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Want to know the part most ‘cubicle cage escape’ stories leave out?

by Marianne Cantwell

50+ comments

Ever heard a story of a ‘career cage escape’ and thought

‘They just got on with it… I’m so pathetic for dithering. I should pull myself together and just make a freaking decision.

Why’s it so hard for ME when they managed it?’

If you’ve ever thought anything like that, or said mean things to yourself for not ‘just figuring it out’, then you need to watch this.

(note: you can watch this without sound… although my favourite song kicks in after the first minute so I’d just crank it up anyway :) )

This is the part most cubicle cage escape stories leave out. And this is the part that makes the biggest difference.

I’d love to hear what you think too – so after watching leave me a comment below, and share it on Facebook or Twitter (below) if you think others would benefit!

 

Credit to the amazing Bernard Fanning for the music playing in this video. The song is ‘Watch Over Me’ and I recommend his whole ‘Tea and Sympathy’ album.

{ 83 comments }

9 pieces of advice they won’t tell you at business school (but really should)

by Marianne Cantwell

(though soon that patient bird is going to be all like "screw this shit, I'm getting us both outta here" and, well, you don't want a pissed off imaginary bird pecking through your insides. Trust me on this one).

Recently I was sent a question about what I wish I’d known when starting out figuring out my ideas / doing my own thing. I had a lot of things I could have said, and a lot of things I did say, but there were more that came up after I replied. So I’d like to share these with you below.

 

You see, you can Google the answer to questions like ‘how do I set up a facebook fan page’ or ‘how do I do that twitter thing anyway?’ but there are some big picture things that matter more than any of that. 9 of the things I wish I’d known when starting out… but which no one really tells you:

 

1. At some point you will have a choice between speaking your truth and making the ‘sensible decision’. The first time this happens you will choose the latter. Some time later you will realize this was the least sensible move you could have made.

(This will not stop you making that same mistake at least once again).

 

2. You will decide, at some point between coming up with your idea and launching, that there is too much competition. You might be right.

 

3. You will find, some time after ditching your idea because of the competition, that someone else has launched this idea anyway. They seem to be doing well. You will, at this point, kick yourself.

 

4. You will try to create something magnificent and put your mark on the world, but early on you will look at what you have created and feel its smallness. In that moment you will wonder if anyone else notices how far wide of your mark you have fallen. What you don’t realize is that they are too busy with their own lives to ponder yours. Are you touching them? Does what you do matter to them? Why not?

Ponder that rather than your own grand dreams and you will find that somewhere along the way your grand dreams happen anyway.

 

5. The people you used to spend time with? Some of them will stop understanding you. (Although in a way that’s probably ok: after all, you stopped understanding them quite a while ago. This is your cue to find a new tribe).

 

6. One day when you are feeling stuck someone will give you a piece of advice – or maybe an opportunity. At the time you will reject them, vehemently. Watch out for those moments. Those are usually the moments where you heard exactly what you needed to hear, or had the chance to learn exactly what you needed to learn.

Why? Because when you are well and truly stuck, your options are restricted to what lies in your comfort zone. But your answer is not there. The road to where you want to be, at those moments, lies outside your comfort zone, and it won’t look quite like you expected (if it did you’d have found it already).

 

7. You will start out with two things: 1) a diary full of things that need to be done this week (your washing, that latest report, that thing for your dad) and 2) a jumbled up list of dreams in your head all labeled ‘one day’. Your breakthrough will come when you learn to sync the two.

Watch out for the opportunities to which you say ‘one day’. They are quite often the ones you need, as you are, here and now (click to tweet this!).

 

8. You will feel that you have a secret. A secret about your own lack of progress. About how your so-together outside doesn’t fit with the turbulent mash up of your insides. About how you haven’t sorted this out by now and it’s just not coming together and how you just don’t know what to do and how you feel ashamed you don’t know what you want by your age.

