In This Chapter

Have you ever noticed how much focus our society puts on career and job? For instance, when we meet someone, one of the first questions we ask is, “What do you do?” Occasionally someone might ask, “How’s your life?” and often we respond with, “What life?” In this chapter, we are going to focus on that aspect of life called “lifestyle.” Lifestyle describes our living patterns. It is how, where, and what we spend our time doing. It means looking at the balance we need to sustain our work and our relationships and interests outside of work.

There is always a connection between our careers and our lifestyle. Our desire to maintain a certain type of lifestyle can influence our career or job choices quite dramatically. Becoming conscious of the lifestyle you want at this point in your life will influence your career choices in many ways. It impacts the amount of money you need to make, the time you want to spend with family and friends, and your ability to participate in activities outside of work that keep you motivated and inspired. Our lifestyle choices are very connected to our values, which make up what we feel is most important to us in life.

Many things influence our preferences for certain lifestyles over others. One of these influences is the generation into which we are born. The times we are born into impact our experiences and, thus, our choices. In the United States, we have designated the name “Baby Boomers” for those who were born between 1946 and 1964. Baby Boomers grew up in a time of social change. They demonstrated for peace and equality, and they experienced the sexual revolution. Jobs in the Peace Corps were preferable to jobs in corporate America. Experimentation and risk taking outweighed the desire for a secure life that their parents had experienced coming out of a Depression and two World Wars. As the economy boomed and Baby Boomers aged, many returned to traditional careers.

However, the Baby Boomers more than other generations, are unprepared for retirement. Living in the moment lingered for a long time!

Generation X and Generation Y who followed the Boomers find themselves in a world that has been heavily influenced by economic and technological changes. The high divorce rate and the latch key lifestyle with both parents working had a big impact on Generation X. They want more balance in their lives between work and leisure/family time. Generation Y experienced the technological boom of the Internet with its incredible access to information. They want organizations to give them skills and keep them competitive in the marketplace. They are known as multitaskers who like fun and work to go together.

Besides all the influences that come from our values, interests, and temperament, we are also influenced by our experiences. We grow up in particular cultures that include our race, ethnicity, economic class, and nationality. Our preferences for the type of life we want to live are often influenced either positively or negatively by our growing-up experiences.

Although we may value certain cultural, ethnic, or national practices and want to incorporate these in our lives, we might also want to change our economic status and live differently from what we experienced. Some cultures are very group oriented and want family, extended family, and friends to be the central focus of their lives. Other cultures are more individualistic and like their experience to be smaller and more private. Whatever the influences, it comes down to figuring out what is now important to us in our lives—and creating a lifestyle that reflects those preferences.

The Lifestyle Preference Assessment will help you to look at two aspects of your lifestyle:

What is your ideal vision for your lifestyle and how you want to spend your time? Take 100 percentage points and divide them up among the following lifestyle categories:

How do you actually spend your time right now in your life? Divide up 100 percent of your time among the following lifestyle categories:

Record the percentage points given for the specific categories of your Ideal Lifestyle and Actual Lifestyle in your Career Profile Map in Appendix A.

Now look at the similarities or differences between your Ideal and your Actual Lifestyle choices. If you are very close in your Ideal and Actual lifestyle preferences, than you are in good shape. If you have gaps, which most of us do, then consider the next set of questions.

What would you need to do in your life right now to close the gaps between these two lifestyles? Can you set a goal that will take a step in the right direction?

For example: Janet realized that her ideal lifestyle was one of spending more quality time with her children. Right now, she was spending all her time working or taking care of household chores and responsibilities. She was spending little or no time having any fun with her family or really tuning into their joys and sorrows. She could not afford to reduce her concentration on work right now. So, she set a goal for herself to take each of her children out to breakfast one day a week; she would spend quality time focused only on that one child.

Of course our lifestyle preferences can change over time. When people are going through the child-rearing years, they often find themselves more focused on wanting time for family activities vs. working until 8:00 every night. Implications during these years can take many forms, depending on economic and personal preferences. Some of these can be reduced hours, flexible work hours, long hours three days a week with three-day weekends, working from home a few days a week, learning to delegate work, etc.

