Lean and Mean

Keep your career running well by not overloading it

Your career is like your body: if you overburden it, load it down too much, it won’t be as flexible and responsive. And if you really overdo it, at some point it’s likely to break down from the added stress.

Keep it lean and mean! Especially in the early part of your career where you may need to make changes more frequently than later on. You don’t have to live like a monk, just keep your expenses reasonable.

It’s kind of like driving on a busy highway: if you follow the car in front too closely you won’t have much time to react if something unexpected happens. With some extra space you can avoid trouble.

If you leave some slack in your budget, same thing: you’ll be in a better position to respond to unexpected situations. You’ll be able to pursue more career possibilities, or be in a better position to deal with unexpected changes (more of a concern recently as our economy continues to deteriorate.) If you happen to wind up working for one of the “bosses from Hell” and it doesn’t seem likely to improve, you’ll be able to walk away.

We all know this; Suze Orman and others make a good living reminding us. Spend less than you earn! Easy to say; easier to do if you make a ton of money (although some surprisingly “heavy hitters” wind up with cash flow issues too). But if you’re just getting started, your income may be relatively modest.

Not that it isn’t tempting to go ahead and load up on nice things as soon as you can. Years of student living, cutting corners, keeping the older car running – it gets old. Or maybe you grew up in a relatively prosperous family and now you feel the need to live up to your background. Lots of reasons to ramp up the standard of living.

Keeping it on the “lean” side, however, can save a lot of headaches and give you a better chance of creating the kind of career that you want. Considering how much time you are likely to spend working, it is worth considering some alternatives.

I recall a young lady I worked with many years ago when I was doing freelance computer work. I had been working for a busy CPA in San Diego, back when networking computers was the “next big thing.” The lady I knew had just passed the CPA exam and was working really hard to establish herself in the field.

One day she showed up with a really nice, expensive new car. I don’t recall what it was but it was a beauty – with a price tag to match. She would park the car in a location that she could see from her office (since she was one of the first ones to arrive at work she had her pick of parking places.)

From time to time she would mention, somewhat wistfully, the irony of only being able to look at her nice car since she spent most of her waking hours at work.

At some point the office politics shifted and she became fairly unhappy in this particular company. I suspected that one of the reasons she stayed was so that she could keep up the payments on her fancy car… the one she hardly ever had time to drive.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve got nothing against living well. But if you’re realistic about the price you may wind up paying for some of the nicer things in life, especially if you try to get them before your career is ready to support them, you may realize it’s a high price indeed. How big a house, how fancy a car, makes up for missing out on the life you could have lived, the career you could have enjoyed?