As a team leader at an IT company, Peter Groenewegen (29) has meetings all day long, or he is programming behind the screen. “There is one constant factor: I’m constantly in my head. What I sometimes find annoying is that I work my way around and at the end of the day there is nothing to see. I still have that same laptop on my desk.”
After four years, Groenewegen felt a strong need to start doing something with his hands. He has had an additional job as a gardener since the beginning of this year, now one day every two weeks, but he is considering setting aside one day every week. In the morning he leaves for the landscaping company at half past six and in the evening he returns home around half past six after a frikandel with his colleagues.
Tiresome, but after a hard day’s work in a garden, the effect is visible. “I can be really proud of that. It is also nice to hand over the responsibility on such a day: just tell me what to do.”
There are quite a few Dutch people with a second job next to their main job, according to figures from the CBS† Last year there were 769,000, which is 8.3 percent of all workers. 6.4 percent of all permanent employees had a part-time job. According to Statistics Netherlands, this latter group often works as a freelancer: last year this applied to 42 percent of these double workers.
The variety is nice
Consultant Leonie Post (31) is one of them. A few years ago she started to enjoy her job less. After talks with a coach, she decided to go creative. She took an evening course in interior design, did an internship with a designer and has been devoting one day a week to her own design company for two years now. “Selecting fabrics, browsing through wallpaper books, determining colours, 3D drawing. Lovely, you couldn’t make me happier.” However, she is not aiming for a full switch for the time being. She would miss her job as a consultant. “I also like to dive into complex business issues. I like the variety.”
What initially held Post back was the idea that she had to make a radical choice. “I thought: if I really go for it, I have to burn all the ships behind me. But that is not necessary at all.”
Many people with a permanent job dream about a completely different job, but do not dare to make the switch, says occupational psychologist Tosca Gort in her coaching practice. According to her, such a plan becomes more feasible if you combine it with your old job. The desire for a total switch usually stems from personal problems, Gort says. “There is almost always a flight emotion behind it, I’ve seen that so many times. A new environment isn’t going to take that emotion away, you have to face what you’re running away from first. You can come across the same shit in other work. The romantic picture is often wrong.”
Crazy about working from home
Marketer Pjotr Knoester (31) experienced this. In corona time he went crazy working from home. He wanted to go out, dig into the dirt with his hands. It started with potted plants on the balcony of his apartment in The Hague, then he took care of the neighbour’s front garden. He reported to a gardener, with whom he was allowed to walk one day a week. That was less satisfying than he’d imagined. “A large part of the work turned out to consist of making streets and building wooden structures. While I especially like working with plants. I am concerned about the loss of biodiversity, I want to do something about it.” Knoester decided to focus on the ecological planting of urban facade gardens, in order to attract more butterflies and bees. He quit his job and started his own company in the late summer of last year.
It was not easy in the beginning to acquire enough customers. Knoester experienced financial pressure, especially since he and his girlfriend had recently had a child. “I underestimated what it feels like to be so dependent on uncertain income. The pleasure in gardening threatened to disappear as a result.”
After about six months, he found a job for four days as an online marketer. Now that working from home is no longer necessary and he sees his colleagues every day, he likes it again. Would he eventually prefer to garden full-time? “At the moment I think this combination is ideal. It gives a calm feeling.”
Whatever can happen: you find out that a dream job isn’t for you after all. Derk van Bijsterveldt (33) always wanted to be a chef. To try it out, a few years ago, in addition to his work as a manager at an energy company, he spent one day a week in the kitchen of a grand café. “After I had baked the hundredth burger, the creativity was gone. I also noticed that I couldn’t get any further if I only worked so few hours. But five days a week I really couldn’t see myself doing this.”
Van Bijsterveldt thought it was a valuable lesson. He conceived the idea of mediating for people who want to do an internship in addition to their permanent job. There appeared to be quite a bit of enthusiasm for it, especially among people with office jobs who wanted to switch to something practical and creative. After the internship that Van Bijsterveldt had arranged for them, almost all of them chose to combine this new activity with their existing work. “I heard from them that the implementation of such a plan gave me a lot of peace of mind and that they actually liked the variety. Moreover, you often find out in the process that it is not perfect anywhere; every profession has its downsides.”
He now has the online platform Semiprof.nl has been set up, which brings self-employed and hobbyists into contact with customers who can purchase their services for a low price. That can also be a way to combine a permanent job with other types of work.
‘This is really the time’
The scarcity on the labor market makes it easier to combine jobs, says labor psychologist Gort. “There are so many options now, now is really the time to take such a step.” She expects that in the near future it will also become easier to work one or two days a week in sectors that still require years of prior training. “Knowledge is outdated so quickly these days. I think that you will soon receive additional training in most jobs. Then you can make the transition to a completely different part-time job much easier.”
New energy
Most employers in this market will not object if you want to work one day less, if that means staying the rest of the days. When Peter Groenewegen presented his plan to start working for a landscaping company to his supervisor, he reacted positively. “He understands that such a day of working outside gives me new energy, also in my position as team leader.”
If he works there one day a week, his contract will have to be adjusted. He earns significantly less at the landscaping company, but Groenewegen does not think that is an issue.
An additional advantage of a second job is that it sometimes makes you think more positively about your main job. For example, during her work as an interior designer, Leonie Post realized how important collaboration with colleagues is to her. “I found out that interior design advice is quite a solo job, while I have always worked in teams. I don’t want to do everything alone.” For the same reason, the combination with an office job works so well for Pjotr Knoester. “I garden on my own. I do have some entitlement when I work on the street, but I don’t want to miss the personal contacts at the office.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 14, 2022