Friday 20 November 2009

Fed Up With Your Job?


Here's some random thoughts if you feel trapped in your job and want to jazz it up. Some variations on a theme.

  1. Redesign where you do the job – disappear to the internet cafe

    Show the company how you can give them what they want faster or cheaper but doing it your way,
    eg working from home or an internet cafe or getting someone else to do the paperwork.
    Keep the company’s best interests at heart. Create a business case for doing it your way. Demonstrate the upside and minimal downside for the company. You work when you want to. The company gets better value for money.


  2. Redesign Your Life – Become the Outsource – disappear to Thailand

    Create a proposal to automate your job (using Virtual PAs, better computer systems and email autoresponders) so that you don’t have to physically be present. Move to somewhere cheap,
    eg Thailand, and work UK hours via Skype phone and conferencing, email and the web to deliver the same service.
    You get to live like a millionaire, sit by the sea and go scuba diving. They get the same if not better service from you.

  3. Go freelance – jump ship

    Make yourself indispensable. Create a niche or centre of expertise. Offer to go freelance and deliver the same product/service (in half the time at twice the hourly rate). You end up getting all that free time; they still get your expertise. Spend the other half of your time doing other work or practicing your golf swing.

  4. Mini-Retirement – you won’t get it unless you ask for it…

    Propose that you were thinking of leaving but would like to suggest an alternative: a mini-retirement with a return to work guaranteed. Take, say, 12 or 16 weeks to do that trip you always wanted to do.

7 comments:

Jon said...

OR:
I work three months each year in UK (earning £9-12k) which is enough for me to live the other 9 months in Thailand.
I have built a house (with pool) and play tennis or scuba dive most days.
Jon (age 36)

Marjory D said...

Look at Tim Feriss's Four Hour Work Week for more stuff like this.

Madge

Unknown said...

The blog entry at
http://robert-craven.blogspot.com/2007/11/bright-marketing-seminar-in-bath.html

references the book by Tim Ferriss

Robert

Marjory D said...

Cheers.
The Ferriss book is another american blockbuster (a brilliant essay that has been expanded into a book) but it is provocative and does get you thinking.
Madge

Unknown said...

I do return to Ferriss's book but find it slightly frustrating. I love the idea behind the book (Gereber on Steroids) but find it difficult to find the exact pages that 'do it for me'.

Robert

Bill Murphy said...

We have tried some of these types of things with our staff. The results are variable.

Sometimes the result is them exploiting us. The free-lance mentality does not come naturally to many people. It requires discipline, or rather self-dicipline.

We have found pure out-sourcing easier than letting employees slowly slip into the out-source role.

Beware IR32!!!

Bill

Jon said...

OR:
I work three months each year in UK (earning £9-12k) which is enough for me to live the other 9 months in Thailand.
I have built a house (with pool) and play tennis or scuba dive most days.
Jon (age 36)