A pivotal read on the diverse nature of career paths, I really enjoyed Emma Gannon’s reflections on juggling many aspects of life and striving to achieve across each. This is packed with useful and clear insight, with nuggets of wisdom which can be applied in all cases. There will be something of relevance for anyone regardless of their stage of life and career journey, and it’s one you’ll turn to again and again.

I got introduced to the concept of the multi-hyphen life and the multipotential personalities after reading this book.
I am now deep into the rabbit hole of the internet nooks that are full of people like this. Prior to this, I was also a fan of the "squiggly careers" so reading this book really reinstated my self-assurance in being a multi-faceted professional.

"The Multi-Hyphen Life" by Emma Gannon is a refreshing and empowering guide for anyone who seeks to break away from the traditional notions of career and work-life balance. Gannon's insight is a breath of fresh air for those itching to turn their passions into a career, transform a side-hustle into a startup, or simply reimagine their approach to work. In this modern age where technology empowers us to work flexibly and design our own careers, Gannon's book reinforces the idea that one can harness their entrepreneurial spirit, regardless of their career path. She shatters the old stereotype of being a "jack of all trades, master of none," and instead, she champions the idea that having multiple skills and interests is not a hindrance but a valuable asset in the contemporary working world. "The Multi-Hyphen Life" is an inspirational source that encourages us to work smarter, live more fulfilled lives, and define our own paths to success. It's a must-read for those looking to embrace the opportunities of the modern working landscape.

A great guide for anyone looking to change careers, with some sound advice from someone who has lived it. I struggle with audiobooks as they don't tend to maintain my attention, but I found this more like a podcast and therefore much easier to follow. Would recommend to anyone career-minded and at a crossroads.

I will not be giving feedback on this book as I couldn’t really get into it but I think others may enjoy it.

A pretty interesting book narrated by the author. It's an interesting and helpful look at working life and how to gain and maintain a work-life balance and gives a lot of tips that I'm sure will prove helpful.

This is a great book, in which the author speaks about having various strings to our bow in regards to our career, especially when we can use all of our passions and creative energies in our careers, instead of only using them as hobbies. Although we can have one main career, she says that we can also have other little side missions where we can use our creative skills to bring in supplementary income.

I found this book really interesting and useful, and I got a lot of tips from it in how I can enhance my own career, and use my skills to my advantage.

The author of the book also narrated the audiobook, and she did a great job.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to enhance their career and better themselves.

Many thanks to the author/narrator, publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book.

I really liked that there was an entire chapter about money, where in other books, it's hardly mentioned. It was also really gratifying how Gannon pointed out that hobbies are different than monetizable jobs, and that it's totally ok to do something just for yourself.

I was honestly underwhelmed by this book. Potentially because I have a lot of prior knowledge of the topic, but I really wanted to learn something new, which I didn't. If it's a topic you're not versed on, I feel like it's an ok book, but it left a lot to be desired.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an impartial review.

Another Emma Gannon classic, after reading Sabotage I knew that I NEEDED to read this book and it didn't disappoint.

Interesting and inspiring. I like the think-out-of-the-box approach to working. It's truly practical, especially nowadays what with this pandemic and more so the trends brought about by technology that seem to change overnight. I think I find this better than reading since it diminishes some of my anxiety, just listening to someone talk about new ideas. It's like having a coach and her enthusiasm is infectious!

Many thanks to NetGalley, Andrews McMeel Audio, Andrews McMeel Publishing for this audio ARC. This review is made of my own accord and with no monetary compensation from the names mentioned above and/or the owners of this ARC.

I've done a bit of reading about multipotentialites of late — because I am one. Whereas other books focus on psychology or multipotetiality as a personality trait this book is more about the workplace. It's an interesting treatise about how technology allows us to work wherever, whenever, and however we want. But because it stresses how we all need to get with the multi-hyphen way of working, if we want to succeed in the modern world, it often comes across like an apologist for the gig economy and as though it's pandering to millennials with special snowflake syndrome. Interesting and thought-provoking nonetheless.

This is a really sensible and practical book about essentially not having one job for life. I loved hearing examples of people who have multiple strands of work and how they make this balance out for them.

It’s particularly interesting listening to Emma’s book in April 2021 as for many the workplace looks set to change in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emma talks a lot about flexible working and fingers crossed there is now a better attitude towards working from home and flexible working since many have spent the past year with their home as their office. My own personal experience is we have a way to go with things such as job sharing but hopefully some companies will rethink this.

I dip in and out of Emma’s podcast and find she presents in a clear and friendly way so great to hear her reading the audiobook.

If your working life has changed over the past year and you are looking to branch out and try new things, this book is well worth a listen/read as it may light a spark and give you some ideas on what direction to head in next.

