When was the last time that you sat at your office desk and really enjoy a cup of coffee, not just gulp it gulp in the hope that it wakes you up before you can get on with the tasks of the day? If you can’t remember, it’s likely that your routine has taken a turn for the worse. Early mornings, long days, and ultimately, the excessive consumption of caffeine are the typical descriptions of the office day in modern countries. As a result, most employees drink around 20 cups per week – that’s a mind-blowing average of 1,040 cups of coffee or tea per year. In your full working life, from 18 to 64, you will drink around 47,840 cups. That is a lot of coffee, but it’s easy to understand why: Coffee keeps your mind alert and helps you to connect ideas together. In the long term, you might not even notice the taste anymore.
It’s all about the jolt of caffeine it gives you. Without the stimulation of coffee, most workers admit that they’d suffer to keep up with the requirements of the job. But the truth about your job is that it’s not only about counting coffee cups. Your career accounts for the major part of your time as an adult; it should provide satisfaction instead of being just an accumulation of coffee cups and paychecks.
If all you can think of during the day is when you can get your next cup of joe, you might want to take a step back and reconsider your career. Is it the right choice for you? More importantly, counting how many cups you drink in a day is not going to make your job more enjoyable. But counting might be the skill you need to change career.
Working sucks for a lot of people
How many are counting coffee cups to survive the day at work? The truth is that 70% of employees are actively disengaged with office work. They find it unappealing – which might be the result of a shift of leadership, generational differences, or even the lack of variety in day-to-day tasks. Consequently, if you a coffee cup counter, you’re probably one of many workers who think that the office is the last place they’d want to be. Both team members and managers are affected by the feeling, with 58% of managers claiming that they never received training for their management role.
There might be a direct connection with the findings from the Harvard Business Review that reveals that 58% of employees don’t trust their boss. In fact, if you had to sum up all results, you would need only one figure to do so: 53% of Americans are unhappy at work. So if you’re one of them, it’s time to ditch the coffee cups and look out for a real solution.
What’s the best solution?
With over half of the population claiming that they are unhappy with their career, there’s no need to beat around the bush. When you hate your job, you need to act upon the feeling before it destroys you. Whether you want it or not, your career is a huge part of your adult life. So when it’s not satisfactory or not fulfilling your hopes and expectations, it can leave you feeling empty and useless. More importantly, you can feel your frustration growing with each cup of coffee you consume, and it doesn’t go away at the end of the day.
More often than not, the best solution for you is to get out of your job. However, one word of advice here: Don’t quit without a plan B. So when you have to stick around a little longer until you’ve figured out the best approach to your problem, you need to make the most of the situation. Start by identifying where the problem(s) lie(s). You’d be surprised to know that the self-analysis phase can give you the key to create you need.
No more office dullness
Biding your time in the office doesn’t mean that you can’t quit. But it gives you the opportunity to develop a solution that suits your needs and interests. It’s not easy to find a job that pays well. But if you can bear to build a new strategy to maximize your earnings from home during your spare time, you can be more flexible about finding an office job that keeps you happy.
The primary question you need to answer is how much you need to earn on the side to give your job hunt the flexibility and freedom you need. For instance, did you know that professional gamers can build a lucrative source of revenue through competitive gaming events and vlogging reviews? If you’ve always enjoyed playing video games, you can develop your side hustle before looking for a new job – this will make sure you can calculate how much you need to earn in your next job to sustain your lifestyle.
Affiliate marketing is also a profitable side hustle if you’ve got an active online presence. You can gradually grow your side hustle; some successful independent professionals are able to quit their day-to-day job and live entirely from their home-based activities.
Business opportunity: Crunching down numbers in property investment
If you’ve got some savings on the side, you can use the amount as a base for a profitable investment opportunity. Indeed, locked in a saving account, the money doesn’t work for you. On the contrary, while it might generate a small interest over the year, it’s fair to say that your savings plus a handful of percents don’t represent a sustainable earning. But investing the money to create regular income can be the ideal solution to replace your day job. The safest investment strategy for newcomers onto the financial market is in the property market. Indeed, it is easier for beginners to manage tangible and physical assets such as houses. However, before signing off a purchase agreement, you need to ensure that you can afford the property using the latest home loan calculator technology to track additional costs and payments.
There are two distinct approaches to property investments. One strategy is to buy to sell, which is often refer to as house flipping. In this case, you need to ensure you have the funds to renovate and decorate the property to make a profit while selling. The second approach is to invest in rentals – with holiday rentals being the most lucrative strategy. Most rentals can pay for themselves, ensuring direct revenue once the mortgage is repaid.
Time to become an entrepreneur with the right figures
If you catch the bug of self-sufficiency, you might want to turn your financial stability into a business. When it comes to entrepreneurship, the secret to success – and wealth generation – is to get the capital you need to launch your business. For entrepreneurs, it’s about pitching your idea to investors and convincing them to invest in your company.
In short, it’s a matter of knowing how much money you need and how you can best use it. Most investors prefer to invest in existing businesses and help them to scale up. From their perspective, you need to be able to able how you plan to allocate their money across your resources. If you’re comfortable with cash flow and financial projections, your project can appeal to investors looking for opportunities.
Can you retire early?
Maybe your desire is not to build a different career, but to stop working altogether. Can you afford to retire early? That’s precisely what counting and budgeting can help you to figure out. Retiring early transforms the timeframe to build financial stability. You need to build assets quickly – in other words, you passive investment portfolio will not grow as fast as you need it. You have to create wealth through active investing – and taking risks –, extreme frugality, and leveraging your resource base.
Real estate investment or business ownership can give you the key to early retirement, but ultimately you have to start your journey with personal capital and specialist skills in business and finances. If you’re not good at managing funds and running assets, it’s a dangerous solution.
Know when to compromise
The bottom line is that you can’t have it all. You need to balance the risks you want to take against the comfort of your lifestyle. Ultimately, you need to make sacrifices to be able to wave goodbye to a career you hate. If you want to follow your passion, you might have to transform your lifestyle to account for a low-income job or a high-stress occupation. If you’re going to use your investment portfolio as a primary source of income, you need to invest not only money but time in it. If you prefer frugality to investment risks, downsizing your home could be a solution. In short, the question is how much are you ready to sacrifice to build the career you want – including retiring early?
Cups of coffee after cups of coffee to keep you focused on a job you hate; it’s time to look for a more satisfying career. Stop counting the coffee rings on the desk and start developing money-making strategies to replace the dullness your day-to-day job. From early retirement to investment strategies, there are plenty of available solutions for the one who can crunch numbers together.
