Career's second track a primer to drive the two-wheel drive of the double track

The competition in the workplace is often a race on the main track, but in the end, only a few people win, and many more may become runners or runners-up, or even face the risk of being eliminated from the race.

At this time, we always hear people complaining, frustrated, or dissatisfied with the status quo, but unable to change it, but more importantly, they have no choice but to run an endless race on this track, with no chance of winning.

But let's look at it another way: if they had more options in their career track, they might not have the time and energy to waste on these futile complaints.

We often see colleagues who are mediocre at their jobs and have no highlights to compete with, but on some special occasions, they manage to turn heads. For example, the unit organizes a cultural competition, or a special skills competition, but they can shine, performance is unusual. In these alternative competitions, they become an irreplaceable presence, and this is the second track of the workplace we are talking about in this unit.

The second track is also known as Plan B, which means that we can avoid the main track of the workplace and create an alternative track to suit our career development, and make our own goals and pursuits in this track.

Competition in the workplace is not a one-way bridge, and most are just ordinary people. It may be difficult for you to amaze others on this bridge, but that doesn't mean you can't do it at all, whether you are planning yourself, finding yourself a second track in the workplace, or finding another way to achieve yourself, and amaze everyone on another bridge.

This track may be where you learn skills outside of your main career and build a bridge between it and your main career to create an unusual path. However, more workplaces still choose a side-project as their second track or as a workplace Plan B to avoid the red sea of competition and become an irreplaceable presence. Let's talk here about how to start with a side hustle and promote a dual-track two-wheel drive.

A. One initial intention, is to promote the dual-track two-wheel drive

Correcting your initial intention from the beginning will allow you to go farther and wider on the second track. Why choose the second track? The common initial intention is of course still related to promotions and pay rises: firstly, to improve the economy and secondly, to improve yourself.

A study on the financial needs of amphibious young people published by an organization shows that quality of life, hobbies, and self-development are the three main motivations for becoming amphibious. The term "amphibious youth" refers to young people who are part-time workers with a main job and entrepreneurs with the main job. In modern times, people have a cash flow mentality, so they may encounter some unforeseen event one day, or they may lose their job and their cash flow is suddenly cut off, so from the point of view of improving their income and quality of life, a part-time job becomes an immediate need.

However, from the perspective of competition in the workplace, the driving force that will sustain your second track for the long term will still depend on whether this track can enhance the value of one's existence. This is the original intention and motivation that supports us to break out of the second track.

In the aforementioned survey, 65.47% of amphibious young people believe that a side hustle is not just a tool to make money, but also a way to gain satisfaction, enhance their sense of self-worth and realize their dreams. More than 50% of amphibious young people said they would invest a lot of study time to prepare for their side hustle.

Therefore, a side hustle is never an excuse for not doing well in your main hustle, otherwise you will be caught in an infinite cycle of moving from one side hustle to another and losing the very essence of your existence.

A person who rushes to take up a side business to relieve his worries without doing his best in his main business will hardly make long progress in such a side business, which will at best be just a way to make a few bucks or to drown his sorrows with alcohol.

It is the cheapest way to make money, to empty your body and trade your life for money.

Therefore, from the very beginning, you have to set your mind right and take your main business as the fulcrum to pry your secondary business, so that the long-term development of the secondary business will not deviate too far from the center of the circle.

(i) The second track can create multi-dimensional competitiveness for the main business.

The workplace side hustle, or workplace Plan B, is not weakening our main hustle, but together with the main hustle, it forms a dual track system, which will bring more breakthroughs and provide more competitive advantages to your career development.

In the book Tools of Giants, there is a passage that shares that if you want to achieve excellence, you probably have two choices: the first choice is that you practice one of your skills to be the best in the world, which is very difficult and very few people can do it; the second choice is that you can choose two skills and practice each one to be in the top 25% of the world, which is easier. There are very few people who have two skills that can rank in the top 25% at the same time, and if you can combine these two skills to do one thing, you could achieve something remarkable.

In this passage, the first choice is actually what we call the main track of the workplace, and those who can stand out on this track are, after all, very few; while the second choice is relatively easier, and this choice is also the second track of the workplace, where the main and secondary skills complement each other to create a dual track system that few people can match, that is, to create a multi-dimensional workplace advantage for your workplace development.

It's as if in a single dimension, the comparison can only be the length, whereas in a double dimension, it's an area, and as for the competition in three dimensions, it's volume. Therefore, increasing the track is also in the growth of their dimensions, dimensional expansion more, your competitiveness will naturally go up.

This is because we have been on the main track for a long time, it will bring you a lot of patterned constraints, limiting your growth more, but the second track can help you enter another new field, from a new dimension to expand your thinking cognition, build your competitiveness, these changes not only promote the development of the second track but also will be injected into your main track, to your entire workplace development to bring metamorphosis.

I know a writer whose field of study is medicine, but he is very interested in psychology, so he combines medicine with psychology and expands the topics in the medical field from the perspective of psychology, reaching a depth that others cannot reach.

This writer may not be the best in the field of medicine, and hardly the strongest in the field of psychology, but the combination of medicine and psychology has created a unique connotation in his work, which has won the attention of a wider audience.

Medicine and psychology are two seemingly unrelated tracks, but once a bridge is built between the two, a dual track system is formed, which is naturally very powerful, far beyond the energy of a single track, and it is difficult for others to imitate, and thus has irreplaceable competitiveness.

(ii) The second track can hedge against the risks that exist on the main track.

The career environment is now very different from what it used to be. Unless you work within the system, you are unlikely to stay with a company until you retire. Many industries are changing by the day and it is usually rare for a business to survive for more than 10 years.

According to Fortune magazine, the average life span of a Chinese TIME is only 2.5 years, and the average life span of a conglomerate is only 7 to 8 years, with about one million companies closing down each year. Not only do companies have a short life cycle, but there are very few that can grow stronger and bigger.

Especially in the post-epidemic era, many people are already worried about their job prospects. Many people in today's headlines are complaining, "The epidemic has not yet passed, I just quit my job a year ago, how should I continue my life afterward?"

This sudden epidemic has led more and more people to look for ways to avoid the high risks associated with unemployment. Perhaps a more dependable side hustle is a good option.

I joined a community a few years ago and followed it for three years. The owner of the group had a job of his own, but his unit never knew he was running a community, while his side business was thriving and must have earned far more than his main business, but he kept doing it as a side business, and during the epidemic, the unit stopped working, but his side business kept running normally!

That's the magic of a side hustle! One of my classmates, who broke into a side business on self-publishing, used this gap in the epidemic to earn back his company's salary income, even though the company was shut down. In a society full of many uncertainties, it is very pleasant to think that one can have another income and diversify one's source of income, like double insurance for one's survival and development.

Of course, if you develop another career track, which happens to be in a growth period, then it can expand your career lifecycle and effectively hedge against the various competitive risks in your main track. (To be continued)

This article is part of a series on "The Second Track of the Workplace". It is only one of the ideas presented in a single article, so you need to grasp it in the context to integrate it and not take it out of context.