What are your opinions about doing more than 1 job at the same time?

Follow this man, he's on to something!

What are these "jobs" of which you speak?

So true! I mean, we're not born to pay bills and die. Life is meant to be enjoyed and relished.

If you can do it, then more then one job at once is not only doable, but I highly recommend it, and I'll tell you why. Because having 2 jobs gives you something to fall back on, should one job go under.

It depends too on the jobs in question, the person involved, their family situation, etc. There really is no one size fits all answer here.

I am however a believer in putting 90% of your focus on your "dream career", while keeping a part time side job on the back burner, "just in case". Unexpected things happen. You want to have a plan b, backup to hold you over in case your career falls through and you have to start over. I learned this from experience.

I completely agree with this. Even though I just said, I recommend multiple job, I also emphasis "if you can" then do it. I know health, family, and other life issues can make multiple jobs difficult to impossible. It depends on your situation wither or not multiple jobs is a goof option for you personally. You have to weigh the pros and cons of how multiple jobs will effect your life personally, so while I recommend it, I also say, if it's right for you. Multiple jobs is not right for everyone.

You know, this was not something that I had thought of. It's defiantly an interesting take on the OP's question. I always think of a "job" as "working for a boss" and the things with in that job as "assignments".

In the case you describe, I would call writing the job (you being your own boss) and the work for each client being "assignments" not "jobs".

If I was to call each project a "job" then I could say that right now I have 81 jobs! LOL! (I have 81 writing assignments, that I've got lined up and am working on finishing between now and August)

Yes. This was my case.

When I first started Avon, which I did for 16 years, I went into it thinking being an Avon Sales Rep was going to be my full time career. I had grown up with the company. My grandmother had sold Avon from the 1940s til her death in 1983. My mom took over her territory. Then when my mom got sick and couldn't work anymore, I took over her territory. It was almost like Avon was the "family business" in a way. It was just something the women of my family did and so there was no question in any one's mind that it was what I would do, as well. It was just what we did.

Well, I did Avon until Hurricane Katrina hit. She hit the south so hard, people forget that she came up the coast and tore up New England as well. We weren't hit as hard as the south was, but still it was the worst hurricane to hit Maine since Bob in 1991. Lot of people lost their homes, lot of businesses lost their businesses (our town is named Old Orchard BEACH for a reason, we are almost an island, the town built up on this weird horseshoe shaped sandbar that sticks out into the bay... when even a small storm hits we have to rebuild the town, so mega sized hurricanes just slaughter us). Hurricane Katrina devastated the area. Usually people rebuild, but this storm was so big, that a lot of people just packed up and went inland. It was cheaper to buy a house else where or start a business elsewhere, then to keep rebuilding every year. Our town went almost overnight from 12,000 residents to 3,000 residents and population gets lower every year.

Summer tourists who come to our beach June/July/August, have no clue how harsh the environment is here the rest of the year. Soon as Hurricane season leaves, blizzard season starts, and from October to May, it's weekly snow storms of 3 feet deep each. In February alone we get 21 feet of snow most years. Most people in these parts have 2 incomes: tourists in the summer, lobsters in the winter; but then Hurricane Katrina took out most of the motels, and smashed most of the boats. Motel owners and lobstermen simply could not afford to rebuild and there was so much damage to so many people all at once that banks couldn't afford to give loans to every one, and with New Orleans hit so hard, there was no federal help left over to help us little towns up north.

Old Orchard Beach became a ghost town after Hurricane Katrina, and that's why I stopped selling Avon. There simply was no one left to sell to. What few people didn't pack up and leave, were struggling to rebuild, so couldn't afford to buy frivolities like shampoo and makeup... not expensive Avon brand types at least, not when they could get .99c ones at WalMart in nearby Biddeford.

Hurricane Katrina is when you saw me start to really focus on my online income as a career move instead of just being a hobby. From 1997 to 2005 my online income was more me, just having fun with a few random things here and there: online surveys paid me a few gift cards here and there, affiliate programs sent me $100 checks at the end of the year, Zazzle and CafePress tossed $50 checks at me every few months. I was making money online, but it was passive income, hobby income, not anything I could live off of.

Hurricane Katrina taught me that even a "stable" offline business, on that had existed for decades and hard strong financial backing (like the big hotels on the beach), could be gone over night at the whims of a flood, that just washed through and took the buildings with it. People who thought they were set for life, were flung into financial ruin in the blink of an eye.

