Rhythms of Work + Diversifying Our “Portfolio” of Life

Exploring work and life beyond the tried-and-true “9–5, 49 weeks a year, until you're 65” design.

For many of us, work has become the sole source of meaning. But as with anything, putting all of our eggs in one basket — relying on a single institution to fulfill our entire identity — is tricky.

As my friend and “Reimagining The Nature of Work” contributor Bree Groff wrote, just like having all your savings in a single stock is a bit risky, you’re overexposed to more risk and volatility if your whole identity is centered around work. A bad day at work becomes a bad day of life. A lay-off (or even retirement) can compromise your whole sense of meaning and purpose.

At Out of Office, we believe in the importance of diversifying our “portfolio” of life so that work is not the sole purpose of it. Instead, we build our identities, our lives, and our sense of purpose from a diverse mix of things. Diversifying our identities allows us to be more well-rounded individuals and develop a sense of self & self worth that is not just about the economic value we produce. It allows us to engage and contribute to the world in different ways. Joining a tennis club, a pottery studio, or hosting a weekly dinner with friends helps us create additional containers for experiences, connection, personal growth, and fulfillment. 

One of our goals for 2024 is to help you widen your aperture around more creative (and gratifying!) ways of working and living. Ways that allow us to build our identities around all of the vibrant – and varied! –  parts of ourselves.

In our recently published book “Reimagining The Nature of Work,” we’ve dedicated a whole chapter to highlighting and exploring different models of work – or as we called them “Rhythms of Work”.

And with this year’s new series “Creative Ways of Living,” our goal is to not only showcase people who’ve modeled novel ways of working and living, but to highlight a growing movement of individuals who are redefining what it means to work and live in our modern world.

Exploring different rhythms of work

An extract from our Reimagining The Nature of Work. In this chapter, my friend and thought-partner

Bree Groff

and I  explored different models of work beyond the tried-and-true “9–5, 49 weeks a year until you're 65” design, which often denies our natural daily rhythms, individual potential, and the needs we have throughout different seasons of our lives — whether that’s priorities shifting and wanting to spend more time on things outside of work, travel, building a new venture, taking care of a family member, or becoming a parent.

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Growing up, we’re told many things about what makes an ideal career: it must be work we love, or work we’re uniquely skilled at, or work that’s meaningful, or work that’s lucrative. 

But none of that advice considers how your work will fit within the context of your life — the rhythm of your days and the seasons of your years. 

The default mode of employment for many people and organizations is the full-time role. In that model, over the course of a year, the rhythms of work and life look something like this:

For 40-some years, work is the default, punctuated by a handful of weeks off every year (which you must seek approval to take). If you’re lucky, after 10 or 15 years you might have the option of a sabbatical. And if you switch jobs, you might have a gap if you don’t finish on a Friday and elect to start your new job on the following Monday. But otherwise, this is the rhythm. 

The good news is that there are other ways to fill your ~4,000 weeks on the planet — with a lovely assortment of meaningful work and rest and fun and money and family and travel and making rugs and reading Agatha Christie novels and all sorts of other experiences the world has on offer that don’t directly contribute to your net worth and some country’s GDP. 

Just like everyone has a slightly different taste in musical rhythms, so too will each of us have a different preference for life rhythms. For many, the full-time-role rhythm feels just right. But for far too many others, it does not — it’s just the default song on the radio.

In Reimagining The Nature of Work we explored five different rhythms. Here, we’re sharing an overview of these rhythms, and to dive in more deeply, read interviews, pros and cons and how to apply them to our organizations, you can get the book here.

The Rhythm: Freelance & Solopreneurship

As opposed to full-time work, which is characterized by its upbeat of work as the norm, with punctuated paid-time-off downbeats, freelance work is characterized by its downbeat of life, with punctuated periods of work as negotiated contract to contract. 

The Rhythm: Seasonal

Seasonal work maintains the regularity of a year-round role, but holds the benefits of periods of life-without-work more frequently found in freelance setups.

The Rhythm: Sabbatical

This rhythm is identical to the “full-time, 9–5, all year long until you retire” model, but with one big multi-month-long break built in after many years of service to an organization. A sabbatical lives within the context of an organization — stepping away from it with the intent to return.

The Rhythm: Part-Time

Part-time arrangements can vary from a designated several days a week of work, to a more flexible X% of full-time hours over the course of a year. 

The Rhythm: Collectives

Working as a Collective is similar to a freelance rhythm, characterized by a baseline of life, but holding the benefits of more stable systems, relationships, and structures in place. 

REFLECT

• Where does work sit in the context of your life? Look at the different dimensions of your life right now. Where are you pouring most of your energy into right now? Where does most of your time go?

• What is a rhythm of work that feels right for you right now based on where your priorities are sitting? What are your needs for this season of life?

• What worries you about maintaining this rhythm over time?

Starting next week, we’ll highlight more stories in our new series “Creative Ways of Living,” so keep an eye out for that and let us know in the comments if you have any questions or topics you’d like us to dive into! 👀