by Marilize Jacobs
Being a single mom of twins is a full-time job. So is running my own business. This is what I do for a living and for the last couple of years I have been on a quest to feel truly at peace with my daily actions. I wanted to derive happiness from the fact that I was my own boss and had the freedom to live my life accordingly. In a nutshell: I wanted to be happy at work. Really happy.
But what did it mean? What kind of happiness was I looking for? Was it the freedom to sit and work on a beach with my laptop and cocktail in tow? (Highly unlikely as any working mom would tell you.) Or was it working towards being financially secure – always a big dream of mine? Partly, yes, but there was more to it.
Flashback 2021. There I was building my interior decorating business, Pigs Can Fly Interiors, trying to find my feet within a post-pandemic working reality, and using rather bizarre marketing tactics to attract new prospects and recover my losses.
W h a t ?!
This was not what I had envisioned at all. This was not part of my search for happiness anymore. Although interior decorating had always been an interest of mine, I started out in another field. I studied BCom and worked in the marketing/PR (public relations) environment. At first, I worked as a brand/marketing manager for various blue-chip companies before opening up my own PR consultancy, VocalCord, in 2005.
After almost a decade, I left my corporate job when I was expecting my twins, Ernest and Engelize, and studied interior decorating part time: Pigs Can Fly Interiors was born in 2008. BUT as a single mom with obvious financial constraints, I started thinking: Why not combine my background and experience in PR with my current business? Why not two careers? PR and interior decorating. One of my clients wanted me to help them promote their newly decorated offices. I put up my (shaky) hand and suddenly I was able to use my skills in PR again – VocalCord was reborn and my excitement to combine different interests and expertise, that is to put both my creative and strategic skills into practice, was unmatched.
You yourself may dream about switching to a career that’s drastically different from your current job. Many people do. But some of us never make the leap: the cost of switching seem too high, and the possibility of success seems too remote. The answer is not to continue plugging away at your current job, unfulfilled and slowly burning out. The answer is to do both. According to a study published by the Harvard Business Review, two careers are indeed better than one. By committing to two careers, you will double the benefits: you’ll acquire new skills, broaden your network, and discover truly creative and fresh solutions by integrating two (or more) wildly divergent careers. When you follow your curiosities, you will bring passion to your new careers, which will leave you more fulfilled. And by doing more than one job, you may end up doing all of them better. Quite simply, I have realised that working more than one job makes me... drum roll please...happier!
Here are some of the main insights from the above-mentioned study peppered by my own experience as a professional multitasker and loving it:
You will Make Friends in Different Circles
When I worked within the interior decorating business my circle was initially limited to corporates and home owners wanting to decorate their premises. By being part of two different career circles, I could selectively (and strategically) introduce people who would typically never meet, thus unlocking value and opportunity for all involved. Journalists, graphic designers, marketing managers to name a few. This was also a way for me to give back through job creation by supporting and partnering up with various small businesses.
You will Discover Real Innovations
When you work different jobs, you can identify where ideas interact — and more significantly, where they should interact. There was indeed a link between my two careers and I was subconsciously re-innovating myself. And becoming happier in the process.
You will realize that a Happy Work Environment is directly proportional to a Happier Life
Despite the fact that post-Covid a lot of us now spend more time in our homes, also working from a home office, the impact our home offices/homes have on our happiness has been relatively unexplored. Until now. According to the World Happiness Report (yes, there is indeed such a report) research shows that often we look for happiness in the wrong places. Sometimes what we think makes us happy and what really makes us happy differ significantly.
Research conducted by Kingfisher shows that if you’re happy with your home, you’re far more likely to be happy in life. The most important factors are not where you live, the size of your house, or whether you rent or own. What matters most is having a home that gives you a feeling of the following: safety, comfort, identity and pride.
The GoodHome Report by the Happiness Institute shows that how we feel about where we live (and mostly also work from these days) is actually much more important to our general happiness than might have been expected.
Firstly, they found that as many as 73% of the respondents who feel happy about their homes also feel happy in general.
Surprisingly, they also found that a happy home accounts for 15% of people’s overall happiness – a slightly higher percentage than the importance of physical health and almost just as much as mental health!
How happy we are with our homes also proves to be much more important to our overall happiness if compared to our income and whether we are employed, retired, single, married, or have children (all typically considered to be highly important to our well-being).
74% of people who have an interest in and spending time doing home improvements are proud of their homes. And guess what. A proud woman is mostly a... happy woman!
Core insight: Despite pride being the most important emotion to have towards your home, very few people actually feel it.
Speaking from experience, I definitely snack a bit more when working from home as oppose to an outside office. 82% of the respondents in the GoodHome study who have renovated their kitchens are happy with their homes, compared to 68% of them who have not renovated their kitchens. Happy snacking... …
Renovating your bathroom comes in as the second area directly connected to happiness. As the average person “tinkles” every 3 -4 hours, this is definitely an area to look at when upgrading – let it become the best seat in the house!
The main myth busted in the GoodHome Report is that the larger our home, the happier we become. Here, how we organise and perceive the space in our home, turn out to be much more important than the actual size or number of rooms.
So, there you have it. It’s your time to be happy, with two (or more) careers and an environment to be proud of to boot.
In the words of icon Iris Apfel: “More is more and less is a... bore.”
Happy working!
Marilize Jacobs is the founder of two businesses, Pigs Can Fly Interiors & VocalCord Reputation Management in South Africa. She is a reputation strategist with a BCom Marketing Management (UP) and a career spanning interior design, marketing, and PR. Clients, especially in the Financial Services, Legal, Pharmaceutical, Hospitality and Retail industries which revere her strategic skills, thoroughness and tenacity when it comes to building and maintaining reputations. On the personal front, she is a boat skipper and avid cyclist, and also has a pro bono involvement with The Star Academy, an international institution for children with Autism.
Reach her at: marilizeb@mweb.co.za / 082 418 6767
Facebook: facebook.com/pigscanflyinteriors
Instagram: @yespigscanfly