I saw hundreds of families all around me, people I knew, homeless and starving, living in their cars, their steady, stable incomes gone. And not just the business owners. All the staff at all the business, were without jobs and there was no businesses left for them to turn to to get new jobs either. It was why the mass exodus out of the area. They didn't have a choice. They had families to feed. They couldn't want for businesses to rebuild, they needed jobs today.

It taught me one thing, that I had always heard, but never really knew the meaning of:

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

My Avon career went dead overnight, because there was no more customers, because they all had no jobs, because businesses were shut down from the mass damage of a mega sized natural disaster that we knew was coming, but had no clue would be the devastation it was. We'd seen hurricanes before, we get hit by 2 or 3 every September every year. But we'd never seen one like this before.

While I lost my customers to sell Avon too, I had my online incomes to fall back on. I wasn't completely without money. It was barely enough to live on, but it was a hell of a lot more then what hundreds of other families around me had.

Why?

Because they had all been relying on one job, one business, one source of income, no matter what it was... they each only had one. And when their one income went dead overnight, they couldn't survive. They didn't have enough money in the bank, there was so much devastation at once that the banks didn't have enough money to help every one, and no one had any extra incomes to fall back on.

Since 2005, I changed how I did things.

I said I would never again rely on one income alone. It was too easy for one income to go dead without warning and me be with no income overnight.

With Avon income gone, I set out to looking for a job elsewhere, but that was not easy with half the local businesses sitting in piles of rubble. Macy's was far enough inland that they did not get hit and they set up temp jobs for people effected by Katrina. It's how I got my job at Macy's. I worked there for 6 years, stopped because of my health, otherwise I'd still be there.

Next I got a job as an inventory taker with RGIS, and loved that job, except it turned out to be too difficult due to my health problems (I have joint issues that limit my movements and ability to lift things). The same time I was with RGIS, I was also a retail merchandiser for HallMark. Both these jobs were territory jobs, meaning I covered a wide area and had to drive to multiple stores each day. With RGIS, my territory was Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, with HallMark it was just within the state of Maine.

I also worked at WalMart, CVS, and WalGreens.

And for a while I worked on a local food truck.


In 2013 I saw a similar event to the Karenina event. Squidoo, was my #1 source of online income from 2007 to 2013. Then BOOM, overnight Squidoo was gone and 3 million writers had their incomes pulled out from under them. A lot of those Squidoo writers were relying fully on Squidoo and had no backup income, no back up plan... like the families devastated by Katrina in 2005, Squidoo writers were suddenly in danger of losing their homes, living in their cars, and their families going hungry, because Squidoo had been their ONLY income.

Not many Squidoo writers bounced back after Squidoo went under. I'm one of the few who did.

Why?

Because Squidoo wasn't my only income. Yes, I was hit hard by Squidoo's going offline as it was the huge chunk of my income gone in a flash, but I had other income streams from other sources, and I was able to live off those while I looked for something else to replace the large chunk of income gone missing in Squidoo's absence.

These are all jobs I never would have had, had Katrina not come through as I'd still be selling Avon instead.

Also, without Katrina, I would not have turned my online income from a passive hobby income to a full time career, either.

I had planned Avon to be my career. Had no intention of anything else.

Macy's, WalMart, RGIS, HallMark, the food truck, etc. Those were jobs I did "between careers".

My career now is my online income, which is multi steam and includes: content writing, affiliate marketing, print on demand products (Zazzle, CafePress, Lule, & Kindle), vlogging, let's plays, and more. In my online career, I do not focus everything into one thing, because I've seen how fast one thing can go under and with nothing to fall back on, it can destroy you.

So, that's why I said back at the beginning that I am a believer in putting 90% of your focus on your "dream career", while keeping a part time side job on the back burner, "just in case". Unexpected things happen. You want to have a plan b, backup to hold you over in case your career falls through and you have to start over. I learned this from experience.

Figuratively.

Yes... This is true for "working" Dads as well.... They have the same "two" jobs.

I don't know of one father who simply comes home and plops on the couch...

The minute they get home from their "first job" their "second jobs" kick in...They're a cook, chauffeur, babysitter, maid, landscaper, mediator, handyman, plumber, electrician, gofer and many other things.

There may be *some* men who simply go to work and come home and do nothing else... But, I don't know of any.... :-)