Why Settling For One Career, If You Can Have Two? How a Dual Career can Keep You Sane!
Cheesy motivational memes make Unicorns vomit!
Follow your passion, and success will follow you! If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.
We have all heard it thousands of times! And every day we spend on LinkedIn or Instagram, we get bombarded with memes motivating us to leave our cushy corporate jobs to find and follow our one and true passion.
But guess what, it’s not that easy! Suppose you are 40 and you are a passionate triathlete training for the Ironman in Hawaii. Your chances of making a living following your heart are about as good as mine, turning my costly podcasting and blogging habit into a media empire of the likes of Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan.
Luckily the world is not just black and white, and there is a smart alternative to tell your boss to love himself while storming out of your office to become a Yoga instructor in Bail.
Follow your passion AND keep your job! Basically, treat your hobby or passion project as a second career while maintaining your breadwinning job.
In a 2017 opinion piece for Harvard Business Review, Kabir Sehgal described “Why you should have (at Least) Two Careers.” In his short article, Sehgal mentions a few good reasons for the dual career strategy: you avoid the high opportunity costs of taking the cold plunge from a (well) paid job into insecurity, your salary can subsidize you getting better at your side gig, you broaden your circle of contacts, and you are getting a broader perspective on different aspects of life, gaining valuable insights that might help in your first career.
These are all valid points, but I would go even further. I believe that the dual career approach has the potential to maximize our happiness and mental resilience. Literally, it has the potential to keep us sane!
Look, unless you are in a completely toxic environment at work or just really, really hate your job, the chances are good that you are pretty decent at what you are doing; you get paid a living wage, and to some level, you are getting some professional prestige out of doing whatever you are doing. These are benefits we should never underestimate.
Yes, you might not necessarily feel completely fulfilled in your day job, but there is no guarantee that you would feel entirely different if your hobby would become your primary career. Maybe you are so obsessed with this fun part of your life because you can’t do it all the time? Is it not the contrast between different aspects of our life that makes us appreciate our passion projects even more?
And starting with your pet project without much financial pressure is a true game-changer. I started my blog Life-Sparring.com when I felt stuck with a job that paid well and was prestigious but left me with very little room to grow and make a difference. My blog (and now the podcast) and the self-improvement topics and experiments I covered gave me the feeling of breaking the stagnation in my life, enabling me to make steady steps forward in my personal development.
Knowing that my hosting fees, necessary software subscriptions, or even hiring an editor to edit my podcast does not get me in financial troubles put me at ease. It enabled me to start without too much baggage and expectations. If I would rely on my blog or the podcast to pay my mortgage rates, dealing with bouts of writer’s block or the lengthy search for the next podcast guest would be a lot harder.
Kabir Sehgal mentioned in his article that both of your dual careers might positively influence each other. I indeed see that in my own career. I am convinced that Life-Sparring has made me more credible, engaging, and versatile as a manager and leader.
I recently recorded a podcast with Henrik Widegren (MD), who could be the poster boy for the dual career movement. Henrik is a practicing Otorhinolaryngologist at the University Clinic Lund in Sweden. If Henrik is not seeing patients or conducting clinical research, he composes, writes, records, and performs music, mostly with lyrics influenced by his work in the medical profession. In 2019 his song “Never Google Your Symptoms” became a viral sensation and generated 4.3 million plays on YouTube. Henrik’s new English album X-ray to Hell is due to be released in September.
In my interview with Henrik for the Life-Sparring Podcast, we talked about the dual career concept, and Henrik agreed that his musical career is making him a better doctor. He believes that, for example, the ability to improvise made him a better communicator with patients. I went even further, observing that maybe having the chance to getting his stage fever out of his system, playing his songs on festivals and medical conventions to standing ovations of the crowd, enables him to be a humbler doctor. Unfortunately, some medical professionals try to live a rockstar existence inside the ER, not always to the patient’s benefit. Tellingly, Henrik recorded a song about one of the most notorious cases in Sweden, “The Ballad of the Superstar Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.”
Don’t get me wrong. Maybe your abstract works of art could make it to the Met, or your first novel could win the Pulitzer prize if only you could devote yourself entirely to it. If you really feel this way deep in your heart, you should go ahead and take the plunge!
For the rest of us, let’s be like Henrik! Let’s be serious about our hobby; let’s treat it like a second career, all without taking ourselves too seriously in the process.
The result is likely more balance, resilience, joy, and passion in our lives.
