The Adventure of a Portfolio Life

I’ve been thinking a lot this past year about my portfolio life.  I picked up that phrase ‘portfolio life’ from the Jeff Goins book The Art of Work.  I think it apply describes what many of us do in our lives.  Not that it needs a label, but if you have to label something a thoughtful, positive label is preferable.

Apparently the concept of a ‘portfolio life’ has resonated with other people because Jeff has started a podcast of the same name.  (I mean who doesn’t have a podcast today?) I haven’t listened to it

The Portfolio Life is really defined by what it isn’t.  It isn’t the monolithic one-job-for-life cultural norm that was developed codified in the Western world.  The thought that there is one consistent path or trajectory from cradle to grave is the existing norm that the Portfolio Life stands in relief to.

I’m not sure the singular life ever existed or whether it was another myth perpetrated by people and institutions who crave certainty above all else.  It does seem to go through cycles in the cultural zeitgeist.  I’m ‘seasoned’ enough to have lived through a couple cycles.

I think the 1970’s were a transition point.  Before that people, in the USA at least, had this myth of the paternal company that gave you a good job for a living wage and if you worked hard you could climb the corporate ladder.

You got the two-bedroom ranch house with a white picket fence on a ¼ acre lot. You had 2.5 kids and a dog and went bowling at night.

Like I said, that was the myth.

In the 70’s the old industries started to fall into their own gravity wells.  By the time I joined the work force in the 80’s we were in full on mass-lay-off mode and that myth of the kindly, paternalistic company had evaporated.

Sure, every generation pines away for the myth of simpler times that really never existed.  (I dare you to go work a farmstead)

Being the hopeful, can-do people that we are we innovated new tech and service industries and moved on with our silicon lives.  But through this you still noticed this angst around the loss of a known, solid path for people’s lives to follow.

Fast forward to today and we have a unique opportunity.  We have access to everything.  Every lifestyle.  Every geographic.  Every religion.  Every philosophy. Every hobby.  Everything.  It’s all right at the end of our fingertips.

This access to everything creates the marvelous opportunity that enables a Portfolio Life.  But, since it is a new thing it also scares the crap out of our monkey minds.  How can we rest?  How can we not go insane when confronted by the opportunity to learn, do and enjoy EVERYHTING?

This is the situation I found myself in last year at this time.  You can’t just do everything. You have to have a strategy or at least an understanding of what you can do.

It’s referred to as a ‘monkey trap’.  How do you catch a monkey?  You put a banana in a basket with a narrow neck.  The monkey reaches in a grabs the banana, but the hand with the banana won’t fit through the narrow neck.  The monkey doesn’t want to lose the banana so they don’t let go, but they’re trapped if they don’t.

It’s an old metaphor for greed, really.  The lesson is that if you try to pick up too many things or won’t put things down those things trap you.

I’m sure you’ve found yourself in similar situation.  You start too many projects.  Have too many interests.  At some point you realize you’re not getting anything useful done and you’re spread too thin.  It’s a monkey trap. You may love all these things you’re doing and each one of them may add value or pleasure to your or someone else’s life.

But you can’t do it all.

One reaction is to try to do everything more efficiently.  That way you can squeeze it all in.  The theory is that if you can find a way to do one or two of your portfolio items faster it will create more time.

There are some problems with this tactic.  First, if it’s something you shouldn’t be doing you shouldn’t care about how fast you do it and second if it’s something you love doing it more efficiently can suck the passion out of it.  Third, stuff expands to fill the time vacuum.  You may tactically finagle an extra 20 minutes in your day but it won’t last long – something will fill that up.

There’s no such thing as free time.  Free time implies that this time miraculously appeared like a found penny on the sidewalk.  Why would you want free time?  Clearly only so you could do something that you wanted to do but didn’t have the time to do in the first place.  That’s not free time.  That’s poorly allocated time.

How do we manage the availability of everything?  How do we deal with the dilemma of abundance?

People will tell you that you need to find your ‘one true passion’ and wrap your life around that.  There may be people on this planet that tumbled from the womb knowing the one thing that they were going to commit their lives to, but for we common folk it would be folly to spend your life fruitlessly waiting to be struck by lightning.

This is where you can, instead, embrace the portfolio.

Here’s your exercise:  Get a piece of paper, or a stack of colored light emitting diodes, and make some columns.  First column write down all the stuff that you know about that makes you happy. Next column right down all the stuff you think you’re good at.  Then write a column of what’s important to you.

Now compare the overlap of these things to the opportunities in your portfolio – the things you are doing today or might want to do tomorrow and see how they line up.  Where’s the Venn overlap?

I know I’ve been circling the point.  Bear with me.

I came to a conclusion this year through some directed self-awareness.  I was troubled because I thought I must be doing something wrong because I have my hands in too many things.  I felt guilty that I wasn’t focusing all my energy on something. Like I wasn’t following the rules.  Like I was cheating the expected path.

I thought I should be able to choose that one thing that was my calling, focus on that and drop some others.   The thing is, it didn’t feel right to drop those things.

Monkey trap.

Then I realized.  It’s ok.

That’s my main point.

It is perfectly OK to have a portfolio life.  It’s perfectly ok to have several passions that you are following.  If you can figure out how to pursue them efficiently, great.  If you can figure out how to make money off them, great.  But that’s not necessary.

It’s a new world.  New rules apply. We are at a point in the evolution of society that we have access to everything and you should dive right in and see what works for you.  If it works, do more.  If it doesn’t, do something else.

But don’t be fickle.  When you choose to do something give it your all. Don’t be a dilettante and play at things.  Go after it, do the hard work, do the deep work and roll around in it before making a decision to move on.

My second main point is that in this confrontation with EVERYTHING you may not know where to start.  It doesn’t matter.  Pick a direction and run hard.  The worst thing you can do is nothing.  Because as scary as EVERYTHING is, NOTHING is scarier.  Nothing leaves you open to the whims of someone else’s agenda.

This is where adventure comes in.  My definition of an adventure is a journey where you don’t know the destination or the path.  By embracing the adventure you are forced out of your box and forced to learn.  Adventures make you grow.

That’s it.  It’s your life.  Maybe you shouldn’t worry about beating yourself up over your lack of focus.  Maybe you should pick SOMETHING from the EVERYTHING and then something else, and maybe something else and go at it hard and wild and balls out because this is a time and place that only happens now.