This is a collaborative post
Don’t worry – this isn’t another annoying article about how you’re somehow deficient if you don’t emerge from lockdown with a million new skills, countless networking connections and a bulging bank balance.
That said, if you do have any energy left after taking all the precautions necessary to keep your family healthy and hold down a job and household, there might just be a silver lining for your work life that emerges once the clouds of the crisis clear.
In the spirit of positive thinking, here are three ways lockdown could change your career for the better.
Permanent home working
Before you scream ‘NO!’ at the top of your lungs, bear with us a minute, please!
If you can imagine permanent home working without an associated health crisis, the benefits might become more obvious – including cash saved on childcare, the convenience of ditching that awful commute forever and the absolute joy of dealing with difficult colleagues at the other end of a phone or video call.
And if your employer also allows you to work flexibly, you could optimise your hours so that they suit you perfectly – with late starts if you like a long lie and early starts and finishes if you’re a morning person.
Side hustling
Lockdown could also be the perfect time to develop the hobby that you’re passionate about into a properly paid side hustle – which could then lead to a permanent shift towards a career that genuinely makes you want to get out of bed every morning.
These lockdown side hustle ideas from Marie Claire are a pretty good place to start, but as well as doing something completely different to your day job, you might decide that you want to continue using your core skill, except on a self-employed basis.
For instance, if you’re already employed as a content writer, you might decide that choosing your own clients and being paid directly cuts out the middle management and office politics associated with in-house writing.
Studying
To stimulate those little grey cells, you might choose to get stuck into a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on a subject that you’ve been curious about – and you can find these casual courses on everything from fine art to forging samurai swords.
But if you want to earn an accredited qualification that can genuinely help you migrate to a career that really motivates you, online degrees from ARU Distance Learning are a better pick and cover subjects as diverse as management and psychology.
So there are three simple ideas about how lockdown could lead to you enhancing your career or switching entirely to something less boring and perhaps even better paid.
Hopefully, as we move towards the ‘new normal’, some of us will benefit from a better work-life balance and more fulfilling jobs.
Do you think lockdown could help some people improve their careers? Let us know in the comments section.