Quitting the rat race to get a life

By GEOFF CUMMING

On John Clark's website is a eulogy to his wife, Jude, who died suddenly in April. Life hangs by a thin thread, it concludes. Procrastinate at your peril.

Ten years ago, Clark walked away from a six-figure income and prestige as a managing partner in commercial law firm Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.

"I had a 3-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son. It seemed like a good time to get a life."

He split parental duties with his wife, did volunteer work and began mentoring professionals wanting to take control of their lives.

His wife's death from a heart attack came without warning and devastated Clark. But it reinforced his decision to abandon his profession.

"Even with that big drop in income we were able to do things we wouldn't have done. Instead of having a Mercedes, we had our lives together.

"If I had spent the last 10 years grinding away in the corporate world and then Jude had died I would have regretted so much."

Clark was in the vanguard of an international trend which is challenging the traditional work ethos: top staff are no longer willing to worship endlessly at the corporate altar.

In Britain last year, 2.6 million people "downshifted" in a quiet personal revolt against the culture of getting and spending, says a report by market analysts Datamonitor.

The trend has reached the corridors of power: British MP Alan Milburn, a Blairite tipped as a future Labour leader, resigned as Health Minister last month to spend more time with his children. And the press believed him.

In Australia, researchers found that nearly one in four workers aged between 30 and 60 voluntarily took a pay cut in the past 10 years to adopt a better lifestyle.

In an era of home computers, email and contracting-out, it is getting easier to step off the corporate treadmill. The monolithic career path - working slavishly for the firm for 40 years - is giving way to the "portfolio" career, where we might draw income over the course of a year, or even a month, from several sources, and have time for personal interests.

In New Zealand, where the lifestyle is considered compensation in itself, downshifting is still seen as unusual. However, the trend is worrying top firms sufficiently for them to usher in policies to stem this inverse brain drain, such as four-day weeks and working from home.

But particularly in big workplaces, staff are vulnerable to the herd mentality. They play the corporate game, put in the hours and seek the rewards.

Increasingly, people are looking for more satisfaction out of work.

"People want more meaning in their lives," says Kaye Avery of the recruitment agency Pohlen Kean. "They want to feel excited about what they do, but also that what they are doing has some purpose."

Ethical concerns in part drove Russell Maylin, national marketing manager at a pharmaceutical company, to leave in 1999 for a new life as a massage therapist, specialising in sports massage.

He had scaled the ranks from South Island sales rep to managing a large budget, working long hours, travelling often and meeting financial targets. But he grew disillusioned with the corporate trappings and was disappointed by the morals of some senior managers who came and went.

"Perhaps I didn't fit the corporate ladder. I wouldn't do what was required to go further up.

"I suspect there are a lot more people who wish to get out of corporate life than is being discussed.

"The price of working in a job you aren't particularly happy in can be appallingly high in terms of stress, health and marriages."

An endurance athlete in his spare time, Maylin, 40, planned his escape over several years, studying part-time for his diploma in sports therapy.

"I had always been on the receiving end of sports massage and was interested in how the body works. I also liked the idea of the clientele - through endurance sports I had met many high achievers who were good people."

Downshifters leave secure jobs for many reasons - to be involved with children growing up, to be less materialistic, to put something back into the community.

When Clark got out at 40, his colleagues assumed he would become a consultant, and struggled to accept that he could survive without "grinding away and keeping the billable hours up".

Instead he divided his time between family, charity work and writing. His book about achieving work-life balance, The Money or Your Life, has been released in America.

"People told me it was a brave career move. What would have been brave would have been sticking on in a career I didn't love and feeling it suck the life out of me."

But he cautions clients against throwing in careers at 45 to go fishing or sit on a lifestyle block. "People need to be pretty clear about the challenges they want in their life or they are liable to start vegetating."

Whether it's the accountant who left to work in a garden centre, the economist who launched a kayaking business or the lawyer who became a chef, successful downshifters tend to have three things in common. First, they swap their chosen career for what really interests them. Secondly, they decide that if they don't make a change, they may not get another chance. Lastly, they don't miss the money.

"If you earn the money you just spend it," says Michael, a reinsurance specialist who did not wish his surname to be used. He has just traded a huge salary in Sydney for the less-pressured lifestyle of Auckland's North Shore. "We had every gadget and mod con you could imagine. Clothes - we'd feel nothing about spending $150 on a little jersey for the kids. It was never an issue."

But the jetset lifestyle brought unforeseen baggage. He recalls his daughter drawing a picture at kindergarten of her father at the airport.

"She thought that was where I lived. You only have one go at life. Your kids growing up, taking them to school, seeing their plays - those are the things you need to treasure."

He was also missing his wife. "I was leaving before 7, getting home at 8. In some ways we started leading separate lives. She had her friends, I had mine."

So they resolved to leave "cold, brutal" Sydney to return to the North Shore, where they had formed good friendships in the early 1990s and retained a bungalow. Michael accepts that his next job will pay a fraction of his Sydney salary and looks forward to the next family holiday at a camping ground, instead of a Four Seasons resort.