I must say, Emma Gannon’s writing has a way to get to me, being fiction with Olive, self-care with Sabotage (literally ME) and now this.
As a teacher, I could not always relate to certain things such as the flexible hours. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have some more flexible hours but that’s not yet 😬👩🏻‍🏫

Emma really depicted so many different aspects of the 21st Century work-life dynamic and I really feel hopeful for the future if people (Women) talk about it and raise issues/ give suggestions.

I really loved when she talks about not to categorise yourself! I am a teacher, but I also am a linguist, a writer, a singer, a knitter (even if it’s not a job as such). And I just loved how Emma makes us acknowledge all out skills while reading/listening.

A must to read or listen to if you feel stuck, but even if you don’t: it will help you grow, or see how to at least!

I LOVED this book! As I'm in the process of figuring out what I want to "do" with my life... I've been only hearing "find a career that you want to do for the rest of your life," and that hasn't been super helpful. I know the idea of a "multi-hyphen life" isn't a new concept, but this book does a great job of categorizing important ideas in a comprehensive and "plain language" way.

THE MULTI-HYPHEN LIFE - EMMA GANNON
I listened to this audiobook courtesy of Netgalley and wow wow wow what an incredible non fiction book. I enjoyed it so much because it felt relevant to my career and the current working world in a pandemic (which is amazing given that it was written pre-pandemic).

‘Technology allows us to work wherever, whenever, and enables us to design our own working lives. Forget the outdated stigma of "jack of all trades, master of none," because having many strings to your bow is essential to get ahead in the modern working world. We all have the skills necessary to work less and create more, and The Multi-Hyphen Life is an incredible modern career guide to navigate the current working world and help channel your entrepreneurial spirit.’

Key Takeaways for me:
Working 9-5 is a Victorian social construct that we still use today. Reclaim your time: If your work allows flexible working then try concentrate your time over your more productive hours.

Boundary setting in the workplace. Setting yourself soft boundaries (I.e I feel comfortable being emailed at X time if it’s about Y) and hard boundaries (saying no to work that you cannot simply fit in).

Gannon also discusses wider topics that impact work-lifestyle in today’s world; the way we view money, the culture of burnout, self-promotion, the concept of failure and the rise of flexible working.

Being successful at work should be about having a job that fits your lifestyle rather than ties you down and restricts you.

Incredibly insightful if you want to convert your craft or side hustle into a start up or another financial stream - you could definitely draw parallels to bookstagram. I loved how wise, nonjudgemental and supportive Emma Gannon came across. It felt like talking to a great friend providing career advice.

The Multi-Hyphen Life (formally the Multi-Hyphen Method) is a career/self-help book that looks at the complexities and benefits of a career with multiple facets and income streams. i.e. having multiple jobs. I listened to the audiobook, which is read by the author.

The book attempts to be a career guide, a self-help book, and a run-down of contemporary labour. It does some of these things better than others. I read many reviews after finishing the book that expressed some frustration. I think the frustration many readers felt was because they were looking for a book on one of these topics, and not all three. I enjoyed all three topics, but I did feel that all of them could have been explored more in-depth.

I'll start with the self-help parts of the book, mostly the early chapters.

I do feel like I needed to read this book or at least some parts of it. I've been very hung up on my inability to find a full-time job for most of the past year. It's good to remember that many people my age (and older) have fulfilling careers despite not have full-time jobs. However, it is awful that full-time jobs with benefits have become so rare.

I've been panicking about the possibility of having to continue to cobble together many different income streams (as opposed to getting a single full-time job) post PhD. While the lack of stability sucks (especially when thinking about mortgages etc.), this book examines some positives. It is easy to feel like a failure when you can't get any interviews for full-time work; this book at least made me feel a bit better about all of that.

It is discouraging to pay so much for your education and then only secure part-time work without benefits. It is hard to tell how much of that discouragement is cultural and how much of it is personal. The MHM dives into the shame, and the discouragement people feel surrounding work. I think it does this very well. The best thing about this book is that it attempts to help you understand that it's okay to make the best of a bad situation. And our labour market currently is very, very, very, very bad.

As a self-help book, this book helps the reader confront the shame they feel around work (and overwork) and acknowledges that it is not the worker's fault. This is important. I think the MHM succeeds in this regard.

As a career guide, I don't think it fully succeeds in its goals. It could benefit from a lot more specifics. How are these people making money? Not "with a podcast," but literally, how does the podcast make money?

These specifics could be from the many interesting people she very briefly interviewed or from the author herself. There is a disconnect happening where you have: "these people are successful here is what they do", but not "and here is how someone like you can do it."

The author clarifies that the book is *not* a how-to guide to becoming an influencer, but it needs to be a how-to of something! Otherwise, it isn't telling the reader (a millennial or Gen Z reader at least) anything they don't already know. It isn't doing anything to demystify these new types of work.

