No More Fixed Jobs (for Me)

Author: Jurgen Appelo

It's been thirteen years since I had a fixed job. At the time, I was the CIO of a mid-sized company, and I learned how to be an agile leader in an environment where every day was different, but my time commitment was the same: 40 hours per week.

Since then, I mostly had flexible jobs. Whether I'm working as an author, speaker, or entrepreneur, the weekly hours are never the same. Sometimes, I spend most of my week being involved in events. In other weeks, I write articles and work with my team on the business.

I like this flexibility in my work. I'm not a fan of too much predictability.

In a few cases, you might say I have a temporary job. For example, when I facilitate a workshop, I am fully dedicated to the project for two days. And perhaps I should count my vacations towards this category, too: the same time commitment each day, but only for two weeks. 😁

Finally, there are cases where my involvement is intermittent, with a temporary contribution and a flexible number of hours per week. That was how I co-organized an event one day, how I produced a small self-published book, and how I built the unFIX website.

I love short-term engagements. Endless projects make me cringe.

You are obviously not me. (At least, I hope not.) Your preferences will differ. You may prefer long-term commitments rather than short-term projects. You may like a steady rhythm per week instead of a dynamic number of hours. We all expect different things from our jobs.

The four Time Commitment patterns in the unFIX Model may help your team members clarify what they like best. You can use the cards to design a game or use the symbols to annotate your organization designs. Whatever you do, people deserve to know what they can expect from each other.

In my case, you can expect me to default to intermittent, with side-steps into flexible and temporary. But fixed? No, I don't find that exciting anymore. (And I have a feeling I'm not the only one.)