Tales From The Lane
Living Your Best Life as Creative Artist
The 8 Questions You Should Be Asking About Your Career
If you’re reading this podcast in real time, the calendar has recently tipped over from “mid-August” into “Late August”, and if you’re anything like me, you’re doing a constant dance between “please don’t let summer ever end” and “let’s just get on with it, shall we?”
I’m lucky this year. I’ve had a wonderful summer (save for that nasty flu I got) and I also have an exciting fall coming up.
But that hasn’t always been the case.
There were many years when I was staring at my September calendar with dread. With the myriad of teaching jobs, meetings, administrative duties, and rehearsals looming, my head would start to swim. Was I really going to do it all AGAIN for another whole year? COULD I do it all again?
Add to that, the usual calls and emails that come in this time of year offering new students, new jobs, and new gigs. My clients are going through this as well–in fact, it just came up in a client call this afternoon. I keep getting Voxers from them telling me about exciting new job offers. Then less excited Voxers about the slightly insulting salary offered, and then the confused Voxers wondering what to do about it all.
And since so many of us seem to be faced with this, and it’s not just in the arts, right? I have non-artist friends who are being asked to join a new board, take on an extra role at work, or coach their kid’s soccer team.
This is the time of year when new things pop up, just as we are wondering if we are excited about going back to do the things we were doing before.
I have a process that I take all of my clients through that can help shed some light on all of it, to help you make the best possible decisions. After all, time is our greatest resource and we should be as intentional as we can about how we spend it. These are the 8 questions you should be asking yourself about the work that you are doing that will help you make these decisions.
If you’re listening to this while you’re driving or walking or otherwise unable to write, you’ll want to listen to the whole process now, and then write everything down when you can. (you can always listen to it again 😉
You’ll need a piece of paper, a pen, and a rough idea of how much you were paid for your various jobs last year.
Question 1 is simple: What are you doing?:
Down the left-hand side of the paper, write down a list of jobs you do. You can break them down however you want: Performing as one job, or listing each group or type of performing “solo, chamber, group x, group y,” etc. include volunteer work that you do as well, and if you have household/childcare duties inherent in your life, write those down too.
In the next column we have question 2: What is the percentage of your yearly income that each job brought in last year?
Do NOT write in a dollar amount, Only a percentage. I know—but I never said there wouldn’t be math on Tales from The Lane. go hit pause and get your calculator.
This is usually the first eye-opening moment for a client–and it was for me the first time i did this exercise. When I discovered that this job that seemed SO important to my bottom line, was only bringing in 15% of my income?
The next column over to the right is about the amount of time this job takes up. Include EVERYTHING. Let’s say you are an adjunct professor at a college and you only have 4 students. That’s 4 hours a week of teaching…..+ a 2-hour studio class each month….plus a 2-hour faculty meeting…..+ attending their performances or other extra-curricular activities because you are a supportive teacher, + the writing of letters of recommendation,…+ the 20-minute commute that is actually a 45-minute commute each way because of the construction that they’ve been doing and because it takes forever to find a parking spot. It all adds up. On paper, it’s 4 hours a week. In actuality, it’s 10.
Now that you know how much time a job is REALLY taking up, the next column over is the amount of joy this job brings to your life. On a scale of 1-10, where does this fall?
Next column, Scale of 1-10, how much STRESS does this job bring you? Do you lie in bed awake at 3am worried about it? Or is it an easy-peasy kinda job?
The next question is: Is it scalable? Can you do more of it? If you teach—privately, or at a school, then it’s scalable to a point—you can raise your rates and scale your income, and you could take on more students, but only until you run out of hours to teach them. Could you teach them in groups? Could you add more offerings? If you’re selling a product, can you produce more? Or raise the prices? If the job is to be the operations manager of an arts organization, then that’s not scalable. The job is what it is.
So jot down if it’s scalable, and how you might scale it.
