Apps aid productivity

I use a few apps on my Android phone to help me organise and speed up what I need to do. Here are my three favourites.

Swype keyboard. Type Fast, Swype Faster buff.ly/11yU0h9. After a few days using this you won't want to go back to poking keys.
— @not9to5 (@not9to5) March 25, 2013

COL Reminder - buff.ly/10Bo1Ox Never forget anything ever again. With the donate version you get 4 levels of reminder priority.
— @not9to5 (@not9to5) March 25, 2013

Llama knows where you are and automatically alters your phone's profile etc according to your needs. Indispensible.buff.ly/10BpXqk
— @not9to5 (@not9to5) March 25, 2013

What apps do you use? Can you recommend some more?

News about Google Reader

If you use Google Reader for reading and collating blogs such as this one you may be interested to know it will be shutting down in July.

Click here for details and how to work around it or here to find out about protests being made to Google.

If you don't use Reader, have a click any way as you may be interested in learning how to collate blogs you like.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"

In my last full post I talked about getting out of the 9 to 5, run of the mill, chained-to-a-desk type work. There are however a lot of people, who are not necessarily in an office, who work long hours for low pay and who may feel trapped in their work situation. Yet their work is essential to the smooth running of everybody's day to day life. The pay is low and they get little thanks. They are frequently looked down upon by some. Yet imagine what life would be like without the binmen, checkout servers, hospital porters, cleaners, mechanics, farm workers, plumbers or factory workers. It may not be 9 to 5 but it can be very hard work. Thankfully there are people who are still happy to do those jobs.

How have I never heard the term "dreadmill" before?
— Gretchen Rubin (@gretchenrubin) March 8, 2013

For those who are keen to stay in their chosen trade or who are eager to work in roles that society relies on there is lots of help from state sponsored agencies and organisations, ready and able to help them find work where it exists. The services in place designed to help these people are, it seems, not able to help those who wish to get out of that sector, the people who want to take flight, do something radically different, live the dream or go it alone. There seems to be a huge gap in the available advice and assistance for the people in between, the ones who want to get out of the essential services or ordinary office jobs and who want to be like the highflyers. Social mobility? Where is the roadmap for it?

In that recent post I mentioned a few people who have escaped the rat race and gone on to live life on their own terms. They are inspirational and their insights are invaluable. They ooze confidence and give the impression of having had lots of support, great opportunities and to have been given the sense that anything is possible.

For someone who has only lived in the '9 to 5' world, in a company that doesn't use up to date tech, whose family are from the same world, whose friends are in the same sorts of jobs, it can seem like a fairy tale. The photos of a freedom-from-work guru on a beach, in the desert or up a mountain can seem just as far away as the banker in his Maserati living in a penthouse apartment on the Thames.  It doesn't seem real if it is too far way.

I know because that is how I feel. I hope that one day it might be me telling people how easy it is to live life the way you want. But not yet. At the moment I am still at the bottom of that hill looking for the right path to get me a bit higher up. As I search for a way to make my life my own I will continue to post links to advice and guidance, inspirational and aspirational sites and to anything that relates to the world of work in all its forms, in the hope that some of it helps me and helps you to get to the point where we can take flight.


I have two challenges for you today.

1. Next time you see anyone in an essential job, such as those listed above, smile at them, thank them if you can. Just don't ignore them or look down on them.
2. Ask yourself what skills you have to offer the world. Are you good with your hands, good at planning, good at communicating, good at problem solving, good at making people feel good? Think hard about what your basic skills boil down to and how they might translate into your life's work. Go.

*"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" Oscar Wilde from Lady Windermere's Fan.

March 4 - 8 2013

It's National Careers week.
That means lots of additional information on the internet.
If you are looking for guidance try starting here.

Good luck

Not the 9 to 5

When I first set up the website I felt that the name of the site was self explanatory and would be understood by any readers who came this way. Now I am feeling the time is right to explain what Not The 9 to 5 really means.

9 to 5 is a well known phrase, in the west at least, and is a synecdoche, it is a description of a part of the world of work which stands for the whole of work.


Hearing the phrase 9 to 5 will invoke in many people an image of commuters jammed into a train, suited men walking across Waterloo bridge to the City, people head down hard at work in offices. In the USA it will summon the image of the ubiquitous cubicle familiar to anyone who has seen the Matrix or a Dilbert cartoon. In the UK where our buildings are older they may envisage people chained to their desks. 9 to 5 is a fairly neutral statement but it conjures slightly less than positive ideas of work being a chore.