"There's a hell of a lot more to life than earning a wad of money and having a serious position in a company."

Yet many stressed-out workers who can afford a lifestyle change never take that step. A little voice inside stops them, says Clark. So they mortgage themselves to the eyeballs for a house at a better address, buy the latest clothes, rack up airpoints and take annual overseas holidays.

He says many people measure their self-worth by the state of their balance sheet and struggle psychologically to accept other benchmarks for success.

"A large number of people say, 'I couldn't afford to do what you've done,' but they may be earning six or seven times more than me."

Many come from a background of academic achievement. They become doctors or lawyers, "because that's what bright people do".

"But by the time they're 40, they forget what really stirs them. I try to challenge some of their assumptions so that, over time, they see there are alternatives."

Clark says he knew early on law was not for him. But he took 15 years to get out - the last several years reducing the mortgage and other debts.

Softly spoken and hair brushed forward, Clark at 50 is as far removed from the Queen St suits as it is possible to imagine. Wearing sweatshirt, jeans and trainers, he saunters around his Remuera villa, a man at ease.

Yet he maintains he's worked harder these past 10 years, as a parent, a volunteer and in paid roles, than as a managing partner. Like others, he rejects the connotation that downshifting means doing less or dropping out.

"The most healthy form of downshifting doesn't involve butting out and spending the rest of your life on the golf course. I think people who do that at 45 regret it when they reach their 60s and 70s and look back."

A one-off event, such as a marriage break-up or a death in the family, inspires some people to change their lives; for others it is a gradual realisation that something is missing.

Two years ago, Denise Church was the highly respected chief executive at the Ministry for the Environment. A zoologist with multiple degrees, she had left the ministry for environmental management roles in Britain before returning to Wellington in 1996 to the top job. With husband Michael working part-time and caring for their 3-year-old daughter, Caitlin, the arrangement seemed ideal.

But Church began to feel she was missing seeing her daughter grow up. "Your kids get older and they are just not going to be 3 again."

She negotiated a half-day off each week, but "it was just so hard to schedule it".

"The balance for me no longer felt quite right."

So she resigned and set out on the portfolio career path - building activities around Caitlin's and her own interests. She co-ordinates children's ministry for the local church and has served on the management committee of Caitlin's daycare. She is a board member of the World Wildlife Fund NZ, a director of Landcare and a trustee of Wellington Zoo. Four times a year, she runs a week-long leadership training course in the public sector.

"That's the only time a week goes by and I don't see Caitlin. That used to be normality."

Church says she misses the interesting work, and the pressure, "but it has also given me time to stop and think - or stop and not think".

When former KPMG marketing director Felicity Stevens had a baby boy at 41, her employer did everything to accommodate her needs, she says. But her own expectations of the hours she needed to put into her job exceeded the company's. "I just didn't feel I could give it everything."

Perhaps as importantly, she saw this as her second chance at raising a child after a gap of nearly 20 years.

"With my first child I was very young and starting out on my career. I was doing postgraduate study and wasn't earning the kind of money that meant I could have a whole lot of support. I think she really came off second best."

This time, when her son turned 1, Stevens left and set up shop as a part-time consultant, helping firms to deliver on their promises by addressing internal issues.

The house needs redecorating and she occasionally pines for the past suit-buying sprees at Adrienne Winkelmann, the facials and manicures.

"Sometimes, out lunching with the girls, I look longingly at the latest outfits and hear all about their holidays in Fiji. But I think of the time I can put into my son and also my husband. Just to have someone who's not going a hundred miles an hour in their career means there's a bit more nurturing going on."

Which is nice if you can afford it, some might say. But according to Australian research, downshifters are as likely to be blue-collar workers on less than A$30,000 as white collar.

Clark says he is constantly impressed by clients without a privileged background who make sacrifices to achieve their dream. He corresponds by email with a solo mother in Levin who was determined to get off the DPB.

"She wanted to spend a lot of time with her daughter, she was highly creative and she loved her art. These were the foundation stones on which she set out to build her life."

So she learned computer design and launched a website business doing artwork for companies needing work in a hurry. She soon had customers from throughout the country and overseas.

"She was never out to make a huge income but she was able to disregard conventional rules and come up with something that worked for her. Others who have the financial platform she could only dream of wouldn't do that."

Downshifting, says Clark, is not as simple as waking up one morning and telling the boss: "I resign."

There's a process to be followed, although there is no standard formula. The first step is to work out "whatever it is that brings us bliss". Then, make gradual changes to spend more time doing it. Along the way, reduce your debt levels.

"I don't advocate dropping your career and living in penury. I just say to people who are complaining about their career, take some steps so that five or six years down the track you can put your talents into something that really stirs you.

"When your debts are clear and you are clear that the things that matter most to you aren't going to be measured by the state of your bank account, then anything's possible."