Legal Research

"How to Feel Steady in a Shaky Economy"

Posted by Penelope Trunk: "Now that we have a recession, and maybe not so much a recession but a new way of doing business, people are starting to look at their career goals differently. And while interesting was the big goal when we were flush with cash, security will be the brass ring of the near future.

Because really, there is just so much interesting that a person can take. When the world becomes too unstable, that lack of stability consumes us.

Jeff Tweedy, from the band Wilco, describes the senselessness of living on the financial edge:  "Having a solid [fiscal] base allows you to look at darker things and actually think about them. I debate people about this suffering myth, this tortured artists stuff, and they almost never buy it." Tweedy is a harbinger of the trend to come, where the demographic you would expect to be holding out against stability for its own sake are actually leading the push for more of it. Because too much instability can ruin anyone, at any age.

Here are five new ways to approach your career so you can create stability in an unstable workforce:

Treat your career like an investment portfolio...

Don't frame career choices around fun versus not-fun jobs...

Volunteer, to create a safety net...

Take a government job...

If you must be risky, mitigate...

So I guess there are at least two ways to think about stability in your life: One is to create it, by thinking about your job as an asset, and investing conservatively. The other way to think about stability is to sell it. And if you sell it well enough, you just might accidentally stumble on stability yourself. That's what I'm hoping for."

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist, 20 July 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on July 21, 2009 (boomark / email).