In the pre-Industrial Age 9 to 5 made sense, daylight was available during those hours for most of the year and very little work could be done by candle light. Then the invention of machinery and electricity made it possible to work through the night but tradition and the need to interact with other workers meant that change didn't happen. Now we have connectivity and can interact with workers on the other side of the planet if we wish and 9 to 5 really makes very little sense. People working in London may have to work with people in Tokyo at 7am or San Francisco at 11pm, should they really be asked to work all the hours between? If your colleagues are a thousand miles away is it necessary to be in an office in central London or can you work just as well from home in the country?

In past jobs I have often felt how strange it is that bosses are happy for their staff to clock in at nine and out at five with very little regard for what they did in between. I knew staff who were penalised for not being at their desk on time or for leaving early and yet anyone working beyond those hours was never praised and anyone who achieved a lot in that time was given no more benefit than someone who slacked through the day. Seems a funny way to run a business to me.

I recently wrote on my other blog about ways in which the world of work is changing, hopefully for the better, in that some people believe a business should be measured not just by its bottom line but also on the good, or bad, it does in the world. The way employees are treated and feel about the company would be one of these measures. For now we live in a world in which there is almost nothing that is not business. Your health, wealth and free time are all tied to someone's business somewhere. How you meet, court and marry is now monetised. How you travel is almost never free, even walking costs shoe leather. Without money there is nothing in the modern world.

And yet we are still, by and large, tied to the 9 to 5 day. From shops and schools to doctors and bankers the majority live in the 9 to 5 world. But there are others breaking out.

Teleworkers, using home technology to 'be' at work any time of day. Crafters and inventors working in their sheds building beautiful things, people with big ideas about becoming Free Range, Multipotentialites or Paid-to-Exist. For many people there is no longer a need to be a cardboard cut out, boxed and packaged automaton or cog. And these roles don't need to be for internet geniuses. Any idea, any pursuit, any handmade item can be a success with very little start up funding.

Of course, Yahoo seems to disagree. But I planned this post last night and then saw this on my Twitter feed this afternoon:

Working life isn't 9-5 any more. The world is connected. Companies that do not embrace this miss a trick. Quote of the week @richardbranson
— Part Time Jobs (@timewisejobs) March 1, 2013

 So Not The 9 to 5 is a blog about all those other opportunities, ways of working, places to work and ways to monetise your life for yourself not some remote boss who has nothing in common with you. For anyone sick of being a desk jockey, anyone who wants meaning in their work, anyone fed up of being a nameless cog in a faceless machine, anyone wanting to break out and do things their way, the posts on this blog and the links on the Twitter feed are for you, they may be inspiration, information, advice or other resources but I hope that through them you will find a new way to work - Not The 9 to 5.

Laura. (Don't forget our motto - No Link Is An Island - when you follow a link and arrive at a new website have a clickabout and see what else is on offer.)

On Twitter

Just passed 222 followers, thank you all, have a beverage of choice to celebrate :D

— @not9to5 (@not9to5) February 5, 2013

Using this site

This blog was set up after the previous site was lost to a changing host service. The first few posts, in April 2012, were effectively pages of that site rewritten for the blog format. They can be found in the Blog Archive menu at the left of this page and include the results of a questionnaire given to people who have their own dream jobs.

The aim of that site, and of this blog is to collate information and resources for anyone searching for a job or career with meaning, getting out of the rat race, working away from the cubicle and not tied to the clock.

The idea is to gather together as much of the available knowledge and advice that is out there and to offer it up for the reader to take and use as required. Not all of it is unique to escaping the rat race but is generic and applies to all job hunts. Some is about what the recruiters, HR managers and employers are doing on the other side of the job hunt. Some is about finding a way to break out and take flight on a unique career. Some is about work in the news.

Between posts we Tweet links which you can see on the Twitter feed to the left. Those links might be from other Tweeters or sites found during research, some are from America but many are UK sites. They may be about careers advice, the world of work or the process of recruitment. Some may be about personal development, skills, entrepreneurship or about people who are living the dream already.

Some of the advice in the links contradicts advice in other links. Some sites offer great advice with poor proofreading or graphics, some offer a slick site with less useful information.  All the reader can do is read, learn, assess and make their own mind up about the best course of action for their own next steps. The more sites and advice the reader investigates the better their feel for the good and bad content will be.

The writer is not an expert in any of these areas but is just a job hunter trying to find all the best information and advice that others have offered up.

Please remember our motto - No Link Is An Island - when you visit a site have a clickabout to find what else is on offer there.

Preparing - the last part

You've done all your lists, you now have a lot of words related to your passions and skills.

Now you need to settle down with a beverage of your choosing and go over those lists and give scores to each word.

It can be whatever scoring system works for you; black marks and gold stars, graded from A - F, 0 to 10 or colours.

