{"id":4443,"date":"2013-08-22T02:53:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T06:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/?p=4443"},"modified":"2013-08-22T13:48:43","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T17:48:43","slug":"paying-in-vs-paying-your-dues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2013\/08\/paying-in-vs-paying-your-dues.html","title":{"rendered":"Paying In vs. Paying Your Dues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"laura-vanderkam\"<\/a>I’m happy to have Laura Vanderkam<\/strong><\/a>, author of several books, including her new one, What the Most Successful People Do at Work<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0 back as a guest today. She has an interesting take on paying your dues. Here’s what she has to say:<\/p>\n

A Better Way to Pay Your Dues?<\/strong>
\nBy Laura Vanderkam<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Something about graduation season compels people to offer advice to anyone sporting a mortarboard. Follow your passion. It\u2019s not what you earn, it\u2019s what you learn. Take the road less traveled by (has anyone, in any graduation speech, ever taken the road more traveled by?).<\/p>\n

This advice may be reasonable, but here\u2019s the rub: it isn\u2019t actionable. When you\u2019re launching yourself into the real world, you\u2019re already keenly aware that most things you\u2019ve learned don\u2019t have real world applications. You want advice that you can use at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.\u00a0??At least I did. So here\u2019s what I would say to my 22-year-old self: Get serious about paying in.<\/p>\n

By \u201cpaying in\u201d I don\u2019t mean paying your dues. To me, \u201cpaying your dues\u201d conjures up images of doing thankless and possibly pointless work in the interest of building a career within a certain organization. You put in time when you\u2019re new, and over time it is recognized and rewarded.?? The problem with this mindset is that the average tenure of a worker at a company is about 4.5 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it\u2019s much lower for younger people. Only 13 percent of 30-34 year olds have been at their current employer for 10 years.<\/p>\n

In other words, gaining capital that is only legal tender within a specific organization is not the best use of your time. A better approach — rather than paying your dues to a company — is to pay in to your own career capital account. This capital may help you rise within your own organization, but like a 401k, you can also take it with you when you, inevitably, move on.<\/p>\n

The best language I\u2019ve heard to describe this process of paying in comes from Sarah Fisher, the former race car driver I interviewed for What the Most Successful People Do at Work. She described a certain decision as one that \u201cbroadens our scope.\u201d This phrase neatly conjures up a growing sense of career abundance and generosity. What have you done today to broaden your scope? The best advice for a new grad is to develop the discipline of doing something daily to broaden his or her scope, amassing capital that will be useful in the future.<\/p>\n

These actions need not be grand. It\u2019s probably better if they\u2019re not. The world may not respond well to a promotional video about how awesome you are. But you can introduce a friend to another friend who works at a company she\u2019s interested in. You can tweet a link to a friend\u2019s blog. You can offer to help a colleague practice for a tough meeting. You can write a short post for an industry website. You can serve on a committee for an upcoming professional conference and remember to say happy birthday to your fellow committee member who\u2019s stuck handing out registration badges at a professional conference on her birthday.<\/p>\n

Of course, these are all things we know we should do, in our personal lives too, not just our working lives. But life gets busy, and it\u2019s easier not to. So I\u2019d tell an eager 22-year-old to actually get in the habit of checking in with herself at the end of each day, asking what she\u2019s done to pay in. If she\u2019s done something, then no matter how monotonous the day was, she\u2019s done something worthwhile. She\u2019s made another deposit in her account.<\/p>\n

What have you done today to broaden your scope?
\n***************<\/p>\n

Join the Self-Love Movement\u2122<\/strong><\/a>! Take the 31 Days of Self-Love Commitment<\/strong><\/a> and get my book, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways<\/a><\/strong> for free at http:\/\/howdoiloveme.com<\/a><\/strong>. Read my 2013 31 Days of Self-Love Posts HERE<\/strong><\/a>. Join the Self-Love Movement\u2122<\/strong><\/a>! on Facebook<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Please leave comments under my posts so we can stay connected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m happy to have Laura Vanderkam, author of several books, including her new one, What the Most Successful People Do at Work,\u00a0 back as a guest today. She has an interesting take on paying your dues. Here’s what she has to say: A Better Way to Pay Your Dues? By Laura Vanderkam Something about graduation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[133,698],"class_list":["post-4443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-self-empowerment-confidence","tag-laura-vanderkam","tag-paying-dues"],"yoast_head":"\nPaying In vs. Paying Your Dues - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2013\/08\/paying-in-vs-paying-your-dues.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paying In vs. Paying Your Dues - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m happy to have Laura Vanderkam, author of several books, including her new one, What the Most Successful People Do at Work,\u00a0 back as a guest today. 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Let Me Count the Ways, a She's appeared on hundreds of TV and radio shows, including Oprah, Howard Stern, and Good Morning America and has been quoted in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Marie Claire, and Men\u00b9s Health. After being a consummate People Pleaser who felt unworthy of getting her own needs met for many years, Daylle found a path of self-love that enabled her to build her self-esteem and reinvent herself into a dual career. She learned to get taken seriously without being overtly assertive when she became one of the first women to start an independent record label (on a dare!) and learned to play ball nicely and successfully in an industry dominated by men. To help independent musicians empower themselves, Daylle writes music business books for Billboard\/Random House, including the very popular Start & Run Your Own Record Labe and I Don't Need a Record Deal! Daylle's books have been translated into over 10 languages and are popular around the world. She speaks for colleges, organizations and corporations. Through her company, Project Self-Empowerment, Daylle creates programs and materials to help people empower themselves. One goal is to raise the money to self-publish her book, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways and give it away for free in colleges and through organizations, to give thanks for all her blessings. 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