults have worked in the restaurant industry at some point. Also, the first “full-time” job(s) out of high school and/or college are included in this stage. This stage might also include various job/career changes, probably into the mid-30s.
- The mid stage continues with more job/career changes. This is also a time when some people realize they would prefer to do what they love. Perhaps they are 15 years into a career and feel it is time to change. The Staging Diva and Julie Messing (Vol 4) are perfect examples of this. Both were successful business executives but elected to switch careers to provide more personal fulfillment.
- The late stage on the career continuum is usually when workers are well established in their career. At this point, hopefully, most people are enjoying what they do. If not, they may still seek other opportunities that provide more satisfaction.
- The encore stage occurs near or after retirement when workers decide to continue working but only if they can do it on their terms. Tom Fulton (Vol 12) is a good example of the encore stage as he became a teacher after a 40-year career in the theater.
Analyzing Your Lifeline
A lifeline chronicles a person’s interests, hobbies, activities, jobs, and careers. In some ways, it is the RLT as well as the career continuum. The easiest way to do a lifeline is to draw a line on a piece of paper and draw symbols to represent important aspects of your life. For example, if you and your family loved to camp you might draw a tree or camper. Perhaps you loved to play soccer, so you would draw a soccer ball. This would continue to your present place in life. Most people usually have about 10-12 symbols representing the important parts of their life. Conduct your lifeline and then consider the following as you review it:
What does the lifeline reveal about you and your career direction? Do you see multiple interests that can be combined to reveal new career opportunities? Can you project any future possibilities from reviewing the lifeline?
A major outcome of doing a lifeline is to identify a consistent theme along your path. What theme or pattern can you identify that connects your education, interests and work experience? Themes were very evident for Marty and Rachel in our last Blog segment. The RLTs of Joe Hendershott (Vol.15) and Nelson Burns (Vol. 8) are also good examples of a reoccurring theme. Though different in some respects, their Roads reveal a lifelong theme of service to others. Joe and his family use Hope4thewounded as their vehicle to support young people who are experiencing trauma. Mr. Burns is CEO and “servant leader” of Coleman Professional Services, a major counseling organization in Northeast Ohio. In both cases, their lifeline resembles a ministry which is evident in reading their RLTs.
The next segment of this blog in January will address another common quality in the RLT subjects: community engagement. All 16 subjects are very active in their communities. Specific examples from their RLTs will illustrate how and why this is important in the goal to “turn what you love into what you do.”
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