The Multi-Hyphen Life

Emma Gannon writes clearly and in a well-organized style. Lots of helpful information in this mentor text.

The Multi-Hyphen Life is a great guide for anyone with a hobby, side-hustle, or an itch to go freelance with their career. Emma Gannon offers practical advice for taking back your time, embracing your skills, and creating a work-life balance that is fulfilling. Centered around the idea that technology has changed the way we work, this book pushes the idea that it's more important to develop individual skills or hyphens that you can take from job to job as our old careers become obsolete. Our adaptability makes us more marketable in today's workplace. The book's mix of quotes, interviews with well-known boss babes, and questions to get you thinking about how to ask for a change in your workplace felt balanced and made for an enjoyable read. I found myself highlighting tidbits of encouragement to come back to later. It was a bit repetitive in parts but overall I enjoyed the casual, chatty writing style, especially from a business book.

Emma Gannon has built a career as a multi-hyphenate, and writes about the benefits and challenges of embracing a working life that combines multiple skills and talents (hyphens) as opposed to a standard 9-5 job in The Multi-Hyphen Life.

Ultimately, I didn’t feel that I was the right reader for this book. Gannon dedicates the majority of the text to laying out the merits of a multi-hyphenate lifestyle, but as someone who already embraces the concept, I felt like I was reading a pitch for something I’d already bought.

However: her arguments were persuasive, and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone on the fence about the benefits of a multi-hyphenate lifestyle, or who has the power to enact these kinds of workplace flexibilities in a traditionally structured organization.

I LOVED this book and it’s approach.. Although it’s partly about side hustles, it doesn’t glorify some fake #girlboss or #bossbabe philosophy that leads people into stupid business decisions. I found this book very honest about living a multi-hyphen life and the advice useful and practical. I’ve read my fair share of career books targeted to younger women and most of them just have a bunch of motivational platitudes. Thankfully, this book has a different tone! Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Excellent guide to expanding your work world .Having side jobs turning into real parts of your work life.Really interesting creative ideas to live a multi-hyphenated life#netgalley#andrewmacneil

Great book for girl bosses everywhere. This is more elevated compared to other similar titles. Definitely grab this title if you have a job, side hustle and a side hustle in the works!

This was a very well-written and well-researched book but I really don't think I was the intended audience. Although the author claims this book was for all generations it was clearly written with Millennials and Gen Z in mind.

The premise behind the book is that in a changing working market more people are living what she refers to as the Multi-Hyphen Life; essentially working two or three different careers alongside each other (e.g. blogger-coach-graphic design). The concept itself is not new and I personally have been living this life for the past 20 years.

This book is not a how-to guide and seems to be an introduction to the modern working world with advice on networking (IRL and online), personal branding and social media use with basic advice like don't have stupid email addresses and be careful what you put on social media that you may not want a future employer to see.

For someone just leaving, school or university and just starting the working journey I think this book would be really useful - for me it got the synapses twitching and has inspired me to do a couple of things.

As someone who took a hobby and turned it in to a business, I couldn’t love this book more! Emma Gannon is extremely impressive and writes clearly. The content was informative and engaging. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to turn a passion in to a career.

"Don't be afraid to have multiple careers and interests."

This sentence alone was enough to remind me that in a world so fast paced, that it's okay to try my hand at more than one thing...and the book explores how you can do this without necessarily burning out- and more so how to find meaning while at it.

It's an interesting read, one that I hope to refer to in the course of exploring my interests.

Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

I hadn't heard of Emma Gannon prior to reading this book. She has a lot of great ideas that could have a positive impact on our work culture. Sadly, a lot does have to change within the corporate structures to improve upon most of the topics she broached. There were no great revelations or new ideas that I haven't seen elsewhere. I really wanted to give this book to my former bosses and anyone I know that's stuck reinforcing the old corporate hierarchy that no longer works and is outdated.

This is a great introductory book to the virtues of carving out your own flexible career path vs. climbing the corporate ladder. However, it lacked the rich anecdotal storytelling and statistics that I usually love to see in books on social trends.

In The Multi-Hyphen Life, Emma Gannon's tackles what it means to have a portfolio career in the digital age. .She defines it as balancing multiple income streams while making sure that you don't become extinct in a workplace that is changing at lightning speed. She says, "The Multi-Hyphen Life is about taking control; harnessing multiple skills and housing them under one career roof." This is not a novel concept as it was introduced by management guru Charles Handy in the book, The Empty Raincoat; it has been gaining momentum over the last decade with the rapid rise of technology and teleworking.

As a fellow millennial, I appreciated her thoughts on being a "slashie" and to let go of thinking that my job is my life, my identity and worth. I was encouraged that it is not too late to have the courage and acquire the tools to make moves on the side without risking financial stability

While the content is not new, I believe that this will be a worthy read right now when the world is grappling with the nature of work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It will help people to embrace diverse professional identities while still put food on the table.

I got a digital review copy of this book via NetGalley. If you are looking for answers to your questions about side-hustles or want to lead a life of multiple interests and dont know where to start, this book and her podcast could be a great start.

What I liked about the book:
- The book was full of practical tips about very practical questions that anyone who is living a multi-hyphen life will have.
- The book is easy, simple and fun to read.

What could have been different:
- I felt that there was excessive reliance on quotes and in same cases transcripts of interviews, which i thought could have been curtailed a bit.

This is a better book than a lot of similar titles that I've read this year.

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 jut for yourself. A lot of these types of book really try to sell you on the go big or go home mentality, and it was both soothing and refreshing how practical Gannon was when listing the options for people who may or may not want to completely abandon the traditional full time job.