Focus on each word and think about all the possible connotations or ideas it represents. Think about how you feel about every possible meaning of each word and give it a score. Do you feel all warm and glowing when you consider accounts payable? Do you feel anxious and panicky thinking about sales? Are you indifferent to managing staff? Find a suitable way to score a range of reactions from very negative right up to very positive for the things you love to do most. Even if those things don't seem immediately to be work related.

Now everytime you do a job search refer to your lists. Use them as keywords to search by or for cross checking adverts to see how they match up to your responses.

Keep expanding your lists, keeping thinking about, and feeling your reactions, to each word and any that you add as time goes by.

Make sure you keep your lists handy as you go through your job searches and keep your ears and eyes open for new words, new ideas, new phrases, new skills or new things you love doing.

I wish you all the luck in the world with your job hunt or career move.

Check back here for more in the coming weeks and don't forget to look at the links posted on our Twitter feed - see left!

New year and your big lists

We have just a couple of steps left in the preparation stages.

Take your lists and for every word on them look up some alternatives.

This Thesaurus site is a good place to start.

Look up 

Write down all the synonyms you can find for the words on your lists and in a different colour write down some antonyms as well.

This will be your last list and probably the biggest as you will hopefully find a couple of words for every one you wrote on the previous lists.

For example if you wrote Writing  you will get these synonyms:

autograph, calligraphy, chirography, cuneiform,  hand, handwriting, hieroglyphics, longhand,  manuscript, print, scrawl, scribble, script,shorthand Some of them link to further words you could add. The next step is the last one in the preparation plan.

Happy New Year

Hopefully you had a nice break and feel refreshed and raring to go. A new year is a good time to think about new starts simply because of the date.

Did you make your Big Lists? Have you been looking at them from time to time and reviewing, editing and considering what you wrote down?

Now it's time for some word association. Read your lists and make a new list. This time your list will be any words that spring to mind when reading the words you wrote on your earlier lists.

Just jot down anything you can think of.

For example I wrote Theatre on one of my lists, so on my new list I am writing:
creative                                                  words
exposition                                              writing
director                                                  new worlds
stage craft                                             imagination
props                                                      team work
costumes                                                philosophy
masks                                                     speeches

I will be adding to that and writing out all the thoughts that come to mind regarding each of the other items on my lists.

This is something to be doing over the next few days.

Preparing for the New Year 3

OK so you have three lists, time for the one more:

My great skills

This one is straight forward. A list of all the skills you use for the two first lists and to amend or avoid the things from the third list.

For example if you wrote something about managing people you might include team work, leadership, communication, writing skills, evaluation, decision making, problem solving, people skills etc.

Easy peasy

Preparing for the New Year 2

So you did your two big lists? (Have a look here if you missed that post)
Now make a third one.

All the things you didn't like. 

Well maybe not ALL of them, you don't need to put the splinter you got or the stubbed toe, or a row with a housemate over the remote control. But do think about the things that made you feel uncomfortable or like a backwards step. Maybe a reprimand over a mis filed invoice, something that didn't work like a late delivery, bad news, or even jealousy over a friends promotion.

That may have made you a bit stressed so file or display your list with the others and then go and enjoy a beverage.

My big lists

So, it would be unfair to ask you to make lists with out sharing a snapshot of mine.

I've done this one as a mind map with space to add a few more things to it.

Preparing for the New Year Part 1

Sincere apologies for the time out, it's been a while since the past post.

However the new year is just three weeks away and with it come resolutions including the renewed impetus to find the right career (and to write more posts on the blog).

First up, give yourself a seasonal celebratory gift. You've survived another year and it's time to take a step back. Time to evaluate the last year, or more if you wish, and decide what worked and what didn't.

So get out your diary and find an hour between shopping and preparing the egg nog to block off as Me-Time.

Get yourself a couple of sheets of paper, some colourful pens, maybe some sticky notes or a glue pen and a beverage of your choice.

Now draw up two big lists:
Things that worked out really well and Things I really enjoyed doing
Or make a mind map if that is more your style

Write down as many as you can remember. Then have a look for any patterns in it. It might help to photograph it and carry it around with you on your mobile. You don't need to act on it now, just keep it in mind and add to it over the next few weeks, but you might like to start a notebook with ideas for next year's big lists.

Stick your lists on a pin board or file them in a ring binder, just make sure you know where they are.

That's your task. An hour off from the chaos of this time of year to reflect. Easy peasy!

If you feel really ambitious you could try to write your own Performance Review instead.

All the planning posts can found through these links:

• http://notthe9to5.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/preparing-for-new-year-2.html
• http://notthe9to5.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/preparing-for-new-year-3.html
• http://notthe9to5.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/happy-new-year.html
• http://notthe9to5.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/new-year-and-your-big-lists.html
• http://notthe9to5.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/preparing-last-part.html
• http://notthe9to5.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/my-big-lists.html

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And have a look through the links on my Twitter page which are offered simply for interest but might work for you. Let me know what you think of them.

