Cultivating many options

In life and career, it's critical that you always have multiple options available to you at any given time. In other words, you want to have a viable backup plan in place. But, I would contend, you don't want just one backup plan. You want at least a couple. Maybe even a few. And you want them always ready to go, at a moment's notice.

Case in point: as you may know from reading prior posts here at this blog, I have always worked in what I generically call the business world - a collection of different private sector roles over the years. It wasn't until only a year and a half ago or so that I started to explore possibilities in K-12 education, specifically high school -level education. One of these days, I would really love to teach at the college level. That's the ultimate end goal for me. But even though I'm passionate about, and excited to be a part of, the world of education, I continue to keep my eyes, ears, and mind open for new opportunities in business and industry. I continue to network and maintain my relationships with an extensive variety of business professionals and subject matter experts, and I keep my resume updated and ready to go if needed. I seek out opportunities to learn new skills and to strengthen skills I already have. Furthermore, I maintain a small amount of freelance marketing work in addition to my full-time work in education. I can always ramp up this freelance work if I want or need to.

Likewise, the same goes with my investing and retirement planning. It's important to cultivate multiple streams of income - multiple strategies and a diverse variety of solid investments - so that if one or more begin to falter, others can pick up the slack.

So that's what I mean when I talk about cultivating multiple options. You never know when you may need to turn to them, or shift them from playing a secondary role in your life or career to a primary role, or vice-versa. It's always wise to have a few viable backup plans ready to go at a moment's notice.