Convenience – Part 1 covered commuting, preparation, and cleanup; frequently the most discussed topics regarding the convenience of a job. But possibly the most important, and often most under appreciated aspect is flexibility: how well does the job fit your life’s schedule, not how much you must change your schedule to fit your job.
“How well does the job fit your life’s schedule?”
For purposes of clarity and scoring, you may find it useful to interchange the terms flexibility and convenience. In general, people with low-scoring, inflexible jobs may prefer to use ‘flexibility’ while those holding a job with flexibility-to-spare may prefer the term ‘convenience’. Feel free to use whichever helps you develop a ranking.
In scoring your job’s flexibility (which is the objective here), your task is ultimately to score this area on a scale from 0-5.
Some guidance in scoring flexibility:
Many forces are at work moving your job’s subjective score to various points on the scale over time making it appear challenging to select and determine a score. For many, Monday and Friday are often scored differently. For others there are significant seasonal variations. Try to eliminate peaks and valleys; you are aiming for an average over time to find your final objective score.
Flexibility can be as simple as start and end times. Many jobs have fixed hours: when your shift starts, you start. Good examples are factories, healthcare, retail, banks. For those jobs you might need to find flexibility in places other than daily work hours. Typical core business pillars such as production schedules, profits, or literal life-and-death situations suggest a lack of job flexibility.
Here is the scale:
0 – No job flexibility.
“You do what you are told, when you are told, where you are told.”
One of the least flexible jobs you can have is in the military. You do what you are told, when you are told, where you are told. Yet many many people thrive in the military. If knowing what you’re going to do everyday appeals to you a low flexibility job might actually rank high.
Other jobs with very low flexibility include policing, firefighting (where you live at the station for days on end), off shore oil work, or for those more inclined to indoor work, banking or manufacturing.
If you must adhere to a strict schedule that is not of your choosing, then give your job a ZERO.
1- Minimal flexibility.
“Those cows won’t milk themselves”
Farming and ranching offer very little job flexibility. When it’s time to plant, you plant. When it’s time to harvest, you harvest. When the cows, or goats (or yaks), need to be milked you get up and milk them, regardless of whatever barriers lie in your way. But still there is a little flexibility, the cows won’t care if you start milking at 6:00am or 6:05am. At least they won’t care too much.
If you can vary your hours slightly, have the option of scheduling an occasional vacation, or can change exactly what you do in any given day, give yourself a ONE.
2 – Some flexibility around schedule.
“I’ll gladly trade you Tuesday for a shift today.”
What do retail, restaurants, service and the healthcare industry have in common? Most jobs allow the workers to pick and trade shifts.
If you can choose between multiple options of fixed hours give yourself a TWO.
3 – Reasonable flexibility.
“The middle of the road is trying to find me” – The Pretenders
The most obvious middle of the road jobs are office work with flexible hours (engineering, programming, administration, analysis, marketing). Any employer that requires “core hours”, but lets you flex your start and end time usually indicates a middle level of flexibility.
Other jobs may have a flexibility score of ZERO at times but overall, they average out to a THREE. For example: teachers. During the school year, flexibility must yield to tardy bells, class schedules, on-time lesson plans, graded tests and overall preparation. Clearly a flexibility=0 scenario.
But stepping back from this narrow view, the flexibility for teachers is actually pretty good (certainly more than ZERO). With summers off and many scheduled vacation periods, this profession offers opportunities and freedom to reflect, decompress, travel, and pursue interests during the summer months. At various points-in-time teachers may have flexibility scores near 0 or 5 but they tend to average out.
If your desired life and job can meld around each other, you get a THREE.
4 – Significant flexibility.
A sole proprietor (SP) has the uniquely opposite problem to a teacher. On the surface, the job appears to be overflowing with flexibility and should easily score in the 4-5 range. After all, this is someone who literally makes their own schedule (with abundant flexibility). However, look a little deeper and the flexibility picture is not so rosy. On close inspection, a successful sole proprietor must adhere to a tight schedule generally around their customers requirements, and continued success requires saying ‘yes’ to almost all opportunities. At which point they are stuck with whatever appointments they schedule. But with judicious planning working for yourself can offer tremendous flexibility.
Other possible level 4 professions include doctors and dentists that can schedule their own practice (for instance my dentist only works 3 and half days a week). Independent contractors and people working in the gig economy (e.g. Uber, Lyft, Grubhub and the like) also fit here.
COVID-19 changed the rules on flexibility. Many many people were suddenly required to work from home, or at least stay out of office. Some chose to setup a home office, others took their gig on the road, working out of relative’s guest rooms or even hotels. Some companies endeavored to bring workers back to offices as quickly as possible, but many began relaxing in-office requirements permanently. 2020 marked the beginning of a new flexibility. If you are one of the lucky ones, you get a higher rating.
If you can work nearly whenever and wherever you want, your job earns a FOUR.
5 – Freedom! Glorious freedom.
Ironically this used to be the nearly exclusive domain of the retired and unemployed. Recently an entirely new category of worker has emerged: the social media persona. Do you TikTok for a living? Five. Are you able to make a living by taking pictures of your dinner? Five. When nine o’clock rolls around do you turn off the TV and begin writing a website on why you should quit your job? Solidly five.
Level five jobs are those that let you do what you want, when you want, where you want. The Holy Grail of flexibility and pretty much the exact opposite of the military. But all that flexibility comes at the expense of having to be self-starting and directed.
As you will see much later, some inflexible jobs CAN be changed, but for now it is time to determine the flexibility in your current job.
After reading descriptions of each level, 0 to 5, rank your job’s flexibility. Then consider where you ranked your prep time and commute, rank the overall convenience of your job. Remember 5 is great, 0 is bad.