Alex Wade, recently nominated as Sports Feature Writer of the Year in the annual Sports Journalism Awards, reflects on professional life.
“All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.” Thus spoke Plato, and I have a feeling that, were he confronted with today’s British professional landscape, he’d stand by what he said. Let me explain.
A few years ago a trendy concept amid business and professional sectors was the idea of the “porfolio man”. Portfolio Man didn’t have merely one job, and he wasn’t employed, either. He was a self-employed go-getter who wore an array of hats, which would sometimes coalesce, while on other occasions they would appear so diverse as to be bewildering, to himself as much as observers. There are still plenty of Portfolio Men about, and, in truth, the idea is nothing new. Portfolio Man is, by another name, the successful lawyer who becomes a consultant and acquires a few non-executive directorships, or the doctor who carves out dual careers in lecturing and buying and selling art. But while these types of Portfolio Man would traditionally have earned their spurs by dint of years of specialist experience in a chosen field, what happened recently was that Portfolio Man got younger. He began to pop up in his mid-30s as the living, breathing and cash-rich embodiment of the idea that, career-wise, suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder need not be a problem.
I warmed to the idea of Portfolio Man and, for a time, was one. Following my last incarnation as a lawyer (for a sports rights company), I became a freelance journalist, a newspaper lawyer (by night), a writer and a sports rights agent. Looking back over my diaries of that time, I find that on one Monday night I worked at The Times as a night lawyer, before flying to Albania on Tuesday. While there I met with a surprising, given Albania’s size, plethora of broadcasters and pitched the sale of various sports rights properties to them. I also managed to venture into the mountains of Lunxheria, in the south, because I would be writing a travel article on the experience for The Independent. I’d already also interviewed lawyers in Tirana, Albania’s capital, for an article for The Lawyer. Back in England by Thursday afternoon, I completed another shift for a newspaper (this time The Sun), before returning home on Friday to write 2,000 words of my first book, Wrecking Machine.
That week was far from atypical. For a while, I relished the incredible variety of tasks that came my way. I continued to work as a legal consultant, undertaking media risks analysis for a leading insurer; I advised on contracts for a betting and gaming company; I did some PR work for a couple of clients. All this, as well as writing, being a night lawyer and concluding sports rights deals.
But it was exhausting. The mental agility required to jump from one area of expertise to another left me shattered. I became grouchy with my family. I opted to relax with a bottle of red wine, instead of going for a run or walking the dogs. I put time into my kids, but almost invariably the phone would ring from one or other of the people retaining me. I was constantly on call, constantly distracted, and constantly stressed. The demons explored in Wrecking Machine looked as if they might be making a comeback.
It wasn’t difficult, a few years ago, to jettison the sports rights work. Yes, it had been lucrative, but continuing to do it meant spreading myself ever thinner. Shortly afterwards I stopped doing much by way of law. I also said “no” to all the other tangential bits of work that came in. I opted to concentrate on writing – on one profession, rather than several, as my source of income. Where once I was Portfolio Man, I became Portfolio-free.
Of course, it’s not quite as simple as all that. I still flit around, from writing about anything from coastal living, to sport, to law, to travel; to art; you name it, really. But my craft, as a writer, has improved precisely because I’m dedicated to the one thing. I’m not distracted anymore, I’m less stressed, and I’m better at my job.
For me, and, I suspect, many other professionals, Plato’s comment is as applicable today as it was some 2,400 years ago. Being professional, in whatever sphere, entails dedication, delivering a service on time and having integrity. But it also means committing to what one does best, and not – unless, perhaps, one is of a certain age – spreading oneself too thin.
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