I’ve never been a fan of retirement.

Why wait for retirement to start living?

Why wait for retirement to start travelling?

Why wait for retirement to start a new hobby?

I remember an older co-worker at my first (and last) “desk job” who had a running calendar for when she would retire (9 years, 10 months, and 22 days at the time of my leaving, if I remember correctly!). She always talked about the crafts room she would install in her house and how she couldn’t wait to spend her days making memory books and crafty things. I always thought… if you like to craft, why not build your crafts room this weekend?!

I guess I just never wanted to kick my dreams out to the future.

And I’m guessing that you feel the same way, too.

And yet, it does make me wonder… are there things that we are kicking the can on? Are there things that we file under our “retirement dream” because they don’t feel attainable yet?

For me, that was always building a portfolio career. You know those fabulous careers that wealthy white men in their sixties seem to have where they consult, sit on boards, invest in new businesses, publish books, and strike deals on golf courses and luxury yachts?

That!

If there was one retirement dream I always had… it was to be a wealthy white man in his sixties. The possibilities! The freedom! The multi-passionate life! The luxury yachts!

Doesn’t every young girl grow up dreaming of this?!

If you have a version of this dream, I want to ask: what’s stopping you from building that career today?

If my old co-worker can (and should) build her crafts room before retirement, aren’t you entitled to your portfolio career before you retire, too?

Sit with that question.

What’s coming up for you?

“I don’t have enough experience yet.”

“I’m not an expert in one thing yet.”

“I don’t have the expertise to advise on big important problems yet.”

In a way, you’re right. Based on how careers looked 30, 50, 80 years ago, you wouldn’t have had enough expertise yet. You wouldn’t have clocked your 10,000 hours yet. You would be right to want to wait, study more, learn more, absorb more.

But we’re living in 2022, my dear. That’s like telling me you don’t know how to milk a cow and that somehow means you’re not ready yet. Sure, you can go learn to milk a cow, but that’s only preparing you for the old world, not the new world.

So let’s optimize for the new world…

Where the ability to absorb and make sense of information—finding patterns, pulling ideas from unrelated fields, seeing the big vision—is more valuable than trying to be an encyclopedia of information (let’s leave that for Google, shall we?).

Where the ability to have empathy—connect deeply to people, understand universal pain, help raise the vibration of the planet—is more valuable than simply getting shit done. If you can connect with, and impact, someone’s inner world, you will have more power than any overworked middle manager could ever dream of. (Side note, this is why your corporate resume is being replaced by your personal brand in the new career world. Who you are is becoming more important than what title you have.)

And where the ability to follow your intuition—set new trends, pave new paths, envision what hasn’t been done before—is more valuable than following direction like a little monkey (we’re inventing robots for that).

All things that sound oddly familiar in these corners of the internet… don’t you think?

I predict that everyone will have a multi-passionate career in the future because embracing creativity, big thinking, experimentation, and every other skill needed for a fast-evolving world…

… requires us to exist outside of just one little box.

We can wait for permission to build our multi-passionate careers when they eventually become mainstream, or we can start building them right now.

I’ve always preferred to be ahead of the career curve 😉

And our growing Friday Newsletter community is a sign that I’m not the only one…

Cheers to us!