The next question, and column, is this: What else do you gain from this position? Perhaps you get a bit of status within the community for your position on the board. Or maybe the adjunct teaching job comes with a performance space and a teaching studio with a nice piano in it–maybe it provides you with yearly professional development funds or a recording studio. Perhaps the university affiliation alone is a big perk?
And the final question: Is this job leading you TOWARDS your ideal career and lifestyle, or AWAY from them? If you were to reverse-engineer things back from your ideal situation, would this position make sense as a stepping stone? Or would it look like a strange detour? Of course, we have to look at things from all angles. It could be that the position itself isn’t a stepping stone, but the additional income at this time is going to pay for the classes that ARE the stepping stone. Only you can decide if the income producer is worth the time and effort to pay for the classes.
It’s possible that on paper, this job offer doesn’t look like a great deal, but it puts you on a direct path toward what you want. This is especially true for people who are in their 20s–or if you’re switching careers and just starting out. Having access to an important mentor is going to be far more helpful than a higher-paying detour-inducing job.
It’s possible that just going through the motions of this exercise has given you the clarity you need, but if you still have some decisions to make, having this information in front of you should help.
And this is why it’s important that we use percentages instead of dollar amounts for our income column. It’s easier to think about giving up 10% of your income and replacing it with something else. It’s really hard to give up a $10,000 paycheck. Thinking of it as a percentage takes the emotion out of it and turns it into simple math (apologies to my mathematician friends–I realize you do get quite emotional about the beauty of math, but you get my point here).
The job that sucks up twice as many hours as it should, is causing a stomach ulcer, and only brings in 8% of your income and the only perks it brings are things that you can get elsewhere? Buh-Bye!!!
But now….let’s not just give up 8% of your income. If a new job offer that has just come in covers it, great. You’ve now cleared the space for that new position. But if there isn’t a new offer on the table (yet!) Then look at some of the other jobs that are left that maybe you could scale a bit.
Do you teach, or do freelance consulting/writing work? How many more students/clients would you need per month to cover that 8%? Or, if it’s been a while, maybe it’s time for a justifiable rate increase. How much more would you need to charge per hour to spread that 8% out over your entire student or client base?
This exercise arms you with all of the information you need to make necessary and positive changes to your upcoming year:
- Which jobs are you ready to move on from? It’s time to craft that email and look for possible replacements.
- Which jobs have slowly increased your hours and responsibilities, but not your pay? It’s time to set up a meeting and an overdue contract negotiation.
- Which jobs are causing you undue stress? Why? Is there anything you can do to mitigate that stress? Conversations that could be had? Help that could be brought in? A conflict mediator, or just some support from your boss?
- Which jobs have a ton of benefits and perks that you haven’t been taking advantage of? Did it suddenly occur to you that you’re leaving money on the table? I got my entire CD recording project covered by various PD funds I had discovered!
You’re so good at what you do, and you deserve to be excited about this upcoming school year. If you’re feeling any sense of dread, I encourage you to take yourself through this exercise. I can promise you’ll gain some interesting insights. It might help you decide to give notice, renegotiate your contract, or scale up the things you love.
It might also help you to see that there are some gaps in what you’re doing and that you don’t have things in place to get you to where you want to be next. You can make this year a bit of a runway to get those things in place.
Either way, I am wishing you a wonderful end to your summer. May the school supply lists be manageable, and the faculty meetings short.
Cheers,
Kate
P.S. I’ll be opening up some 1:1 Coaching slots this fall, and enrollment for my 9-month Creatives Leadership Academy will be opening up in a few weeks. If you’re wondering whether either of those might be just what you need at this point in your life or career, you can schedule a 30-minute, no-obligation call with me HERE.
This is a great list of questions to ask when evaluating your career! I especially love the emphasis on self-reflection. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks, but taking the time to step back and ask these kinds of questions really helps to gain clarity and direction. I think focusing on personal growth and aligning work with passions is key to long-term satisfaction. At Staff Now Ohio, we advise professionals to regularly assess their career goals to ensure they are on the right path. Thank you for sharing such valuable insights!