To which I would say: please know that you are not alone in this. Right now, someone else is reading these words too. And another, and another. One of them may be in your neighbourhood and the other across the world, and they are nodding and saying ‘yes that’s me, how did she know’ and the answer is simple: while how you feel may be a secret to you, I have been through it and then, I have watched many others go through this same uncertainty and come out the other side.

When you poke your head out of your fog of confusion, and join others in forging a path toward your own clarity, you might well do the same.

 

9. One day you will come across a list of advice, with which you may or may not resonate. You will have the chance to complete this list with a thought of your very own. When that time comes, what will you say?

(Feel free to share your answer below or on the Free Range Facebook page).

 

Marianne x

 

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Top 10 Coolest Offices Around The World

by Marianne Cantwell

 

When I was in a job, I dreamt of being able to travel and work anywhere.

I loathed being stuck in a bland, beige office every day (particularly when it meant commuting for an hour in a peak-time sardine-packed tube train jammed under the armpits of coked-up City boys in suits… but that’s another story).

The point is: as soon as I ditched my job to work for myself I vowed never to step foot in a cubicle again. And indeed I haven’t. The big question was… where do you work when you don’t have an office to go to?

Today, give me a laptop and an internet connection, and the world is my office: combine that location independence with a love of travel, and the result is an intimate acquaintance with the beaches, shared work spaces and cafe scene of cities from Siem Reap to San Diego.

Here are my top 10 favourite free range ‘office spaces’ around the world for the past two years:

 

1. AUSTRALIA: BONDI BOOKSHOP/CAFE 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Gertrude and Alice, a Bondi Beach cafe… in the centre of a beautiful rambling secondhand bookshop. The tables are scattered throughout the store and you sit anywhere in the company of your favourite book (and great Campos coffee). Perfect inspiration for a spot of book-writing as well – which is lucky as that’s why I was there!

Sydney is mecca for digital nomads seeing cafe space for their laptops. I’m yet to find a dud cafe in this town and of course everyone is super-friendly.

Tip: My favourite Sydney free ranging spaces tend to be east (from Bondi to Coogee) as you get to dip in the ocean on breaks but if you’re aren’t a beach person, check out Newtown and Surrey Hills as well.

 

2. BALI: VILLA NEAR UBUD

 

My ‘office’ in Bali: at a villa in the ricefields, home for a month. Ducks were the main neighbours (along with a slightly irate French couple who started shouting one evening when we thought it would be a nice idea to run a live teleclass from the balcony. Due to time differences this started at midnight. Turns out sound travels over ricefields. Oops. Pardon, Monsieur). Other than that, a smooth ride. Amazing wifi internet connection too.

Bali is perfect for location independent working. It it beautiful, warm, friendly and also great value for money. You can get a whole Bali-style villa for the price of a room rental in most Western cities (though if you want air conditioning you will pay a lot more).

Tip: Ubud is increasingly popular with free rangers…. and, it seems with the rest of the world. Not quite the serene village many imagine, think clogged traffic and noisy horns! It is still worth visiting but stay on the outskirts if serenity is what you are after.

We stayed in Penestanan, a little village a 15 minute walk (or 5 minute moped ride) from the centre of Ubud, but another world in itself. Penestanan is a local, ricefields based community. There are no streets (park your bike near the main restaurant along with the locals and walk home on the little paths).

Occasionally I would decamp to Yellow Flower Cafe, an organic cafe on the edge of a hill 5 minutes walk from the villa (left at the roosters). Happy for you to sit there with a cocoa date smoothie and free-range in Bali style… next to travellers on the search for enlightenment, fresh from Yoga class next door.

 

3. ITALY: TUSCAN VILLA

 

This was the view while sitting with my laptop – the view stretches across to San Giminiano (in the distance). This 13th century villa in the Tuscan hilltop town of Certaldo was home for a month. It had great wifi internet, and to clear your head, the opportunity for lots of long walks through the vineyards at the doorstep. I came here to start writing my book, and am very glad I stayed.

