I finished this book in August 2024. I recommend this book 2/10.
Why you should read this book:
If you are just entering the job market or have just been laid off from your corporate job, The book will help you take stake of what you have and need. The book will also make you think about how the job market are shifting.
Get your copy here.
🚀 The book in three sentences
Become more comfortable being flexible.
Think long-term and ensure you have what you need for later in life.
More responsibility will be pushed on the employee, such as medical and retirement.
📝 My notes and thoughts
P4. Ten rules of the Gig Economy:
Define your success
Discover your personal vision of success, which might look very different from the traditional American Dream.
Diversity
Learn to identify and find gigs to increase your opportunities, improve your skills, and expand your network.
Create your own security
There is no job security. Understand how to create income security, an exit strategy, and your own safety net.
Connect without networking
Decide if inbound or outbound connecting works better for you, and discover how to make great asks and offers.
Face fear by reducing risk
Tackle the big fears that are holding you back, break them into manageable risks, and develop an action plan to overcome them.
Take time off between gigs
We can expect tot take a lot more time off in the Gig Economy. Here's how to plan for it, and make it meaningful.
Be mindful about time
Reboot your calendar to spend time on what matters. Consider whether a Maker or Manager schedule works best for you.
Be financially flexible
Forget the save-your-latte-money approach to money management. Restructure your financial life and increase your financial flexibility and security.
Think access, not ownership.
Owning is so Baby Boomer. Access the things you want with less debt and more flexibility. Examine the myths of home ownership.
Save for a traditional retirement, but don't plan on having one
Answer the question: When can I stop working?
P19. Define your vision of success:
To see that internal vision, start by asking yourself questions that will help you articulate your priorities:
What does success look like for me?
What are the values and priorities I want to live?
What is my definition of a good job, a good career, and even a good life?
P24. Richard Shell, a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, advocates that we take "pit stops" along the way to accomplishing our goals in order to evaluate our priorities and our varying definitions of success. This means that we need to check in, reflect, and recalibrate regularly. We should—both on our own and then together with a partner or close friend—stop to reflect and update our definition and go back through this chapter to review and respond to the list of questions again. Our answers are likely to have changed, and if so, we'll need to course correct.
P26. Surrogation and success:
Step 1: Identify success
Who do you know and consider successful?
Identify and write about five people I consider successful.
What specifically makes me think of them as successful?
Step 2: Practice surrogation:
Can I meet with them to ask about their experiences achieving success?
P28. We might not be able to achieve work/life balance on a particular day, but if we extend the time frame to a month or to a year, we're more likely to be successful. The same concept applies to achieving our vision of success. Time horizons can help us better allocate all of our resources—our. time, energy, attention, and money—to achieve our goals. We have to be aware of our natural tendency to over-allocate our resources to short-term activities that offer immediate rewards instead of to our long-term activities, goals, and priorities. Our over-investment and over-allocation of time and energy to short-term goals put our longer-term goals at risk. To overcome this tendency, we need to keep our long-term goals "front and center" and consciously allocate our resources to them.
P28. Time horizons are also powerful because they can help us avoid false dichotomies—choices that look like "either/or" decisions in the short term but are really "and" decisions within a more generous time frame. For example, if I'm a self-employed consultant, I might find myself deciding whether I want to either spend the summer off with my kids or work during the summer to achieve my financial goals for the year. In the short term, the choice is either/or. But if I extend the time horizon and plan to spend next summer off at the beach, I can use the year in between to save money, take on additional clients to generate more revenue, and give advance notice to existing clients that I'll be taking off next summer. By allowing myself the additional time to plan and execute those three steps, I can do both—spend the summer on the beach and achieve my financial targets for the year. We can accomplish more of our biggest and most meaningful goals if we give ourselves the right amount of time.
P39. We also expose ourselves to the possibility of goal creep. For instance, we assure ourselves that we'll work as a corporate lawyer or investment banker until we hit our number (the amount of money we want to have), but half a decade later, we're completely caught up in the lifestyle and the number we are thinking we need to achieve starts getting higher. The constantly moving goalpost of the ever-increasing number means we'll never feel satisfied enough to stop what we're doing and shift to what we want to do. A portfolio of gigs can help us avoid deferring our lives by giving us a way to pursue the things we really want to do starting today.
P41. Finding gigs:
Thinking about your own interests and goals, create ideas about what a diverse portfolio of gigs looks like for you.
Step 1: What was my best gig? What about it did I love?
Step 2: Identify your ideal gig:
What would be my ideal gig?
Why?
What are the specific elements that make this my ideal gig? For example, is it the opportunity to be creative? To be in charge? To work from the beach? To immerse myself in an activity I enjoy?
