The Portfolio Life summary

Wallace separates her Portfolio Life concept into four pillars: identity, optionality, diversification, and flexibility. Together, these four pillars provide a solid base for you to build a more holistic lifestyle. Let’s take a look at each one individually.

The first pillar of the Portfolio Life is creating an identity that is insulated from your job. In other words, understanding that your life amounts to so much more than what you do for a living. As humans, we love to group everything around us into tidy little categories. The thing is, our lives just don’t work that way.

Confining your identity to a one-dimensional job title is not only old-fashioned and inaccurate, but also incredibly limiting. When thinking about your own identity, the answer should always be “and,” not “or.”

The second pillar is optionality, or the ability to pursue multiple opportunities and life paths at once. Starting in childhood, there’s a common misconception that we have just one correct future in front of us – one that we need to pick early and stick with for life. As a kid, how many times were you asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The truth is that there will be countless paths that we choose to follow throughout our lives. Even if one seemingly disappears, new paths are constantly emerging, just waiting for us to take the first step. 

Diversification, the third pillar, is an incredibly important aspect of building a life that is not only fulfilling, but financially secure. The classic advice to get a stable, full-time job at just one company is actually one of the riskiest choices you can make.

Don’t believe me? Look at it this way – if you choose a linear path, you’re putting all of your income, benefits, and retirement savings in the hands of one leader or organization. This is the very definition of “putting all your eggs in one basket.”

The longer you’ve been in one role or at one company, the more you put yourself at risk. Building multiple income streams is a great way to protect yourself, but it’s not the only thing you can do. This pillar is also about creating more diversity in your skill sets, industry experiences, and even within your own personal network.

Finally, there’s the fourth pillar – flexibility. While the first three pillars work together to create strength and stability, this final idea gives us the freedom to adapt and respond to a rapidly changing world. Anyone whose career is based on a single job will inevitably get stuck in the same loop, with “work” or “don’t work” as their only two options.

In contrast, people with a large network and portfolio of skills and interests have a much greater ability to change their priorities and “reshuffle” their life as needed.