Tip: Italy is a great place for location independent types – easy to travel around, lots of beautiful accommodation, but just make sure your place has internet as it is surprisingly hard to find the public places and cafes.

 

4. AUSTRALIA: SURF CLUB IN NEWCASTLE, NSW

This is Merewether Surf Club, in Newcastle, Australia: a three storey space with cafe, cocktail lounge and event space, conveniently located exactly next to my favourite ocean baths. And, as luck has it, friendly to free range humans with laptops.

Tip: if you’ve never heard of Newcastle, a few hours north of Sydney, you’re missing out. Best beaches in the world, chilled out and a thriving community of social media connected humans. Stay near the beaches and check out Darby Street for some of my favourite cafes, such as Frankie’s Place, as seen in this photo)

5. LAOS: HAMMOCK ON THE NAM-OU

 

In a hammock, laptop at the ready. This was taken outside my little hut in a village in northern Laos. To get there, go to Luang Prabang, take a 6 hour long boat ride, an overnight stop, and another few hour’s boat trip. In other words, somewhat isolated.

No power during daylight hours. One main (dirt) with chickens, two shops (shacks by the street selling sweets) and no cars. Perfect conditions for getting work done without getting distracted by Facebook.

Tip: if you are looking to work more conventionally in Laos (ie: connected to the rest of the world!), Luang Prabang is the best option. I became a regular, pootling across on my bike to several excellent French style cafes in this sleepy, world heritage protected, French-colonial town. 

 

6. UK: LONDON CAFES (and co-working spaces)

I love working out of cafes for the quiet buzz of having other people around… but still having the privacy to focus.

You can find spots all over London but as a general rule the East is a treasure trove of free range workspots – for example the Pavillion in Victoria Park (where much of the 21 Day course was written), Gallery cafe near Bethnal Green station, or a range of places around Brick Lane (including Brick Lane Coffee House or Allpress).

More centrally, get off at Angel or Highbury and Islington and head up Upper Street for pretty much endless options (Euphorium Bakery is one of my stalwarts).

All of these (except Pavilion) have good free wifi.

Tip: I tend to choose cafes over official co-working spaces just because I get better work done in this environment. However if you prefer a more formal arrangement check out the beautifully designed The Hub in Kings Cross (London), or the equivalent shared work space in your city.

A shared working space will allow you to use hot-desking space (and other facilities) for a monthly fee. Cheaper than an office and a great way to meet other free rangers too.

 

7. UK: LONDON SOUTHBANK CENTRE

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Photo via Southbank Centre 

The Southbank Centre has to be the best Free Range workspaces in London, and one of the best in the world. Great views (as above).

It is a large space that you can just walk in and use. Free Wifi for everyone. Hundreds of spread out desk spaces that you can use all day just by showing up. Plus, the occasional musical event strikes up in the performance space just after lunch.

Great for informal meetings in central London as well as a day tapping away on your next free range project.

Tip: become a member for a low annual fee. While you can use everywhere else for free, becoming a member gets you access to the Southbank Centre members lounge upstairs, with a nicer seating area, the best views – that’s where the above photo was taken – and better wifi connection.

After work tip: Skylon bar on the middle floor is one of my favourite bar spaces in central London and also serves the best espresso martinis in the world (though that’s another blog post).

 

8. USA: SAN FRANCISCO

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Dolores Park in San Francisco where I was a regular on weekdays with my laptop. I stayed in the Mission/Castro district – of which this park is the social hub in summer – and felt at home immediately. The area is full of free range humans! Every cafe is filled with people on laptops and you can get the best chocolate gelato outside of Italy (right at the end of that park).

The SF list of cafes and shared spaces ideal for free range working is too long to begin. Simply grab your laptop, head for Dolores park and work out from there.

