China and portfolio careers

Today I'm writing this in Beijing. There are 20million people in this vast, long-roaded, dusty city. I wonder how many of them have portfolio careers. There is a strong, smartly uniformed police presence in the city and some 7million of the city's inhabitants are migrant workers in the service industries.

Blocks of apartments, most of them now owned (on 70 year state leases) line the wide roads. The streets don't seem nearly as busy/grubby as they might for a city with well over double the population of London. Speaking to the smiling, helpful and friendly locals we find that there is a feeling, particularly among older generations that the pace of growth and change in the city has been hard for people to keep up with. I can't help but wonder if the versatility and range of skills associated with portfolio careers might just become a necessity here.

Multiple careers

At the end of a day working through a to do list that felt like the length of a significant tributary to the Thames, I had a moment to idly google some possible alternative terms for ‘portfolio career’. Not very imaginatively I started with ‘multiple careers’ and found an article on the Financial Times website that proudly announced ‘Multiple careers are better than one’.  Obviously, as a committed portfolio careerist, I had to agree.

In this article Luke Johnson says that people who have multiple careers are impressive business people due to the career changes which lead to an accumulation of multiple skills and achievements across a range of disciplines. He gives examples such as Benjamin Franklin and Ronald Reagan who switched focus more than once in their lives. He says that its laziness that prevents us from breaking the mould and sticking to a cautious career route. Luke cites our increasing longevity as a catalyst to encourage us to do more than one thing with our working lives.

The difference with a portfolio career is that you might also do more than one thing at the same time. I wholeheartedly agree that we have capacity to master a range of disciplines, change tack, find new directions and push ourselves to explore more than one career in our lifetime. Indeed, I think it's increasingly becoming a necessity. My concern with Luke’s article is that he doesn’t take into account that earning a living in a range of fields doesn’t have to be linear, with only one is focus at any one time. Despite advance in healthcare, life’s still pretty short in the grand scheme of things, there’s lots to pack in and with a bit of imagination, hard work and creativity – you can!

An arts-focused portfolio career in the making

Another guest post from a reader of this blog...

Helen invited me to write a few thoughts on my journey as a Portfolio Careerist. I was craving a change in direction and a friend suggested that as I was looking at doing at least two different part time jobs, then I was a Portfolio careerist. ‘A what?’ I asked. She suggested that I have a little look at Helen’s site. Which I did and contacted Helen as I found the content useful.

I’m currently exploring the idea of doing something more creative. I graduated with a Fine Art Sculpture Degree six years ago. I have worked for a Fine Art Auctioneer’s and currently I am working for a Housing Association as an Employment and Training Officer. I am looking at Art’s Education, within a gallery or museum, but I am also open to other placements within the Art’s. To gain more experience I am applying for roles that are volunteer positions. At first I was reluctant to apply for unpaid