The Management

Recently I have had conversations with two very different people in very different careers facing a very similar issue.

The first is an artist, mostly working in metals, producing sculptures for both the monumental and interior design markets. He trained in art and is passionate about creating new art and new designs. He has reached a point in his career where he is taking on so many commissions as well as producing limited edition runs of pieces that he needs help. He has taken on an apprentice. This however means that he now has to spend as much of his time teaching, monitoring and managing his 'staff' as he does actually creating art. He also now has to deal with salary, insurance and other administrative issues he was able to avoid as a one man operation.

The other is a computer systems developer who studied business and computing and who loves designing systems and has moved up in her career to become a manager at a major international company, and has now become responsible for a team of staff. She spends most of her time allocating projects, monitoring and guiding her own staff and reporting up the chain of command, to the extent she barely has any systems work of her own to do.

It seems it is fairly common for people with a passion for their career to reach a stage at which they are no longer working to their passion but are managing others. Is this the point at which The Peter Principle kicks in?

Has your job changed beyond recognition or are you able to retain the work you love without sacrificing progress?

50th post

A minor milestone.
The first few posts were built from sections of the old website that was lost when the providers changed everything.
Since then there has been a lot of research, reporting news stories and some searching questions about the nature of work.
We joined Twitter and have picked up some interesting tips as well as finding quite a few followers.
So what next? Well as the title of the blog suggests, as well as trying to provide ideas and inspiration for job hunters, we want to find out about how to get into work that is not based around the traditional 9 to 5, job for life, stuck in an office career plan. That works for some people - a lot of people - and the web is FULL of advice for them. But those of us seeking something different need slightly different advice. All the advice we've found and offered so far is pretty generic and will help anyone looking to get into work, we hope, but we need more specifically tailored help.
Some of our posts have been about finding a different path - Setting Up On Your Own, Starting Your Own Business and how to learn Traditional Skills - and some about how other people got into a Dream Job. We have also looked at making some extra income on the side or ways to make your income go a little further.

Skipper

Now we want to focus on those jobs and how to find them and others that are more esoteric. 
We'll still post career and job hunting advice when we find something useful but general advice will be less of a focus for us.
So please tell us what sort of jobs you consider to be dream jobs, what unusual jobs you want to hear about and what kind of work you do.

Inspirational art

These enormous letter blocks are hung next to the Royal Festival Hall in London. As you walk around they just look like big block suspended in the air. Then you reach the top of the steps and suddenly, if you are in just the right spot, they resolve into words. SMILE and DREAM BIG.

DREAM BIG

So go ahead, be inspired, dream big and make all your career dreams happen. Take the first step today.

Very unusual jobs

There are a remarkable number of unusual jobs out there, from flying choppers to guiding rafters. Just try a web search for 'strange jobs' and see what bizarre things some people make their living at. Have a look at Dream Jobs in our tag cloud (on left of our blog).

The BBC got lots of comments from people with weird and wonderful jobs a few years ago, some of which would probably qualify for Mike Rowe's Dirty Jobs.

What's the weirdest job you've ever heard of? What would you like to do that is out of the ordinary? Think outside the box, what unusual service could you offer to a paying customer?

The bottom line.

The BBC has just reported on a new study that has defined the minimum income that a family can live on.


They found that a couple with two children were said to need to earn a minimum of £18,400 a year each before tax; single people £16,400 a year, while the figure for lone parent with one child is £23,900 and a pensioner couple £12,000 each.


At the bottom of the article you can find links to average salaries around the world.


How does your income stack up? Are you struggling or would you sacrifice some of that money for greater happiness at work? What would you consider a suitable way to make the most of your income? Would you try self sufficiency or upcycling to save a bit of cash or make a little extra? Do you feel you have to sacrifice your dreams to fund your current existence?


The Money Saving Expert site recently published ways to make a little extra and, of course, have lots of saving tips to help stretch every pound to its fullest.

Work. What is it good for?

Well it pays the the bills right? But you are likely to spend about quarter of every week in the workplace. It is important therefore that at the very least you feel comfortable there.
One factor that will influence how you feel about your workplace is the culture.


Some companies deliberately create and promote a specific working culture amongst its staff, whether it be innovative, appreciative or formal. Often the culture is organic, having developed with the growth of the company.
There is advice for employers about picking staff who will fit into the existing company culture and advice for applicants eager to find the right job culture on what to ask at job interviews.
And if you find yourself in an uncomfortable workplace there are tips for surviving or even beginning a process of change.


Have a look at our other posts on what makes work valuable, or not.

happy at work

Happy At Work
Mental Health in the Workplace
Work. Life.Balance.
What is a Good Job
Commuting