"Multi-hyphenates" Self-employed people, influencers, podcasters, writers, they make money, but how? The book gives a lot of advice that most people have heard before but stops short of getting specific enough to tell you things you don't know.

The most useful stuff is when she mentions specific tools/services she uses. She doesn't do this often, but when she does, it is great.

In Chapter 10, the author briefly explains how to monetize these various side hustles (affiliate links etc.), but it is really a very short list that doesn't detail how these things work. It really could be a blog post. I think Chapter 10 could have been fleshed out into multiple chapters, and it would have improved this book a great deal.

Lastly, this is a book about the changing nature of work. This is the book's portion that I am the most qualified to talk about, and I have read about this topic in great depth.

As a Marxist, I was a bit worried that this book might make me mad, but it didn't. Gannon acknowledges the horrendous state of the economy, and this book was written *before* the current recession. She acknowledges how the gig economy takes advantage of people. For the most part, she does not valorize the capitalist crisis.

Ganon points out many flaws in late-capitalism and office-work culture. Unfortunately, she stops short of actually pointing out the root of the problem. It's presented more as "this is how it is, and it all sucks, so why not opt-out of it?" I understand that saying "the problem is capitalism" is probably not something an editor would let you do when you are attempting to write a book for a very large audience. But because of this, the discussions of inequality and labour feel a bit toothless.

This would be a great book for Bosses and CEOs to read to learn about the challenges employee face, but sadly I don't think that's who is reading this book. Because workers are reading the book, they are well aware that work is literally making them sick. But, at the end of the day, they are not the people who could do something about these problems. Other than by organizing, which I will return to in a second.

While Gannon does a great job of outlining what's wrong with work, she also forwards a "do what you love" mentality that I feel is incompatible. While she is much more pragmatic about that mentality than most people, it still contradicts much of what she says. Even someone living the dream can struggle with all these issues as well.

A lot of these problems discussed can't be solved by "multi-hyphen life" They can only be solved by unions, better health care, better housing, better government, better social programs, etc. This book could be a fantastic argument for why everyone needs a union, but that's not the argument it is advancing.

I wish passion, flexibility, and side hustles were the cure for burnout and unstable work, but they aren't. If they were, academia and journalism would be much better places to work!

Lastly, while the audiobook was very well read by the author, I would pick the text version over audio. The book has many short sections with headings etc., and it would be better to read it traditionally if you are able.

I really think Gannon is very talented, and this book had the potential to be one of three great books, but instead, it was a surface examination of three topics/approaches. I do think that many people could still get a lot out of this book, especially if you know what you are getting going into it, so I would still recommend it to the right person at the right time.

I really enjoyed the narrator of this book, although I must admit it is quite similar to other books from the same genre, I found it similar to the previous book I read by the author but also practical.

Couldn't listen the whole book because it got archived before I finished. I'm going to review it based on what I managed to listen to, so I apologize if a topic in my review is discussed alongside the book.

Overall it's a good, but not great book. It brought me many reflections, but not always positive ones. I had a hard time connecting with the subject because I'm a believer that it's hard to achieve greatness in multiple career options when you don't commit yourself fully to that, and, in my limited and personal experience, I found many, many multi-hyphen professionals who half-ass all their projects but are great at promoting themselves, making my life a living nightmare when I have to work alongside them. Not all multi-hypen professionals are like this, of course, but in my professional bubble that's the majority of them.

Another thing that made me feel disconnected is that, although I'm a millenial and many things said in the book align with me, I'm also from a 3rd world country, so many aspects mentioned in the book doesn't fit into the economid model I'm living. This is obviously not the author's fault, it's what I get from listening to a book from other culture, but I'm lying if I didn't wish the content wasn't a bit more broad, to include other realities.

Third and last point: this book made me tired. I kept picturing myself in the multi-hyphen life, and let me tell you, I don't think I could do it. Listening to the stories shared from many multi-hyphen workers, who often had to work 12+ hours a day to fit all their jobs and projects on their agenda, I realized that I crave a 9-5 job and value (a lot) my rest time. Kudos to the people who manage to juggle several projects at the same time and don't get to the end of the day completely exhausted, I really envy you.

I still gave it three stars because I got some nice reflections out of this. Besides being from a different culture and having a different vision from the author, the book still made me open my mind a bit and reflect that maybe I don't have to restrict myself to only one area in my job, I can open myself up to explore a new area and see if I'm confident enough to act on both of them eventually. Also, it made me realize that what I crave from the workplace is a bit of flexibility, but not from my hours. I really want to leave my work at my job, and be able to rest and work on my hobbies when I get home.

This book is very clearly aimed at middle-class people who are already financially stable and have enough time on their hands to start inventing ridiculous new terms for having more than one job. The author seems to think that millennials invented this concept, but actually it's just what a lot of people have to do just to get by.

I wanted practical advice but there was almost none of that here, just repetitive jargon.