Tip: I travelled around California – and much of the rest of the world – using AirBnb. This is an essential in the free range toolkit: a website where people rent out their apartments, or individual rooms to travellers (super reliable and safe).

If you prefer privacy get a place to yourself but I find that starting out by renting just a room lets you meet incredible locals you would otherwise never come across. For San Francisco, I met the lovely Christina through AirBnb.com, and her place, two streets up from this park, was so perfect I stayed there twice on one trip.

 

9. ON THE COUCH

Sometimes the best office is quite simply at home. At your kitchen table, or on your own sofa. Occasionally other ‘team members’ drop by.

This little guy was my Vice President Of Shredding Newspapers (the ‘with bare teeth’ division). This here is a team meeting.

 

 

 

10. THAILAND: TBA

New possibilities are always exciting. This space is saved for a new destination I’m visiting from this week…. and I’m predicting it’s a winner!

In the centre of a Thai island, it’s a little hideaway I’m going to work out of for a month. Watch this space for updates and see if the prediction holds and it stays in the top 10!

 

Have you got a favourite workspace? Or ideas for your dream workspace? Share in the comments below!

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Why You Can Say F-You To Finding Your Passions

by Marianne Cantwell

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS?

“I’ve tried so hard to figure out my passions but I can’t find them. Maybe I don’t have any passions and this job is the best I can expect.”

Desperate email from a blog reader.

Not knowing your passions must suck.

It must mean you’re an empty shell of a human being with no  prospect of ever escaping the flatline ‘bleh’ of commute-work-commute-die existence.

Well that’s a load of rubbish.

Who in the real world ever even THINKS about passions?

Seriously, who says “oh I can’t go out with you tonight because that’s not one of my PASSIONS. Even though it would be fun and all”.

All the fun stuff you do, the moments in your life when you’ve felt completely yourself, happy and in flow. Were they on the list of things you call ‘passions’? Or were they just moments you let down your hair, freed your sexy little soul, and enjoyed?

THE MYTH

The reader who wrote that email was stressing about not having passions.

After more digging, I found that person’s vision of passions that goes something like this: a passion is something ‘out there’ to be found (they thought). It is something you do – like stamp collecting, or baking, or skydiving. It’s a topic you are into, continues this assumption, such as dogs, or cars, or history. Or the history of dogs in cars.

Stop a moment. That’s a list.

Where are you in that list?

The biggest myth of passions is that they are something ‘out there’ to be found. Something you can point to that will give you a purpose to your life. Well I don’t know about you, but I don’t want stamp-collecting-dogs to give my life a purpose.

How sad would it be to have to look to a list of ‘things’ to find out who you are? That’s as bad as being pigeon holed into a career-box!

Passions are a band-aid on the hole labelled “having a life that makes me feel I am alive every day”.

Honey, if you want to wake up every day feeling alive, enthused, and knowing that what you do is worthwhile, then passions are not your answer. They’re a cop-out that are blinding you from valuing yourself.

What’s REALLY interesting is you.

Let me show you what I mean. Here are some of my passions:
- Dogs

- Espresso coffee

- Being outdoors somewhere beautiful

- How the brain works

- Travel

- Interior design

- “The IT Crowd” (esp series 2)

- The LOL Cats language (specifically how to use it everyday in inappropriate situations. Like on legal forms).

There’s more. Some of which is unprintable. But anyway, can you see that this is not the sum of ME? I am more than any one of those 8 things.

If you write down a few things you think you might be passionate about, you’ll find the same. You are more than the sum of the things that you get excited and/or geeky about.

By the way, that list is not a cop-out: these are things that I am really into. I am obsessive about good coffee. I can name every decent cafe in London and rank them and ARGUE PASSIONATELY about the finer points of difference between blends. I am also enraptured by dogs. I see a dog and I stop and grin a stupid grin and then talk to it until people drag me away.

However those things do NOT define me. They are important to me, and yes, I craft my career around some of them (heck, the Free Range project started because ‘my love of being outdoors = I can’t sit in an office all day’! How the brain works is the driving force behind my approach to the career change courses I run).