Step 3: Discover potential gigs: Write out 10 potential gigs that you could do an would want to do. Make sure to include some ideas that aren't money making.
P45. Businesses reduce their risks and maximize their returns by diversifying their lines of business and revenues. Investors do the same by diversifying their portfolios. Yet when it comes to individuals we're advised to concentrate: to work for one employer and generate one stream of income. This concentration is risky. Diversifying reduces that risk and gives us the chance to develop new skills, expand our networks, and increase our future opportunities. As you think about diversifying, consider:
What are the ways I can build a diverse portfolio of gigs?
What kind of gig would I like to include in my portfolio?
What existing skills, networks, and knowledge can I leverage to create new gigs?
P58. Create an exit strategy to leave your job. Imagine that you are going to leave your job in six months. Create a list of tasks you would need to do to prepare. Make sure to address each of the following categories:
Professional: What would I like to do next? What can I do now to start creating my next opportunity? What side gigs help position me to my next opportunity? What networking/connecting efforts should I start? Who should I contact?
Financial: How much do I have to save? What opportunities can I pursue now to increase my income? What financial changes can I make to reduce my expenses, and how soon can I make them? What healthcare and other job benefits can I use before leaving?
Personal: What changes in lifestyle, accommodation, or location would I have to make?
P64. As you think about creating your own security, consider:
Have I accepted the reality that there is no job security?
How can I create income security?
Do I have an exit strategy for my current job or work?
How strong is my safety net, and how can I make it stronger?
P95. Face your fears and reduce your risk:
Step 1: Start with the worst case:
Imagine the most negative outcome of the decision you're most afraid of, the extreme consequence, and the most frightening results. Write them down.
Step 2: Identify specific risks:
Identify specific, concrete risks that make up your fears. List as many as you can think of.
Step 3: Assess how to reduce your risks:
Develop an action plan for each risk. Go through each risk and evaluate: Can I mitigate it, insure it, shift it, eliminate it, or accept it? Determine the risk of taking no action.
P124. Calendar diagnostic:
Step 1: Think back to the chapter on success and priorities, and recall the responses to the key questions:
What does success look like to me?
What are the values and priorities I want to live?
What is my definition of a good job, a good career, and even a good life?
Step 2: Open (or go get) your personal or family calendar and review the past year. Answer the following questions:
What were my three biggest time commitments each month and each week?
What did I spend my time doing?
What did I do on my weekends?
Did I take any vacations or time off?
Step 3: Reflect and answer:
How much alignment is there between my priorities and how I spend my time?
P146. A checkbook diagnostic:
Step 1: Revisit my priorities:
The first step is to consider your responses to three key questions raised in the exercise in chapter 1:
What does success look like to me?
What are the values and priorities I want to live?
What is my definition of a good job, a good career, and even a good life?
Step 2: Audit my spending:
Gather the data on your spending from wherever you track it. Go back through the past year and review how you spent your money. Answer the following questions:
What were my five biggest financial commitments each month and for the year?
What did I spend my money on? Break spending into categories to help see where it's going and evaluate your largest categories.
What life am I buying?
Is this the life I want?
Step 3: Evaluate if my spending is aligned with my priorities.
Step back and reflect on these questions:
How much alignment is there between my priorities and spending?
Do my five biggest financial commitments move me closer to or further away from a life aligned with my priorities?
What changes can I make, and am I willing to make, to better align my money and my priorities?
P153. Determine your personal burn rate:
Step 1: Tally your savings:
Add up any liquid savings, including cash in the bank, short-term CDs, and investments in stocks/mutual funds (not including retirement accounts).
Step 2: Determine your personal burn rate:
Using the financial information you have already gathered for the Checkbook Diagnostic, sum the total of all your expenses by month and the year. The sum of your expenses is your burn rate (we're assuming for the purpose of this step that you have no income because you are between gigs and not working). Divide your savings from Step 1 by your monthly personal burn rate from Step 2, and you have a preliminary idea of how many months you could live your current lifestyle if you earned no income. It's a proxy for how much financial flexibility you have in your life. The more months you can cover your expenses, the more flexibility you have.
Step 3: understand your personal burn rate:
Answer the following questions to better identify what drives your personal burn rate:
Can I reduce or eliminate any of those commitments or habits?
What is the minimum burn rate I could achieve immediately if I had to?
What is the minimum burn rate I could achieve with six months of planning?
Step 4: calculate your financial flexibility:
To complete the exercise, compare your current monthly income with your current personal burn rate. Answer the following questions:
How much income do I need to earn to cover my personal burn rate and still have money available to save?
Am I living above or below my means?
By how much?
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