When it comes to choosing a career based on the lifestyle we want to live, it’s important to look at occupations that are going to support our lifestyle rather than work against it. For example, if you want to live in the country, but have culture and intellectual stimulation in your life, then working on a college campus might be the answer.

According to your lifestyle preferences, do you see any implications on the direction your career is taking, or the focus you place on your career? If so, write them down here.

The second part of the Lifestyle Preference Assessment focuses on patterns and aspects of your life outside of work—the what, where, and how. For example, on the television show, The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, you get a glimpse of how rich and famous people live using such descriptors as the size and look of their homes, the locations in which they choose to live, and the formality or informality of their lifestyles.

Review the list of lifestyle descriptors that follow and circle the descriptors that represent the lifestyle you aspire to live.

Now, according to the lifestyle descriptors you circled, write down the top seven lifestyle descriptors that you feel are the most important to you.

Top Seven Lifestyle Descriptors:

At different points in our lives we may be placing more emphasis on one or two aspects of our lifestyle preferences more than others. When we are just starting our careers, typically in our 20s, we might find ourselves in a steep learning curve where we need to spend a great deal of time focused on work. And we are still very focused on having a life of fun and engaging in doing things we like to do. We are young, full of energy, and can still go out and have a good time after work.

When we are in our 30s, our responsibilities usually begin to grow with the arrival of children, moving from one location to another, buying homes, keeping up with friends who may have moved far away. And these years continue to be prime work years when progressing in our careers through education, advancement, and achievement are critical. So the focus in the 30s is still on career, more on family, and less time for fun and entertainment or even fitness.

The 40s are seen as “the writing on the wall” time for our careers. We are right in the middle of whatever career direction we have chosen, and we are either advancing and succeeding, or we have leveled off and hit a plateau. This can be a critical time for many of us, because our identities and feelings of self-worth are tied up with “what we do.” For some people, their lifestyle preferences come into focus in these years. We begin to reassess where our energy is going. Career may take a back seat to our family life at this point. Or, some people leave organizational careers behind and decide to do something less stressful or “what they really love” to do. It can be a major time of re-evaluation and change.

When we reach our 50s, we begin to think about the “R” word—retirement! Unfortunately, the economy and the government have both conspired to keep moving that retirement age right up to the 70s and beyond. So, what can one do? Most of us face our aging process head on. We have reached half a century, and the reality is that we probably can go another half century. So what do you want to do in that time span?

It’s too early for most people to retire, and there’s too little money to retire on. Some recommit to career goals at their current organizations by taking on new responsibilities and challenges. Others leave to pursue their own businesses. Some do retire—those that have planned well! Although most people go to an investment planner to start figuring out when they can retire—in earnest. It is another peak time for re-evaluating our lifestyle choices and seeing how we really want to live the next phase of our lives.

The 60s today are still a very active career time for many people. It is also the phase of life where we start to do some serious retirement planning. Our lifestyle focus becomes more on our future and what we want our lives to look like in semi-retirement or retirement.

Many other things influence our choice of lifestyle. Some of these include our values, interests, temperaments, and personality styles, and all kinds of life experiences that “happen”—some planned and some not. For example, taking care of our parents when we are in our 50s and 60s can be planned, but for most of us, this role reversal comes as a surprise.

Reminder!!! These stages and ages are not prescriptive—they won’t necessarily happen to you. These are collective themes that do occur for many people at different ages and stages of life, but not all of us. For instance, one of your authors is over 60 and hasn’t even started to think about retirement (except in terms of income!!!).

Your Age: _______

It’s critical to take into consideration the balance we want in our lifestyle between all the life aspects that are important to us. You have taken the time to think about different aspects of your lifestyle and record them in your Career Profile Map. Now just sit back and think about what you have selected and what is currently influencing these selections. Are you embarking on your career and want to make sure you have an ideal in mind? Are you in a life transition that is changing your balance, and you want to be purposeful about your actions? Are you looking toward retirement years and deciding what that life looks and feels like to you? Consciously thinking about the lifestyle you desire can make it happen.