The things on that list are very important to me.

But they are ‘things’ and I am ‘me’.

And I’m far more passionate about ‘me’ than any of those ‘things’.

They can be a huge part of my life, but I’m not going to let them define my life.

Life design first, passions second.

Want to jack in your ‘I can’t breathe!’ career for a life where you can be YOU?

Then ask yourself that question: who do you want to BE? Not what do you want to DO.

I don’t want to go all cliched and say ‘this is the one life you have to live’… but what if it were? (it is, you know).

Let’s go back to basics. This is about YOU. Who you are and the life you want. Every moment you spend doing something because you think you ‘should’, not because it means anything or leads to anything you actually want, is a moment you’ve taken away from yourself.

Every moment you spend in that office (the one that is sapping your soul), is a moment away from the people you love, from that novel you’ve been meaning to write (or just sitting in the garden looking at clouds). That sort of life  saps your energy and spirit to the point that you don’t have space for anything that feels truly passionate.

You want to get out of the 9-5 grind and feel like you’re living your life every day?

Create (and note the use of the word ‘create’ and not ‘discover’) a business around your life – not the other way around.

Choose to craft a business that lets you be who you are, live it out and come alive every single day. So that every hour you spend on it feels right – you’re no longer spending your days wishing you were doing something else.

And that means straight up, you need to take control. If someone else is no longer defining who you are and what you do, then YOU, honey are the one creating your solution; you are making the rules. And there is no rule that says “you have to be passionate about a specific topic in order to have an amazing life”.

Drop the word ‘passion’ and replace it with ‘things that make me come alive’.

Let’s stop the myth that ‘I can’t find my passion’. Your passions are not OUT THERE to be stumbled across. They never have been. They have always been within you.

The thing that makes you come alive might be performing on stage. Or creating environments that are mindblowingly beautiful. Or it might be dogs. If dogs are your thing, the thing you want to be around and be involved in above anything else, that is awesome. If that is what makes you come alive. Go for it!

But don’t do something just because you say (in a passionless voice) “I think that might be one of my passions”. Do it because you CAN’T HELP IT. Because it’s going to be weighing on your mind forever and anything else would be a compromise.

……. Now you’ve read that are you freaking out a little that you don’t have anything that you simply MUST do?

That’s cool. Let’s breathe and take it down a notch.

Sometimes, what makes you come alive is something softer – maybe you love bringing people together, or you just ‘spark’ during the process of doing something (like generating ideas), or you feel completely energised spreading the word about things you think are Really Important (like chocolate).

More often, what makes you come alive is a totally unique combination of things, not one overwhelming whack.

For example, something that makes me come alive is energising groups of people. But not for the sake of it – I want to get people to wake up to how remarkable they are and grab their lives by the balls and DO something amazing. But not just anything amazing, something that makes them proper money to give them real freedom. And not just freedom, but…

You see where I’m going? Just listing ONE thing that makes me come alive brings up a billion extensions. Getting into the nitty gritty of what something really means to you, uniquely, is where the fun starts. That’s when we start moving baby!

PASSIONS WILL NEVER GIVE YOU THOSE BREAKTHROUGH INSIGHTS. You will end up with a list and no clue of what to do with it. Ask what makes you come alive instead.

Do your soul a favour.

Screw passions. They are overrated and they ain’t helping you out one iota.

You are way better than a boring list.

Stop searching forever for something ‘out there’ and then secretly kicking yourself for not being passionate enough about that passion (you SO just did that :) )

Instead, take back control. Put that energy into understanding what makes you come alive – every element and crease of its uniqueness – and then take some kick-ass action to create a truly unique business (crafted around you) that lets you be that gorgeous, fabulous person every day.

And THAT’S how we do ‘shakin’ it up and livin’ your life’.

Picture by the incredible Gaping Void

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